Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83786 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
That year should mean we aren’t fucking, but that small detail got lost somewhere in translation. Every single night, when the lights go out, we find each other in the dark. And every single night, I refuse to touch her before getting verbal consent. “Say yes.”
She curses. “Yes.”
Hera. My queen. The person in Olympus who hates me the most.
But when my fingers brush her hip, she grabs my wrist and pulls me down to her. No hesitation. No ice. Just a heat so intense I’m certain it will burn us both away to nothingness. She’s not sharp as I pull her close and kiss her. She’s soft and fiery and full of need. Her fingers dig into my hips, urging me to line up with her, to get this over with.
Despite everything, stress and rage and a deep sense that I’m fucking things up beyond all repair in every facet of my life, I smile against her lips. “Say yes.”
“I hate you.”
It’s the truth. But not in this moment. When she’s moving against me, a battle of wills where we both win, I can almost see the partnership we could have if we’d just get out of our own ways. If she wasn’t Hera, determined to stand apart from her predecessors and survive. If I wasn’t Zeus, trapped in a long shadow of all those who have held the title before me. We would be unstoppable. We might even be happy.
But we are Zeus and Hera, and I can’t afford to forget that. I drag my mouth along her jaw to speak directly in her ear, as soft as a secret. “Say yes, Hera. Spread your thighs and let me taste you.”
Her nails prick my hips, but when she speaks, she’s the same cold creature I married. “I already said yes, Zeus. Don’t be a bastard and try to make me beg. You’ll fail.”
We both know that’s a lie, but I allow her the illusion that it’s not. She always begs in the end—for me to go harder, deeper, to not stop. Tonight, I don’t test the limits of her patience. I never do. Instead, I kiss my way down her body and settle between her thighs.
Here is where Hera is sweetest, and she proves that to be true yet again at the first slow drag of my tongue through her folds. Instantly, her legs fall wide open. She laces her fingers through my hair and lifts her hips to meet my mouth.
These stolen moments of peace never last. They’re a fantasy I can’t help engaging with, an alternate reality that I only allow myself to entertain when there is nothing to illuminate the lie. Dawn will come soon enough to pierce the illusion that I have a wife who actually wants me.
But for now, we have this.
2
Hera
I hate Zeus. I’ve hated Zeus since I was a little girl and realized exactly how much power he holds over Olympus—over my family. It doesn’t matter that this Zeus and that one are two different men. Zeus may be a title passed down from parent to child since the beginning of Olympus, but they’re all monsters.
This particular monster currently has two fingers inside me and is licking my clit in a rhythm that has my toes curling almost painfully.
It only makes me hate him more, yet it doesn’t matter how little I like the man between my thighs. When the lights go out, I can almost pretend he’s someone else, someone whose pleasure I can accept without choking on it.
It’s unfortunate I’ve never been all that good at playing pretend.
Zeus crooks his fingers inside me again and again, driving me into an orgasm so strong it almost wipes away the bitter taste of failure. If I’d gotten my way, I’d be a widow by now, my husband crushed in a truly unfortunate accident in that eyesore he calls a workplace. Instead, I’m shoving him onto his back and straddling him, taking his ridiculously large cock into me.
I don’t need to fuck my husband any more. I got what I came for—an heir to take his title, a clear path into a future without him in it. I’m months along at this point and all signs indicate that the little parasite in my stomach is perfectly healthy and will continue to be until the moment they come barging into the world, no doubt to grow up to be a monster just like every Zeus before them. But they’ll be my monster.
We have no shortage of those in my family.
So, no, I don’t need to keep having sex with Zeus. Every night, I tell myself that this will be the night I’ll go sleep in the spare bedroom, or will at least resist telling him yes the way he keeps insisting before touching me.
And every night, I’m back here again, riding his cock and letting pleasure sweep over me until this entire interlude hardly feels real.