I should deny her. She’s actively trying to orchestrate my death and I highly doubt that the most recent failure will set her back for long. Letting her be close enough to access me when I sleep is foolhardy to the point of being suicidal. Having sex with her is even worse. Even knowing exactly how intensely she wants me dead, I…forget myself.
Knowing that doesn’t stop me from walking to the spare bedroom and taking a quick shower. It isn’t enough to keep me from pulling on a pair of shorts and padding barefoot across the hallway to the primary bedroom. Opening the door allows a sliver of light into the darkness. Hera has pulled the curtains already; can’t entertain even the slightest possibility that someone might see what happens in our perfect darkness.
She steps out of the bathroom, a silk robe wrapped around her lithe body. She meets my gaze boldly and reaches without looking to shut off the light. My breathing feels unnaturally loud as I move unerringly toward the bed. Toward Hera. The faint slither of her robe dropping down her body to the floor makes me so hard it’s difficult to think. It’s always like this. No matter how cold we are in the daylight hours, no matter what violence her plots entail, in the dark all I can think about is the feel of her, the way she tastes on my tongue.
It’s because of that desperation that I hold back. That Ihaveto hold back. I have to be sure. “Hera.”
“Gods, you areunbearable.”
I ignore that. “Say yes.”
“I’m naked and waiting in your bed, you utter bastard. Get over here and do your husbandly duties so I can get some sleep.”
When we were married, we signed a contract explicitly spelling out that an heir and a spare are required, but she demanded a full twelve months before actively attempting to get pregnant. I was more than happy to oblige that particular demand. Hades already has an heir on the way, which creates pressure for me to do the same, but there are few horrors I can imagine beyond forcing a pregnancy on a person, so even after the year is up, I’ll wait for Hera to decide for herself that she’s ready to stop taking her birth control.
That yearshouldmean 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 intenseI’mcertain 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, toget 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.”
“Ihateyou.”
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 weareZeus 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
IhateZeus. 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 thatthisZeus 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 unfortunateaccidentin that eyesore he calls aworkplace. Instead, I’m shoving him onto his back and straddling him, taking his ridiculously large cock into me.
I don’tneedto 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 bemymonster.
We have no shortage of those in my family.
