“If you keep looking at me like that,” Aeëtes grinned, leaning down and kissing her gently, “this is going to be over before it’s started.”
Hecate smiled into the kiss, the soft moment breaking through their heady attraction.
“It’s a good thing I know what you can do with that tongue then.”
Aeëtes bit at her lip, sending another delicious jolt of painjustshy of too much through Hecate.
“Wait and see what I can do with the rest of my body, little witch.”
His hands drifted down to her thighs as he guided Hecate to wrap her legs around him. She moaned at the feel of him, hot and ready at her entrance, and cried out as he lazily thrust his hips, teasing her as he ran himself through her folds. The head of his cock was grinding against her clit, and red magic sparked over Hecate’s body.
Aeëtes nearly blacked out at the sensation, already soft and warm around him, and it took every bit of control he had not to immediately fuck her into the mattress. Hecate could see the restraint written across his brow and smiled, leaning up to kiss his brow.
“Fuck me, Aeëtes,” she growled, her voice at odds with her tender actions, and the contradiction made Aeëtes impossibly harder. “Fuck me like you mean it.”
That was all it took, and Aeëtes sat up on his knees and gripped her hips, finally moving himself inside of her. He moved wickedly slowly, languidly, and Hecate could feel every inch of him as he entered her. She felt like it went on forever, all heat and stretch as each neuron in her brain began to fire. She felt like she was being undone underneath him, and Aeëtes wasn’t fairing much better.
His whole body was coiled tight, sweat breaking out across his chest as he rocked forward in a steady motion. Her body gripped him like a vice, and he had never felt more insane than he did in that moment. As he looked at her blissed out expression beneath him, every part of his brain and his soul chanted one thing:Hecate, Hecate, Hecate.
With a final roll of his hips, he settled into her to the hilt, letting out a garbled moan at the sensation. Hecate was panting underneath him, one hand in her hair as she tried to breathe, feeling like she was split in two but willing to die from the burn. There were no more words between them. In that moment, nothing else needed to be said. Aeëtes leaned down and wrapped one arm around her back, the other elbow holding his weight near her head. She looked up into his eyes and nearly cried at the sight of him, the warmth and intensity in his gaze as he looked at her.
Aeëtes was utterly lost—every part of himself, he now signed over to her. Any sovereignty that he had left in this world now belonged to the goddess. He stared at her flushed face, trying to say everything that had been bottled up inside of him. His affection for her, the way that he had been lost to her witchcraft as soon as he laid eyes on her, he poured it all out at her feet. Hecate had never let a lover take her like this before, on top of her, all around her,lookingat her.
Really looking at her.
The vulnerability and acceptance in Aeëtes’s eyes were a far cry from the lust and fear that she had always seen in a man’s gaze. As he began to rock his hips against hers, each thrust created another crack in her walls. He started slowly, increasing his pace as Hecate felt the last of the tension in her body release. She surrendered to the delicious feeling of her body moving with his, rolling her hips up lazily to meet each thrust.
“Fuck, Aeëtes!” Hecate cried, her magic responding to him and running all over her body in waves.Has it ever been like this for you?she was really asking him.
“I know, I know.”No, it’s never been like this for me with anyone,he would’ve answered her.
Every part of them was open to the other. As they went hurtling towards the edge, they were terrified to realize that they had always been searching for this—for calm that could only be found in chaos, to the darkness that let the light rest, and the brightness that kept the night from being never-ending. Aeëtes reached down and gently rolled his thumb around Hecate’s clit, and with a final thrust, pulled the release out of her. She arched her back as her face contorted in a silent scream, her entire body electric with pulsing, white-hot pleasure.
She spasmed around him, and Aeëtes’s orgasm was ripped from his body, pulling his soul out with it. He collapsed forward and bit at Hecate’s shoulder to keep himself from shouting until they both went limp with the aftershocks. Hecate’s legs were shaking, and Aeëtes eased out of her, kissing her cheek softly when she whimpered at the sensitivity.
Neither of them said a word.
Aeëtes was careful as he rolled off her, taking in the sight of a thoroughly satisfied and flushed Hecate next to him. He pulled her to his side and gently laid her head on his chest, both of them falling fast asleep again in the bright light of morning.
? ? ?
When Hecate woke,it was mid-afternoon. Every part of her was sore, but it paled in comparison to the panic that had settled in her stomach. She had never felt anything like that before; had never seen a man look at her like that. Hecate had never spent the night with a man, either. Sleeping next to someone required too much vulnerability, too much intimacy. She could never relax enough to do it. But she had fallen asleep immediately with him…and had rested. Aeëtes’s chest was rising and falling beneath her in a steady rhythm, and she breathed in the scent of him as if trying to commit it to memory.
The anxiety in her bones turned to leaden guilt, heavy and shameful, as she slowly untangled herself from the warmth and safety that she felt in his hold.
I’ll be cursed for this.She knew that when she made it back to the Underworld, even the Fates would damn her for her decision.
Hecate quietly stood up and got out of bed, her feet feeling cold on the floor. She found her himation in the corner and wrapped it around herself quickly, moving towards the door in total silence. As soon as her hand touched the doorknob, Aeëtes’s voice called to her from the bed, sounding rough and utterly wrecked.
“It’s a good thing they call you the necromancer, because if you walk out that door…you’ve made me a dead man.”
There was a perilously long beat of silence, and Hecate stepped out and didn’t look back.
23
The crew was wise enough to give an angry woman space when they saw one, and when Hecate emerged on the deck of the ship, the men scattered. She hid behind an angry face and glimmers of red power, keeping her battle-bruised heart under lock and key.
A key that Hecate realized she had unwittingly given to Aeëtes, who was downstairs in her cabin.
