Motherfucker, he was hard.
Not just from the feel of her hot little body plastered to his side as he hauled her down the mountainside, but from the way she’d very nearly kicked his ass out there in the trees.
Darkness closed around him as he dragged her into a cave that opened to a series of tunnels, which provided passage beneath the lake to the island beyond—a darkness that only made his dick throb harder. Darkness turned him on. Danger made him hard. This minx’s reactions and the way she was still trying to fight him made him absolutely ache with the need to take her and tame her and show her who was really in control. Especially when he remembered how responsive she’d been during their training sessions and how easy it had been to drag her into all the dark, dirty filth that got him off.
“I want to know where you’re taking me,” she said as he pulled her around switchbacks in the tunnel, her breath heavy at his side, her skin so hot against his he was starting to sweat.
He didn’t owe her an explanation. She was lucky he hadn’t decided to kill her after the way she’d lashed out. Or taken her to Zeus already. The second he’d recognized her he’d decided not to do either, though. Not because she didn’t deserve one or both but because he had his own plans for her. Plans that didn’t include the King of the fucking Gods, at least not yet.
Eventually he knew Zeus would want her back for punishment, which could include anything from having her reassigned as a servant or handmaiden or even a sex slave. And though Erebus wasn’t wild about any of those options—especially the last, unless she was his sex slave—he knew he had time. Time to have his own fun before his life-long obligations to Olympus drew him back.
Hell, he deserved some fun after the years he’d spent in servitude, didn’t he? As far as he was concerned, he deserved more than a little fun simply because he had to deal with Zeus’s incompetent Siren trainees on a daily fucking basis.
“I’m taking you to the half-breed ruins,” he said, tugging her around another corner in the dark, deciding he didn’t want her completely defiant. Oh, he enjoyed an adrenaline-amping fight now and then, but it was so much more enjoyable when he could coax a female’s reluctance into cries of sensual pleasure. With Sera’s nymphomaniac tendencies, he knew it wouldn’t take much persuading.
“No one’s there,” she argued. “The half-breed ruins have been empty for twenty-some years.”
Exactly. No one was there. No one could hear her screams from inside its walls. No one would even know a minor god had gone off the grid there with a cheeky little nymph who made him so hard he hurt.
She tugged against this grip. “Erebus, please. This is a bad id—”
It was the please that brought him around. Or maybe it was the way she said his name. He wasn’t sure which, but something in her voice made him whip back and push her up against the cold rock wall.
She gasped as he moved in close at her front. Blood rushed straight into his cock at the reaction, making him even harder. He knew he shouldn’t tease her, that he was only tormenting himself by doing so, but he didn’t care. She was like a drug making him high, making him want. And it had been so long since he’d wanted anything purely for himself, he couldn’t seem to force himself to stop.
“I like it when you beg, Seraphine.” He leaned in close and traced the line of her ear with the tip of his nose. She trembled, which shot his blood even higher. “I love it when you beg me. Do you remember when I had you tied to that bed in the training center, when you begged me to fill you, to fuck you, to make you come?”
Her throat worked in the darkness as she swallowed, and her hands landed against his chest. Hands that were warm and soft and so much more than he remembered. He wanted them on his skin. Wanted to feel them wrap around his cock. Wanted her to draw him toward all her warm, wet heat all over again as she pushed him over on that bed, as she straddled his hips, as she rode him to a blistering climax that had been better than any he’d had in a thousand years.
She didn’t answer, but the way her breath sped up, the way her hands curled into the fabric of his shirt and didn’t push him away told him she was already acquiescing.
A smile curled his lips as he lowered his face to her neck and breathed hot over her scintillating skin. “I remember, oraios. I remember the way your fingers clawed at my back after I released your bindings and you screamed for me to give you more.” He drew in a deep whiff of her rich, citrusy scent. A scent that was so intoxicating it had made him wild on Olympus anytime she was near and still haunted his dreams to this day. “I remember the way you flipped me to my back, the way you scored your nails down my chest until you drew blood, the way you made me scream.”
She groaned, a sound that caused his erection to twitch against his fly and him to rock against the wicked heat of her lower body.
She bit down hard on her lip. Her fingers curled tighter in his shirt as she fought what he knew was her own growing desire to press back against him. But instead of giving in to her needs as he wanted, she whispered, “Why are you doing this to me?”
He drew back just enough so he could see her face. It was pitch black in the tunnel, so dark he knew she couldn’t see his face, but one look was all it took to see she wasn’t peering up at him. Her eyes were tightly shut, her face scrunched as if in pain. But not the same pain of lust and desire swirling like a vortex inside him—this was another kind of agony. An emotional torment he didn’t understand and which dimmed his craving until it was a manageable ache instead of a burning demand.
He eased back a step, putting space between them, and released her arm. As cool air swept over his body, he watched her eyes flutter open. Watched her head turn and her gaze narrow as she tried to see him. Watched that silky blonde hair he’d enjoyed fisting flutter over her slim shoulders.
His heart hammered against his ribs, and his blood was still up from a hunger that hadn’t been satisfied. But the heartache he’d seen in her features moments ago continued to resonate inside him, keeping him from touching her again.
Conflicting thoughts raced through his mind. She was a nymph, a Siren recruit, Zeus’s property, so he shouldn’t care what she was feeling besides lust. But he did. As his heart continued to beat in long, steady thumps, he realized he cared more than he liked. Even now, when all he wanted to do was strap her down and ravage her until they both screamed, he cared. Because his desires where she was concerned were rooted firmly in pleasure, not pain. He wasn’t a sadist, regardless of his darkness. He wasn’t Hades. He wasn’t even Zeus. And even though he’d fucked hundreds of Siren recruits, all in the name of training, he remembered now what it was about Sera that had resonated so strongly with him then.
She had been different. She hadn’t just wanted sex, as so many of the other recruits did the moment they saw him. She’d wanted to talk. She’d spent time getting to know him. As they’d lain in bed together after her sessions, she’d made him smile with tales of the recruits’ antics in the barracks and on the field. At times she’d even made him laugh, as she had when she’d tried to bind him to that bed and hadn’t been able to tie a knot that would hold.
In the long, lonely years of his life, for brief flickering moments, she’d been a light to his darkness. A breath of fresh air. An oasis in the middle of a desert whose grains of sand were nothing but years of servitude to the gods. And he wanted that nymph back. He wanted to see her smile. He wanted to hear her laugh. He wanted her wild and willing and begging and his. The way she’d been his before she’d been wrenched from his grasp and he’d been reassigned to another recruit.
The force of that want was strong. So strong he turned away from her, swiped a hand down his face to cool himself down, then reached for her arm again—but only when he knew he wouldn’t give in and try to force her to want him back.
“Come on,” he said, pulling her away from the wall, this time tugging gently. “We’re almost there.”
Confusion pulled her brows together. He saw it from the corner of his eye.
And he knew she was wondering why he’d stopped his advances and what he had planned next.
He frowned because...he was suddenly wondering that too. His so-called plans had just changed. Oh, he still wanted her, still intended to have her, but the ways in which he would get there were now swirling in his mind. Along with just what he needed to do to remind her just how much she’d wanted him long ago.
How much the woman he’d awakened inside her years ago still wanted him now.
* * * *
Sera was unnerved. Unnerved and confused and more aroused than she wanted to admit.
That moment in the caves, when Erebus had pressed all his succulent heat against her and whispered those dark and naughty things in her ear, echoed in her mind, replaying like a silent video set on repeat. He was a highly sexual beast. She’d seen that on Olympus. She’d felt it moments ago in the caves. And she knew exactly why he’d dragged her into these ruins and what he intended to do to her.
She knew and she hated him for it.
She knew, and she trembled with anticipation over when it would happen.
The half-breed colony had once occupied an abandoned castle on an island in the middle of a glacial lake. As Erebus drew her into the structure and up several flights of stairs, she’d realized that the tunnel he’d pulled her into had led to the island. Walls were blackened and burned. The ceiling was open and missing in places from some kind of fire, but the rock of the castle remained, as did several floors that had been built out of stone. Now, after twenty-odd years left abandoned, plants and vines had crept into the space, making the ruins their home.
Erebus ignored the main floor with the broken wide windows that looked out over the early morning light rising above the lake and dragged her to an upper room. To what she recognized had once been a bedroom suite but was now scattered with broken furniture, dirt, and dried leaves.
She swallowed hard when she spotted the enormous bed, the old, worn mattress covered in a layer of dirt and slashed in the middle, stuffing falling out to mix with the debris on the floor. Though she tried not to be turned on by the presence of that bed, heat built in her veins and her treacherous body tingled to life.
Her whole body tensed as he tugged her toward the bed, but instead of tossing her onto that dingy mattress and having his way with her as she expected, he backed her up against one of the four posts. “Put your arms down at your sides.”
Her heart beat faster. Some instinct deep inside warned her not to obey, but she did as he said, not wanting to do anything to set him off. He was twice her size, the epitome of darkness as she’d seen when he’d attacked her in the forest, and she was a nymph who hadn’t completed her Siren training and who was currently without weapons. But that wasn’t the only reason she’d acquiesced, she knew. The other reason was because her lascivious body liked his touch. Her traitorous mind craved his commands. And that submissive part of her lineage—the part straight from her nymph heritage—yearned to please him as she had eighteen months ago on Olympus when he’d been her seduction trainer and she’d done every dirty, erotic thing he’d demanded.
Anger welled inside her as she watched him pull a length of thin rope—rope that didn’t look like it was strong enough to hold a cat, let alone a person—from somewhere in his pocket. Anger and disgust with her own body. He hadn’t once looked at her since they’d left the darkness of the tunnels. Wasn’t looking at her now as he wrapped the rope around her torso and the bedpost several times. Didn’t even glance at her face when he tied it off at her back and finally stepped away.
He’d ignited a slow-burning fire inside her with his words in the tunnel, and now he was letting that fire smolder. Tormenting her in a new and torturous way.
He moved to the far side of the bed, and she heard the sounds of fabric rustling, then the bedpost shook at her back. Excitement surged inside her. An excitement she didn’t like. Knowing he was distracted, she shifted her shoulders and tried to move, but the rope held her tight, and she realized belatedly that the rope had to be charmed by some kind of otherworldly force.
Of course it was. He was a freakin’ god, after all. Had she honestly thought escaping would be easy?
He stepped around her with a pile of filthy sheets and moved toward the door without another word.
Confusion drew her brows together. “Hey,” she called as he reached the threshold. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer. Just turned the corner and disappeared.
Panic pushed in. She didn’t like being confined. Strapped down and ravished was one thing. Bound and deserted was something altogether different. “You can’t leave me like this!”
The only response that met her ears was the sound of his boot steps fading down the stone corridor.
Alone, she heaved out a sigh. He’d be back. He hadn’t dragged her all the way to these ruins to abandon her. While she knew she should be thankful he wasn’t tormenting her with his hands and lips and sinful body as he’d done in the caves, part of her couldn’t help be disappointed. Yes, she hated him for so easily ditching her on Olympus all those months ago, but she couldn’t deny that sex with him had been earth shattering. Just the memory of how he could seduce without even touching made her whole body tremble. And the things he could do with that mouth...
Her skin grew hot. She cleared her throat to fight her body’s natural response to him. Instead of thinking about hot, sweaty, satisfying sex, she needed to stay focused on why she was here. Why she’d been out in that forest in the first place. Not for herself, but to set right a wrong that been done a hundred years ago and to prevent what had happened to her world from happening to someone else’s.
She glanced over the suite, searching for any kind of escape route. This room had avoided the fire that had charred other parts of the castle. A dark fireplace fronted a ratty couch, what used to be a side chair, and an old coffee table. The door on the far wall looked as if it might open to a bathroom, but she couldn’t see inside to be sure. Peering over her shoulder, she caught the movement of gauzy white curtains, frayed and hanging in front of what looked to still be solid windows. Beyond, the rising light of morning told her the view was from several stories up, and unless she planned to jump to her death, her only way out was the main door Erebus had left through.
She frowned and looked back to the fireplace. At least she wasn’t going to freeze to death when the chill of night swept back over the castle. But even that was a small comfort as minutes turned to an hour and still there was no sign of her captor.
Where had he gone? What was he doing? He’d said he had something big, hard, and very wicked planned for her. She’d felt that big, hard, wicked bulge in the caves and knew he’d been close to giving it to her there. But now, when she was bound, and—thanks to her licentious body—aching for the same damn thing, he was nowhere to be found.
She struggled against her bonds, but soon decided all she was doing was exhausting herself. As daylight warmed the room, the last few hours—the last few days caught up with her, and her muscles grew limp.
It had all started when she’d heard rumors in her training class of the Sirens’ recent discovery of a medallion with special properties. Something about the location of the discovery had seemed oddly familiar, and she’d gone to the Hall of Sirens during her free time to research. Little had she known that research would trigger her memories—memories that had been blocked by the Sirens when she’d been handpicked by Zeus to train with his elite female warriors. And that those memories would reveal a deception so great, she was sure only the gods could conceive of something so heinous.
In retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have confronted Athena, the leader of the Sirens. That had been a bad idea and had led to Sera being tossed in the Pit—a black hole in the ground on Olympus where Sirens were often punished—for a week. At least she hadn’t told Athena she’d regained her memories. Doing so would have resulted in her immediate death. But it had made her realize that everything she’d been told from the moment she’d arrived on Olympus was a lie. When she’d emerged from that black hole of despair, she’d pretended to step back in line, but behind the scenes she’d plotted her revenge.
Of course, that revenge had landed her here—in this cold castle in the middle of nowhere, wondering where the hell Erebus had gone and when the heck he was coming back.
She heaved out another sigh and glanced up and around the room. No wonder she was tired. She’d barely slept in the last two weeks, and her adrenaline was rapidly crashing. As much as she didn’t want to encourage Erebus and his nefarious plans, she wished he’d tied her to the mattress before he’d left so she could sleep. Wished he’d had the sense to tie her lower to the post so at least she was sitting and could rest her weary legs.
Her eyes grew heavy, and her head drooped. Thoughts of Erebus and the sensual way he’d held her against the cave wall in the dark swirled in her mind. Whatever he had planned, she knew she would endure it. Just as she knew she’d likely enjoy it. The key would be making sure she found a way to escape as soon as his body was sated and he dropped his guard. Because staying, and ultimately letting him haul her back to Olympus, was not an option.
She hadn’t sacrificed her future to fail now. Too much depended on her success. Erebus might be the master of seduction, but she wasn’t going to let her treacherous heart fall for him again. She was going to escape.
Or, the Fates help her, she’d die trying.