I could not begin to describe the sensations coursing through me—wonder, awe, and complete and total shock. Not even Aphrodite had known that Caly was still in there. I wondered if Calypso had known she would be, or whether this was a shock to all of us.

Thalassa was so unlike the female she’d been the first day I’d been with her, which now felt like ages ago rather than the three days it actually was.

She was talkative and she laughed. There was still an edge to her that had been missing with Calypso, but like a butterfly bursting forth from its chrysalis, she was a completely altered woman, as if the shackles that had held her bound were free.

She was beautiful, and I was falling all over again, deeply, completely. She consumed me in her fires, and I reveled in the burn.

I held her tightly, my hands clasped around her waist, basking in the sensation of her luscious, pillowy breasts pressed tight to my hard chest. If this had been our other time, I’d have laid her down, stripped her nude, and given her three, four, five orgasms with my tongue and cock by now.

Her desires had been as ravenous as my own, and our sexual romps had been exciting, adventurous, and experimental. Whatever she’d wanted me to do, I’d done and had found myself enjoying some rather odd requests more than I’d ever thought I could have.

Playing with carrots had always been a favorite of ours, oddly enough.

But we were learning one another all over again, isolated in this oasis of light and wonder we’d built together, trapped in a cave filled to bursting with exotic gems and fish I had never seen, with heads shaped like puppies and eyes that burned red and were large and lovely and could be terribly wicked if it wanted to be.

She was smiling, and so was I. I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.

“Tell me, Thalassa, if you had one desire, one wish above all else, what would it be?”

She grinned and pushed back on my chest, even as her thumbs continued to rub hot circles on my flesh, making me feel dizzy and breathless as pleasure and desire coursed like hot lava through my veins.

Her look was shy and innocent, and stars above, she was glorious. I bit my bottom lip, and the pupils of her dark eyes flared wildly, making me throb all over.

I swallowed a groan of madness and desire. I’d told her I’d be a gentleman, that I’d listen and be good and loving and kind and all the things a lover should be, but I was still a hot-blooded male in desperate love with the female curled like a kitten on my lap.

My cock rose up, hard and stiff and poked her in the backside. She hissed and jerked, but she didn’t shove off of me. Instead, she was looking at me as if I were foreign, and yet as if she were just as desperate as I was.

My nostrils flared, scenting the musk of her desires beginning to curl through the cave we called ours. Like salt and sea flowers, it called to me, reached out to my soul and beckoned me nearer.

“I’ve always wanted to see a dragon fly.”

I blinked, confused by what she’d just said, needing more than a moment to regroup and remember what she was answering. “Oh,” I said, voice full and deep, shivering with the need that I tried so desperately to suppress.

In this life, she was still a virgin goddess, and I knew how much being so had mattered to her. The virgins of my pantheon would kill to protect what they considered to be the pinnacle of their godhood.

She’d been no different.

But I remembered the taste of her body, the feel of her flesh pressed to mine, the throaty rumbles of her purrs in my ear as I’d make her come for me over and over again.

I shuddered, digging my fingers into her back. This was a small torture, holding her, and yet, I never wished her to part from my side.

She nodded. “Calypso does not care for the beasts. She finds them—”

“Reptilian,” I said with her at the same time, and she gave me a soft, crooked grin.

“Yes, exactly. She does not much care for things with wings and scales that fly through the air. But I do. I always have. I’m fascinated by the monsters that I cannot control, the beasts that do not bow to me.”

As she said it, she swiped her thumb gently, almost like a whisper, over my bottom lip, and my body reacted instantly, flaring with heat so white-hot and intense that the tip of my cock began to leak. I groaned, dropping my cheek into her palm.

“I’d stopped daring to dream that you would ever touch me so,” I whispered honestly and hoarsely, not taking the time to censure my words. I was lost in her just as I’d once been and just as I knew I always would be.

Both of her tiny hands were on my face. “Look at me, Hades,” she whispered heatedly, her own voice just as scratchy and raw as mine.

I looked, not bothering to hide what I felt, knowing she could read everything in my burning gaze. I had a fever, and it was all because of her, because of what she did to me, what she made me feel without even trying.

Her eyes, which had grown dark and stormy even as her waters surrounding us continued to burn brighter and brighter with golden light, searched mine. Her soft pink lips that I’d suckled on for years and that had haunted me into this new life were gently pressed together.

“Gods above.” My voice cracked. “I love you. I could not love you more if I tried, Thalassa. I will always love you. Always want you. Always need you. Don’t you know that, yet?”

I was ashamed of the crack in my voice, but she was shaking her head and smiling so sweetly, so gently back at me. I suffered a recollection of her grasping the neck of the soul siren, her face a twisted mask of demonic and goddess-like fury as she’d very nearly snuffed the life from the creature for simply daring to exist. The dichotomy of this woman and that one wasn’t lost on me.

But if I were honest with myself, truly honest, her sheer power had always been one of the biggest draws for me. I’d loved her darkness because it had so perfectly matched my own. We were two behemoths who fought tooth and nail to be better than we were designed to be, and only we could unleash the full might of our fury and potent powers upon one another because we could handle it. We could take it, and not only that, we delighted in it.

I loved her teeth. Her bite. Loved her claws raking down my flesh, making me hot and weak and fevered. I loved her waters that overwhelmed and drowned me. I was not afraid of Thalassa’s or Calypso’s powers. I loved them.

I shuddered, cock leaking harder now, and I moaned. “Thalassa, I do not think I can—”

She planted a finger on my mouth and laid her forehead against my own, stealing my breath for her own and making me light-headed and dizzy.

“Shh,” she murmured tenderly “Shh.” She wiggled her luscious backside on my cock, and I groaned from deep within me, grunting like a desperate, raging beast.

“What are you doing to me, woman?”

“Don’t speak,” she murmured, as she dropped a tender but scorching kiss onto my lips. “Say nothing else.”

She writhed on me, making my blood rage and steam. My fires began to burn, encasing us both.

She moaned, and still she danced on me.

I gripped her hips tight, wanting to ram myself deep inside her wet warmth, wanting to take her, own her, but never wanting to scare her off.

She moved like silk, like a sensuous snake, writhing and undulating her broad hips, making me reckless and wild and stupid. I stared at her, in awe of her alien beauty.

I’d always loved Caly’s goddess form, and Thalassa’s wasn’t that different. Her hair was a nest of writhing black serpents, her flesh glassy waters. Her lips tasted of ice and wine as she teased my mouth, my jaw, and my chin with tiny little kisses and sharp bites.

I hissed as she moved. This was a dream I wished never to wake from. A dream I wanted to die in and exist in for the rest of my damned eternity.

“Look at me, Reaper,” she said. But this time, I did not mind the use of the word because there was tenderness in it, a claiming. Desire.

I opened my eyes. She was nude, her body exposed to me completely. Her hands were on my shoulders and she was moving, grunting as her beautiful face screwed up and she rode me harder and faster.

“You’re like lightning,” she hissed, spine bending backward, forcing me to adjust my grip on her body so that I could keep her sealed tight to me.

She moved as if she knew how, as if she remembered, and I knew that somewhere deep down, she did.

“Hades. Oh, my Hades,” she whispered in a throaty drawl that felt like it was sucking the very life, essence, and soul right out of me. She was all things, everything I’d ever wanted and thought I could never have again.

She stared at me, and her face was a mask of intense lines and concentration. I could read the orgasm rising in her, and I’d never even slid home. We were simply rubbing ourselves off on one another.

But it was the best I’d ever had.

Ever.

I moaned, and the waters began to churn. My cave walls began to rumble, and an explosion of new life started to form. Underwater lights. Sun, stars, a moon. We were creating a brand-new world.

My cave was also filling with beasts. Birds with plumage of jeweled flame. Flowers made of diamonds and pearls. Beasts I’d never seen before, stomping heavy feet down as they moved through a forest alive with sounds and smells and sights so beyond earthly imaginings that there was no description for it.

“Tell me about our life, Reaper,” she whispered tenderly, and I hissed as she wrung such pleasure from my bones that I was sure she was killing me.

But I could deny my dark priestess nothing.

I shook my head, moving harder and harder against her, knowing I should have orgasmed a long time ago, but also knowing that she was controlling me, forcing me to an agony of pleasure that was killing me.

“What do you want to know?” I moaned as she reached between us and took my balls in her hands, gently squeezing and then running a wickedly curved claw down their center.

I cried out in agonized wonder. “Bloody hell,” I grunted, shivering and spasming with an orgasm that still refused to come.

“Everything,” she whispered. “Tell me everything.”

“I loved you. You loved me. We had children. A life. Joy. Wonder. Sex,” I said, thrusting my hips so hard into her that she partially lifted off.

A cry of aaahhhh, rang from her lips. Her forehead was coated in sweat, and her breasts gleamed like mother-of-pearl. I wet my lips, wanting to suckle the honey between her thighs.

She blinked, gasping for breath, and looking awed. “Was it always this way for us?”

I nodded. “Always. It was always like this.”

She cried out, keening to the rafters with a sound that would make a mortal man’s ears bleed, tossing her head back and exposing the long line of her neck. With a hunger that knew no bounds, I leaned over and clamped my teeth around the throbbing vein, biting hard.

I bit so hard that I broke skin. She screamed and raked her claws down my back, breaking skin in turn. Blood poured out of me and her both, landing in the waters and floating through the air.

Life exploded around us.

We’d rebuilt our home, and I doubted she even realized it.

I roared as the best bloody orgasm of my life plowed through me. She was still screaming, still rocking violently on me. I felt her start to fracture in my arms, returning to her nascent form, becoming water.

I held on tight, even as I clenched my back teeth because I, too, was fragmenting, splintering apart.

It had always been thus for us, pleasure that had bordered on violence.

She held onto me, keeping me whole just as I did for her.

It took us several moments before we came back to ourselves, and while she was soft and pliant in my arms, she still wore the form of a woman.

“My woman,” I mumbled heatedly, and pressed my massive palm against her soft, delicate cheek.

She purred like a kitten and rubbed her face into me, dropping a thousand kisses on to the flesh of my body and making me burn again. She’d stolen the seed from my body, but I did not care. I would give her every bit of me if she asked it. She was not my Calypso, this was true. But it no longer mattered to me.

Because she was mine.

When she looked around, wide-eyed, at the magick we’d created, she grew silent with awed wonder. A tiny smile curved her mouth.

“We build life, Thalassa. That’s what we do,” I whispered, voice deep and broken, but full of hope and joy and wonder.

“Always? Is this what we are, then? Is this us, Death?” There was wonder in her gaze and tenderness too. I knew without asking that I’d claimed her now just as surely as I’d claimed her then.

I’d gotten beneath her armor, and she would never again be able to take me out. I was in her as she was in me.

I pulled her beautiful face to mine and claimed her lips for my own, daring to be brazen and take her as I wished, as I’d wanted to from the very moment I’d opened my eyes to this brand-new hell we called home.

She was putty in my hands, and I knew she would deny me no part of her anymore. Reaching out my hand, I called forth her soul blade from the pocket dimension in which I’d hidden it.

She gasped when she saw the silver blade, gleaming with its unholy runes, in my hand.

“Hades?”

I shook my head, never saying a word as I gently, and lovingly threaded my fingers through her chest and opened her. But I did not end her or take anything that wasn’t mine to take. Instead, I gave her back the parts of her she’d so trustingly given to me in the first place. Gently, reverently, I put the blade back where it belonged, in her chest, right where her heart should be and would be again.

Tears streamed down her face as she clutched at her breast. There was awe and wonder shining in her eyes. “But why? Why would you give me this? I might still—”

I shook my head and threaded my leg through hers, wrapping her foot to mine, wanting to be as physically close to her as I could possibly be. Only then did I release my hold on the one thing that could end her. Then I sealed up her chest, closing it off to me forevermore, and patted her left breast lovingly and tenderly.

My voice was thick and full of gravel as I whispered, “You won’t.”

“I could,” she said, voice thin and nothing but a shiver of sound.

“Then I will die a happy man. I don’t care anymore, Thalassa. I do not want the key to your destruction anywhere near me. I love you, female. Whoever you are. I will always love you, and I could never, ever kill you. It is not in me to harm my heart, and that is what you are, my beautiful darkness. You are my treasure. My heart. You are the only thing I live for. Now and forever.”

She gasped, but I did not wait to hear what she’d say. With a flick of my wrist, I vanished my clothes. I was not done with this woman yet, not by a mile. I’d burned for her for far too long, and I could not wait another moment.

Already, I was hard again, and she purred, the sound hot and wicked.

“What will you do to me?” she whispered, voice full of heat and quivering with anticipation and dark desires.

I ground my burgeoning erection down on her, making her hiss, turning her pliant in my arms. I framed her small body with my much bigger one and grinned, a sight that was at once wicked and also tender.

“I will show you passion. I will open your eyes to the truth of us, the truth of me.”

She frowned, but then she purred because I did not slip my velvet shaft into her warm and waiting heat. Instead, I crawled down her body, doing to her as I’d wanted to do from the very beginning.

Between her legs was life.

And I drank deeply from the cup.

She cried out, bucking and writhing and wrapping her fingers in my hair, urging me on with both pain and pleasure as she pulled and tugged.

“Oh my god,” she murmured.

And I grinned. “Whatever you want, just tell me, my goddess. Whatever you want.”

She ground herself over me, a wanton, wild thing that clawed and raked and hissed and seethed. The waters of our cave overflowed with life.

“Honey,” I mumbled, delirious by the sweet nectar of her clit on my tongue, that precious pink jewel, glistening like a freshly plucked fruit.

She gasped, body arching up beautifully. Her feet were on my shoulders as she both pressed down and yet used her arms to draw me ever closer.

I swirled. I suckled. And I ground my painful erection down into the bed she’d fashioned for us, pumping my hips in time to the rhythm of my mouth on her sweetly sensual center.

Sounds that were at once wild and animal burst forth from her tongue. The air around us smelled of sea flowers, redolent with the scent that we had only ever created together—something dark and yet salty sweet.

I moaned, drunk on her. She could drive that soul blade of hers through my back right now and I’d not care. So long as I had this, her, my face between her thighs till my last dying breath.

“I love you,” I mumbled. “I love you.”

“Yes. Yes. Yes!” she screamed, and the sound shot like a cannon through the cave, causing the land to roar, the waters to churn, and my own magick to burn ever brighter.

She yanked me to her, and there was fire in her eyes, fire and water. The fire did not singe the water, and the waters did not drown the fires. Instead, they merged, becoming as one.

She kissed me, tasting her own essence on my tongue. Then she wrapped her legs around me and rolled us over, taking a position of dominance. With a keening wail of an orgasm that seemed to have no end, she slid down my thick, painfully hard cock

I roared and shoved up at the same instant she slammed down. I broke through her virginal barrier just as I had once before.

She cried out, almost sobbing, as she clutched my head to her breast.

“Too much, and yet not enough. Not nearly enough,” she muttered incoherently. I knew she would remember none of her words, but I would always remember. I would never forget.

I bit my front teeth together, sucking in air so fiercely that I felt blackness swirling at the edge of my vision. I wanted to ram myself to the hilt over and over again, cleaving through her, giving her every bit of my passion and strength. But I was afraid that the violence of my desire might scare her off, so I held still though it was perfect agony to do so.

Her hands were on my chest, and she was looking down on me with quiet wonder in her eyes, looking at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. Then she glanced at where we were joined, and though it was absolute agony to think of slipping out of her, I would do it if she needed me to.

“I’m… so sor—”

“No.” She slipped her finger over my mouth. “No.”

I couldn’t help myself. I sucked her finger into my mouth and pulled. She tasted sweet, and she groaned like an animal from deep inside herself

Her lashes fluttered, and her skin, which had been glass, was now flesh and flushed through with blood. She was glowing, that god glow that we all got when our emotions were at their peak.

But her colors weren’t golden. They were bronze, deeper, darker, and infinitely more alluring.

I gasped when she started rocking again. Her knees gripped me tight, like a vice. I couldn’t move. But I’d never have wanted to anyway.

“Thalassa, I burn for you,” I admitted with a voice that rolled like gravel, and she grinned.

I knew I would never forget the look on her face. It was discovery, amazement, and it was everything.

She opened her eyes, the waves and fires dancing within, and she stared at me.

“I love you.” She said the words thickly, as though they’d been pulled from deep inside of her. “I always have. I always will. Now, shut up and screw my lights out.”

I almost laughed to hear her butcher that phrase so badly because that had been all Calypso. But then she was rocking, undulating her tight, gorgeous body on me like the waves she called her own, and I was dumb, a being only able to serve her every need, her every fantasy.

I dug my fingers deep into her hips, and together we moved as one, both of us growling, crying out as our pleasure spiraled into a tight helix that would lead us both over the edge of sanity and reason.

I had my eyes closed, unable to bear the pleasure because it was almost too much. But then I felt her eyes boring into me like a heated cattle prod.

“Look at me,” she commanded, and I was her slave.

My eyes shot open. Her small hand was clasped tight to my neck, squeezing harder and harder. And even as she moved, she grinned and held up her other hand.

“I don’t know why I know this, but I know this.” And when I looked and saw a carrot in her hand, I shook my head and croaked. I’d never mentioned that to her, never told her anything about the wicked and naughty things we’d done together.

And before I knew what she was about she’d flipped us over, so that now I was on top and she on the bottom.

But then I forgot all about that when she did to me as she’d always done before, and I was a beast, not just a god, but the darkness that could kill with a mere snap of my fingers. She squeezed the air from my lungs as she rubbed herself all over me and shoved that bloody, stupid carrot deep into parts of me no other person would ever dare go.

My fires burned out of control, but it could not harm her or the beauty of the world we’d fashioned. I did not need breath to make her come. All I needed was to shove down just as she shoved up, and she fractured.

She exploded into a shower of rain that poured over my body like acid. I roared, experiencing the singularly most powerful orgasm of my entire existence.

I was spent. Everything ached. I was gasping for breath, and I could not believe that we’d done as we’d done.

Calypso had never been that violent, that brutal, in her sexual onslaught over me. Mouth hanging open as I gasped for air, I ran my fingers through the water that lay beside me, feeling the stir of her beautiful soul, and wondered if maybe it wasn’t just Calypso that I wanted now.

Thalassa had brought out an animal in me I’d never known before, and I wanted so much more of that.

“Priestess,” I rumbled through lips that felt numb, a windpipe that still ached, and a body deliciously sore. “Come back to me.”

And she did. Without a fight, she returned to me. Her waters pulled together, and my body tingled with the electric rush of it.

Her head lay on my stomach, her arms were spread out beside her, dangling half on and half off the oyster bed as she, too, sucked in air like a bellows.

“Mmm,” I murmured, feeling so bloody content and boneless that I was sure I’d never be able to walk again.

Her ear was pressed to the flat of my stomach, and one of her hands played with my skin, making me burn. But my cock was flaccid now. She’d wrung every last ounce of energy, stamina, and soul right out of me.

“I’m spent,” I admitted ruefully, even as I ran my fingers through the silky curls of her gorgeous sea-mint-colored mane.

It was always a surprise who she’d look like from one moment to the next—Thalassa or Calypso. But it was all part of her appeal for me, the excitement of the unknown with her.

She giggled. “It’s the oddest thing, Reaper, but I swear I can hear your heart beating through your stomach. It’s like this wonderful bump, bump, bump sound that makes my toes curl and…” She giggled.

My blood suddenly felt too warm for my body, and I curled to a slight sitting position, wincing a little when I moved. The woman had used me thoroughly, and only now could I feel just how violent our mating had been, but I couldn’t move. I was enchanted by the breathy sounds of her laughter.

Her eyes danced, and my fire was no longer in there, but she was looking at me like I was her whole world again. A sudden sheen of tears blinded my eyes, making her gorgeous visage too blurry for me to see.

I scrubbed at my face.

“I’m a silly creature, aren’t I?” she asked softly, tenderly.

I sniffed, trying in vain to hide my emotions. But they were on display, and when she finally saw them, she crawled up my body, kissing me along the way, making my skin burn from her touch.

“Don’t, Reaper. Don’t do that. You’ll end me,” she whispered heatedly, and I trembled so hard.

So damn hard.

I had her back. I had my female back.

And like a dam bursting wide open, I cried silently as the realization that she was well and truly back hit me like a fist to my chest.

She held me as I did, saying nothing but three words softly over and over again.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.”