Once a Myth

The two bodyguards stayed close beside me, removing any hope that I might be able to bolt with this young doctor and hop on the closest plane home.

Home…

Will I ever see it again?

I’d asked that far too many times as I’d been ushered from the hangar, shoved onto the silver helicopter, and endured a stern-faced pilot strapping me into a five-point harness.

Before I could wriggle free, the engine started, the clouds dropped strings from the heavens, tied us tight, and ripped us from the ground in one swift pull. We’d left behind one destination for another, swooping out to sea just as the sky lightened with a new day.

The sunrise had been spectacular.

All tangerines and apricots bathed in golden threads as the sun stretched and yawned.

It was no longer dawn.

The sun had reclaimed its place in the sky and blinded out the stars, giving me the final glittering view of my new home.

How cruel that my imprisonment was prettier than any dream I could imagine. How unfair that my cage was the Garden of Eden. A Shangri-La dripping in promise and protection, hiding the sinister snakes and sin at its core.

My bones rattled as the helicopter finally stopped teasing with descent and landed slightly too hard on the helipad.

I’d arrived.

Chapter Six

I WAS LATE TO my own welcome party.

I was the host and owner, the life-giver and keeper of the new goddess who’d just stepped onto my shores, and I’d missed her touchdown.

Shit.

Slipping my arms into my silk-cashmere blazer, I strode down the sandy lane linking my office to the jetty where every conquest and guest was processed. Unlike my high-paying guests, my inspection would last longer than just a stare into their eyes and quick appraisal of their personality. With guests, I’d already done my research. Background checks and online sleuthing yielded enough to make a calculated guess that I could weed out the behaved from the reckless.

But a new goddess?

I knew nothing.

I want to know everything.

Buttoning a silver engraved button, I smoothed out my graphite suit and stepped into the sunlight just as the girl was unbuckled from the helicopter and given a hand to help her climb the three steps down.

She didn’t recoil from the courteous offer of help. She didn’t screech or scratch or act stupid in any way. Instead, she held her head high, inserted her hand into the staff member’s waiting below, and allowed him to guide her down the jetty bobbing on the gentle waves caused by the landing as he escorted her all the way to me.

I didn’t move, studying her every step.

She was taller than some of my other employees. She was willowy, but her legs weren’t weak, skinny things. They were toned with flickers of muscle beneath alabaster skin. Even barefoot, she moved with assurance and a liquid type of sensuality.

She didn’t stumble or shy away, even when she looked up to my palm tree-surrounded podium and caught my gaze. Her full lips parted as she inhaled—the only sign of nerves—before gritting her teeth and arching her chin higher.

She didn’t look like she’d been bought and smuggled here. She seemed as impenetrable as a paying patron. A female looking to indulge in her own devious tastes.

She didn’t act like any of my other goddesses. Their reactions ranged from tears to tempers and everything in between. I’d had to duck a swinging fist or pluck a sobbing girl from the sand. I’d cajoled and cursed, laying out my laws to wild-eyed and fury-filled women.

But not this one.

This one moved like she had a crown upon her head. A crown made of dignity and diamonds, heavy on her brow but invaluable to her sense of worth. Her ankles were narrow, her wrists delicate, her collarbones perfect sweeps of femininity leading to the elegant line of a regal throat.

For the first time, I felt a kick of interest.

A brief skip in my familiar cold-hearted heartbeat.

Closer and closer she came.

Harder and harder the kick of intrigue.

Waving my hand, I signalled the staff member to let her go, to step aside, to vanish. He bowed his head immediately, relinquishing her hand and backing away to subtly disappear to complete one of the countless chores he was paid to do.

I waited to see what the girl would choose.

She was technically free.

She could run back to the sea.

She could leap into the salt and try to swim to freedom.

She could attack me.

She could plead with me.

She could self-harm or shutdown or scream until her tongue turned crimson with blood.

Yet she did none of those things.

Her bare feet sank into the crystal sugar sand. Her breakable fingers fluttered once by her sides as if she fought the urge to curl them. Her head tilted, cascading incredibly long, tangled hair over her shoulder.

Knotty and dull, the length was a distraction from the otherwise pleasing features of her face. Pixy chin, high cheekbones, smoky grey eyes, and eyebrows that slashed across her smooth brow with temper and seething refinement.

Fuck, the price I could charge for a night with her.

Even straight out of her abduction, with shadows smudging her beauty from travel, rope burn around her neck, tattooed barcode on her wrist, and bruises marking her otherwise perfect skin from her punishments, she was a fucking natural-born immortal.

Raw and untouched, she bristled with injustice and courage. She could be Artemis’s reincarnation or perhaps Aphrodite’s twin.

She didn’t need to be turned into a goddess, she was one.

One I very much wanted to yank from the stars and slander with every debasing, demeaning, and downright disgusting act I could think of.

The kick of interest turned into a lick of lust.

I’d never sampled my stock. I didn’t play with the toys my customers paid for.

But her…fuck, I was tempted.

Sorely, deliciously tempted.

Our eyes locked, grey to blue.

My island, my pride and joy and deliverer of fantasies, vanished behind a suffocating void. There was no parrot chatter. No jasmine breeze. No lapping waves.

There was just her.

The dark-haired, coldly judging, queenly, impenetrable girl.

My lust thickened, coiling from my belly to my cock.

I curled my hands, fighting my body’s reaction to swell, to heat, to crave this innocent consort.

And then, she moved of her own accord.

Not away from me, but toward me.

My legs locked, my body turned rigid, my heartbeat increased into a steady pound of hunger.

She stopped with a metre between us. The grey jumper she wore hid her body, but it couldn’t belie that beneath the fabric was yet more wonder. Shapes and sinew. Curves and caverns. A girl who was grace and elegance.

“Are you him?”

Fuck, her voice.

Low pitched but soft. Husky but feminine.

Shit, her lips.

Naturally peach with a stung bottom fullness and shapely bow. Everything about her mouth was made for sucking a man’s cock and granting him every pleasure he requested.

My suit became tight.

My blood hissed into my trousers, adding pressure to my throbbing erection, reminding me it’d been a fucking age since I’d stuck that part of myself into another. Since I’d stopped indulging in my own fantasies to focus on delivering them to others. Since I’d become disillusioned with the idea of fucking an immortal. Since my illusions had skipped the binds of reality and ensured sex with normal could never compete with the soul-quaking fucking of a siren or angel.