The stretch burned, but I welcomed it. Welcomedhim.
My hands fisted the sheets, my back arching, mouth parting on a gasp as he sank into me inch by inch. He held himself rigid, his jaw clenched and his muscles trembling from the effort it took not to lose control.
“You feel,” he choked out, forehead pressing to mine, “like you were made for me.”
I couldn’t speak. My throat was tight with emotion, my body too overwhelmed by the fullness of him, the exquisite friction of him sliding deeper, deeper, until he was seated fully within me.
We stilled.
He was so far in me I could barely breathe. The air was heavy between us, trembling with the weight of this moment. Of everything we were risking.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered.
I didn’t realize they’d fallen shut. When I looked at him, I saweverything.
His face hovered just above mine, and he cradled my cheek like I was fragile and fierce in the same breath.
Achilles withdrew almost entirely, teasing my desperation, before plunging back inside me. My body arched to meet him, clinging, greedy, aching, straining to take all of him—his size, his heat, his weight—until I was trembling beneath the force of him.
Each movement was adoring. Purposeful. Like he wasn’t just taking me … he waslearningme.
I gasped and raked my nails down his back, the burn of pleasure blooming wide and wild inside me. He moved again, deeper this time, harder, and I cried out, a helpless sound that split the quiet like a cracked chalice.
“Again,” I breathed. “Don’t stop. Please, Achilles,don’t stop.”
His response was a low growl in my ear, and then his hips snapped forward. The bed creaked, the headboard slamming softly against the stone wall, a rhythm forming that felt like poetry and delirium all at once.
He kissed me again, rougher this time, his tongue tangling with mine as our bodies met in frantic unity. His hand slid beneath my thigh, lifting it higher, angling me to take him deeper. I felt him everywhere, burning through me, remaking me from the inside out.
Every thrust sent lightning cracking through my veins, pleasure coiling tighter and tighter until I thought I might shatter from it. I moaned into his mouth, my body straining for more, for everything. The red paint on my skin smeared across us both, streaks of war and desire marking the places we collided.
“You’re shaking,” he breathed against my lips.
“You’reruiningme,” I choked, tears springing to my eyes, not from pain, but from the unbearable beauty of this, ofus.
He drove into me harder, faster, each thrust stealing my breath, until his hand slid down, fingers pressing against the slick, aching place that throbbed for him. The contact was blinding, fire shooting through every vein, my vision swimmingas the coil in my belly wound tighter, tighter … until it snapped. Violent. Blissful. Absolute.
I cried his name, half prayer, half curse, as my body convulsed around him, clenching, and dragging him deeper. His groan tore from his chest, and he wrenched back with a ragged sound that left me gasping.
For a breathless beat, I was hollow. Empty.
Then his fist closed around himself, his body shuddering as release overtook him. Hot, thick ropes spilled across my stomach, marking me in streaks of heat.
He collapsed at my side, chest heaving, eyes wild with something unchained. But I barely felt his weight against the mattress. Because something colder was already coiling through me.
I stared at the mess he’d left on me, the evidence of his worship that was like a secret only we would ever know. But it would mark me long after the heat cooled.
If I ever carried Achilles’s child, the world would know. The difference between them—between him and the king—was written in every line of their bodies, every glance, every act of power and tenderness and pain. One was forged of cruelty. The other of fire.
And someday …
Someday, I would be forced to carry Menelaus’s child.
The thought set something screaming loose inside me.
I turned my head away, shame creeping into the edges of my euphoria, the future closing its teeth around my throat.
“Helena.” His voice was hushed. Threaded with something that defied the world I knew.
