Styxx (Dark-Hunter 22)

He did and her heart wrenched. Someone had pierced a row of small silver balls down the center of his tongue. Her vision turned dark at the sight. It was a common practice in Atlantis to do that to sex slaves.

"Who did that to you?"

The shame in his eyes made her own tear up. "Apollo when he took me to Olympus."

She'd felt them earlier when they kissed and he'd licked her breast, but hadn't realized at the time what it was. Now that she knew, she wanted blood. "Would you like me to remove them?"

"Your will is my will, akra."

Bethany touched his lips with her fingers and used her powers to dissolve them.

Styxx took her hand in his and held her wrist to his nose. "You smell so much like my Beth."

"I am your Bethany."

He shook his head and released her.

Sighing, she stood up and held her hand out to him. "Come, Highness. You look like you're about to pass out."

He rose without touching her and followed her back to bed. She tucked him in and started humming.

Styxx pressed his hand to his ear. "Why do you mock me?"

"Mock you? How?"

"Please put me back in the arena. I don't want to be here anymore."

She was flabbergasted. "You'd rather be chained like an animal than rest in my bed?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

"I don't want to be reminded of what's forever lost to me. It hurts enough without your making it worse." The ragged tears in his voice made her ache as she realized that anything she did that reminded him of her cut him more.

"Very well. I won't sing. I'll leave you to sleep in peace." But that was something much easier said than done. Because he didn't sleep peacefully. Rather, he tossed and turned as nightmares tortured him. They were even worse now than they'd been whenever he'd napped in their cottage.

And as bad as it hurt for her to see that pain, it was the number of times he called for her in his sleep that sliced deepest. Unable to stand it, she sat on the bed beside him while he fitfully slept and mumbled a heartrending "Bethany."

"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.