Authors: Sherrilyn Kenyon
“Shh,” she breathed in his ear, trying to soothe him. Using her powers, she awakened him so that he could see it was her in his arms, but not so much that he’d be lucid enough to shove her away.
“Bethany?” He spoke her name like a prayer.
She laid her hand against his sculpted cheek. “I’ve missed my Hector.”
Closing his eyes, he buried his face in her hair and breathed her in. He hardened immediately. Her eyes widened as she felt his cock on her thigh. She’d forgotten how big he was.
“I think you’ve missed me, too.”
He answered her with a kiss so hot, it left her breathless and weak. Desperate to please him, she nibbled her way over his bare flesh. It was so strange to finally see the body she knew as intimately as her own.
Or so she thought.
Frowning, she brushed her hand through the sparse, short hairs of his groin to see a brand that infuriated her to an unbelievable level. Her hand shaking, she laid her fingers over the slave’s mark and ground her teeth. It was bad enough he’d been used as a whore, but to mark him as one …
It was unbelievably cruel.
Why didn’t I leave with him all those years ago when he asked me to?
It would have saved him so much pain and degradation. So much misery. Right now, they could have been in a little cottage somewhere with a baby …
Just the three of them.
Instead, she’d chosen duty and obligation, and left him in the hands of people who weren’t fit to watch a doormat.
How can I ever make this up to you?
Could she ever make it up to him? She didn’t know, but she was determined to try.
Styxx growled as Bethany took him into her mouth. His head spun. It’d been so long since he’d last known her precious caress. So long since a loving hand had touched him at all. Was this real? It felt like it, yet it seemed more like a dream.
But he needed it to be real. Just for one moment. One heartbeat.
Don’t leave me again.
Even though Bethany had abandoned him, he wanted her back so badly that when they’d taken her necklace from him, it’d felt like someone had ripped off a limb. Nothing had hurt him more.
And as she touched him, memories surged. Some so painful they threatened to rip him to the core of his soul. But somehow her touch grounded him in the present and made them recede.
For one moment, he forgot everything except those precious afternoons where he hadn’t been Prince Styxx. Where there had only been him and a beautiful woman who’d given him laughter in the midst of utter Tartarus. Someone who had taught him to smile and look forward to something.
Someone who had taught him hope and love.
His jaw quivered as pleasure shot through him. And as good as her mouth felt on him, that wasn’t what he wanted.
“Hold me, Bethany,” he breathed.
She kissed her way up his body and then laid herself against him. Styxx expelled his breath in a rush before he cupped her head in his hands and kissed her.
Rolling over, he pinned her beneath him as she spread her legs in invitation. He took her hand into his and kissed her palm as he slid into her.
Bethany moaned at how good he felt. It seemed like an eternity since she’d last held him. Over the past year, she hadn’t allowed herself to remember this. It’d been too painful.
But as she looked up at him and felt him inside her while he held on to her as if she was the most important thing in the universe, she tried to remember how she could have been dumb enough to walk away.
How could she have ever chosen anything over someone who loved her like this?
I don’t deserve you
.
She hissed in ecstasy as he thrust against her. “I love you,” she whispered in his ear.
He lifted himself up to look down at her and cupped her face in his hand. He had no idea that she could see what she’d never seen before when they made love.
The tenderness in those blue eyes for her. The love and pain. It seared her. He buried himself deep inside her body. “Never once in my life did I feel sunshine on my skin until the day you touched me,” he breathed in her ear. “And without my Bethany, I dwell in total darkness.”
Her throat tightened. “I’ve missed my poet so.” No one had ever talked to her the way he did. He could be so bashful and clumsy and at the same time so eloquent and graceful. It was what she loved most about him.
He was always unexpected.
In that moment, her body erupted with pleasure. Arching her back, she cried out as he thrust harder and deeper, giving her more pleasure until he finally joined her there. His breathing ragged, he shook in her arms. “I love you with all my heart, Beth,” he whispered gently as he kissed his way to her stomach.
Sighing, he lay down between her thighs with his head on her belly. His breath tickled her skin along with his eyelashes and whiskers.
After a few heartbeats, she realized he was sound asleep. Laughing, she brushed her hand through his hair and thought about the day they’d first met when he’d fallen asleep in her lap.
But then he always fell asleep with her. She knew from their chats that he didn’t sleep well on his own. Yet any time they were together, he’d doze off for a bit. It’d always warmed her that he trusted her when he never trusted anyone else.
Her smile fled as she looked down at the mark of Apollo on his back, and all the other wounds and scars there. Styxx would hate her if he ever learned that she was a goddess who had abandoned him to Apollo’s cruelty. That she belonged to the pantheon that had gone out of its way to humiliate and punish him.
And who could blame him for that? She should have fought for him instead of walking away. He would have fought for her with everything he had. Styxx would never have abandoned her. Not for any reason.
Don’t think about it
.
She couldn’t change what she’d done. But she could make sure that no one ever hurt him again. And she would. Even if she had to defy every god on Olympus and Katateros. No one would ever lay another hand to her prince.
Please forgive me, Styxx.
Yet even then, she didn’t know how to reenter his life after all this time. What would be crueler? To stay away or to return to him and remind him of how she’d left him when he needed her most?
How could he ever trust her again?
For that matter, would he ever be normal? She glanced down to watch him sleep. Even unconscious, he held on to her desperately. There had been no accusation or reservation while he made love to her. That gave her hope.
Of course, he hadn’t been fully conscious either. Still, it boded well that he might welcome her back.
Or curse her to the level she knew in her heart that she deserved.
January 12, 9527 BC
Coughing and weak, Styxx came awake to bright sunlight pouring through a white marbled room. At first he had no idea where he was, until he remembered the goddess who’d freed him from his cell. He pushed himself up from the ornately carved and gilded bed with bloodred curtains.
“Careful.”
His head spun as the blond goddess helped him to sit. “Why am I so dizzy?” He glared at her. “Did you drug me?”
“No, I swear it. You have a fever.”
That explained why he was so chilled and hot.
She wrapped a formesta around him and drew it tight to his neck. “Let’s get you bathed and dressed, and then I’ll take you home.”
Pain slammed into him at the thought of returning to the arena. But he held it in. Whatever fun she’d wanted from him she must have had. And in spite of what she said, he was sure she’d drugged and used him. They all did.
Except for when he fought. For that and what came after, he was always sober. Because it would be too kind for them to let him forget
that
.
Weary and disgusted, he followed her back to the pool and quickly bathed. There was no need to stay here any longer than necessary. At this point, kindness was the cruelest torture of all, because it made him feel human. Made him long for things the gods refused him.
Warmth. Friendship. Happiness.
Dignity.
She put a gray chiton on him then took his hand. Dreading his return to Tartarus, Styxx ground his teeth as they left her temple and materialized in a barracks area. An instant later, recognition hit him.
This was Didymos?
“Highness?”
Styxx couldn’t breathe at the sound of that familiar gruff voice. “Galen?” His knees buckled.
The goddess kept him from falling.
Galen took his other arm and slung it over his massive shoulders. “What did they do to you, boy?”
Words failed him as his emotions surged and Styxx realized that he really was home again. It wasn’t a dream or hallucination. It was real. He held on to Galen and wept in utter relief and gratitude.
Galen walked him to his quarters and helped Styxx into bed. He pulled covers over him. “I’ll get the physician.”
“You can’t.”
Galen turned to scowl at the goddess. “He’s extremely ill.”
“I know. But they think that he’s been here the whole time. How are you going to explain all the marks on his body that tell a different story?”
Galen clenched his teeth as he saw the old and new cuts and bruises. “What did they do to him?” he repeated.
Bethany wanted to cry as she remembered the way she’d found Styxx in his cell. “You don’t want me to answer that question and I know Styxx doesn’t. Suffice it to say, he’s been in the hands of people who hate him for a long time.”
Styxx ignored them both as his breaths came in labored gasps while he stared at the whitewashed wall with disbelief.
“Thank you for bringing him back.”
She inclined her head to Galen. “Please remind him once he’s able to walk unassisted that he has to…” She curled her lip in anger at what the Olympian bastard required for his freedom. “Make reparations with Apollo.”
“I will.”
And with that, she was gone.
Styxx looked around the room, waiting for it to vanish. “Am I really here, Galen?”
“You are.”
Still unable to believe it wasn’t a dream, Styxx licked his chapped lips. “How long have I been gone?”
“I’m not sure. What was the last thing you remember?”
How could he forget? “The betrothal feast. Father announced Ryssa was pregnant.”
Galen went pale as he sucked his breath in sharply.
That didn’t bode well. Styxx frowned at the old man. “What?”
“Her son is almost five months old.”
Styxx gasped as he realized it’d been almost a full year. And there was one terrifying event he wouldn’t have been here for that would have come and gone in his absence. “I’m married?”
“No. You sent the Egyptian princess home after Acheron tried to rape her.”
Deepening his scowl, Styxx tried to make sense of what Galen was saying. “I’m no longer betrothed?”
“No, Highness. Not for months now.” Galen swallowed as fear shadowed his gray eyes. “Where have you been all this time?”
Styxx winced at the memories that tore him apart. “Atlantis.” He didn’t elaborate beyond that. There was no need to tell Galen he’d been kept caged, beaten and used as a tsoulus and worse. Not that it wasn’t obvious given his physical condition. There were bite marks and handprints all over him and in places that said exactly how badly used he’d been.
Sighing, he tried to come to terms with everything. The last time he’d been gone this long, his mother had died. This time, he’d missed a birth. “Her son’s really five months old? What’s his name?”
“Apollodorus.”
Gift of Apollo
. It was enough to make him sick. How could he ever call his nephew by the name of his bitterest enemy? Especially knowing that enemy was the child’s father?
But he wasn’t going to be like his parents. He’d never hold the child’s father against him. Of all men, he knew what that felt like. No matter what, he would love and protect the innocent boy.
Closing his eyes, he continued to sift through the events he’d missed. Until he remembered something else Galen had said. “Wait …
I
sent Nefertari home?”
Galen nodded. “I knew something was wrong. You haven’t been acting like yourself, but I thought it was premarital jitters and battle fatigue. I should have known the minute I saw the imposter pick up your shield and fight that it wasn’t you. He held it like it repulsed him.”
Styxx laughed bitterly. “Don’t be surprised if I have that aversion now, too.” Because every time he’d touched one over this last year, win, lose, or draw, the outcome had always been the same.
Abject and public humiliation at the end of the fight.
“Yes, but I was able to knock
him
on his arse.”
That would definitely not happen. Especially not after battling the larger Atlantean fighters they’d thrown into the ring with him. His skills had never been more honed.
Or lethal.
And still they hadn’t been enough to protect him.
“What else have I done?” He dreaded the answer.
Galen ground his teeth. “Honestly? You’ve been a royal asshole. Well … not you. The other Styxx. And you … or rather
he,
pissed off a lot of your men.”
“How so?”
“He repealed the pensions and upped their yearly service quotas with no extra pay. He insulted all of us and has been behaving like an out-of-control brat to everyone. Even your father has had enough of you.”
Styxx would give Apollo credit. He’d warned him that he was going to ruin him and he had. Not that Styxx had all that much to lose in terms of his reputation. But he hated that his men had suffered for it. That wasn’t something he’d foreseen.
First thing he’d do was take care of them.
And Galen.
He tried to get up and start on it, but the moment he moved, he groaned in absolute agony and fell back onto the bed. Grimacing, he glanced to his mentor. “How bad do I look?”
Galen held up Styxx’s arm that was riddled with bruises and cuts. “This is the least damaged part of you. You look like you fought Echidna and all her children. And I’m pretty sure the hydra swallowed you whole and shit you out her back end.”