I can smell salt and vanilla, and I close my eyes, tipping my head back so that I can feel what sunshine is peeking through the clouds on my face. The waves are rushing around my feet, cold piercing my skin as the water splashes over my skin, and I want to stay there forever, with sun on my face and sugar and salt in my nostrils and cold water on my skin, in this place where I feel happy and alive and free.
I can feel the waves tugging at my ankles, pulling me backwards, and something in the dream makes me want to let them. They could pull me under, and then I could stay in this place forever, and I feel myself wobbling, my toes sinking into the sand as I start to fall into the water, giving myself over to the inexorable pull of the ocean and the way it makes me feel.
And then suddenly, there’s arms around me, and when I open my eyes it’s my mother sweeping me up out of the water, clutching me to her chest, her eyes and voice full of fear. “You have to be more careful, Athena!” she cries out, walking quickly away from the tide, and I don’t have the words to tell her why I wanted to stay, to let it pull me under, because if not, if we walk away from this beach, one day I’ll have to hold an urn of her ashes in my hands and set it in the earth, in a plot of land far away from the ocean. That one day our house will burn up and so will she, and I’ll be left with nothing but the memory of sunshine and salt and vanilla on a day so long ago that eventually I’ll forget it altogether.
“Promise me,” she whispers, setting me down and kneeling in front of me in the sand, her soft delicate hands pressed on either side of my face. “Promise me you’ll be more careful, Athena.”
I look into her eyes, wide and pleading, so full of fear for me, and I don’t know how to tell her what’s coming for me, that there’s so much worse out there, things that will drag me down and hold me under for longer than a riptide ever could.
But instead I just nod, and when I tell her that yes, of course I will, I promise, I’m speaking as a child, small and defenseless, playing too close to the edge of the water. Not the Athena watching all of this, knowing what’s to come, but the one who played on a beach with her mother and had no idea.
“Okay.” My mother smooths my hair away from my face, kissing me on the forehead. “I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you, my little love. You’re so very precious to me.”
I close my eyes, wanting to memorize the feeling of her lips on my skin forever, the way it felt for my mother to kiss me on the forehead and tell me how much she loved me. But then the feeling is gone, and when I open my eyes, I gasp aloud, a sound that turns into a scream.
“Athena? Athena?” My mother cries out my name, dissolving in front of me, her hands and face and everything else dissolving into ash in front of me, and I reach for her, trying to hold on, to piece her back together, but I can’t. She’s already floating away on the wind, and I’m screaming, crying, begging for her to come back–
My eyes snap open, and I lurch half upright in bed, tears streaming down my face as I gasp aloud, feeling as if I can’t breathe. I’m reaching for something that isn’t there, in the open air of my bedroom, and next to me Jaxon sits up too, his face taut and worried as he reaches for my hand.
“Athena?” His voice is gentle when it says my name, and it’s all it takes to make me dissolve. I collapse against his chest in tears, my hands pressed against the scratches I left in his flesh, and I can feel myself starting to sob helplessly, my shoulders shaking with a force that spreads through my entire body as I feel his arms go around me. He rocks me gently in his arms, his chin atop my head as he holds me while I cry, not bothering to ask why just yet. It’s as if he knows that I couldn’t speak if I wanted to, that I just need a solid place to let it all go, and I can feel all of the emotions of the past months rising up like a geyser, pouring out of me as I cry for the first time in what feels like forever.
I’d known it would be like a torrent when it came, but I hadn’t anticipated how much it would hurt, how my chest would feel like it was cracking open as I cried, shuddering and shaking in Jaxon’s arms, and it’s a long time before I feel him shaking too and I realize he’s crying along with me.
“I’m sorry, Athena,” he murmurs into my hair, still holding me. “I’m so sorry for everything–”
He lays me down on the bed then, stretched out alongside me, both of us still naked, the way we fell asleep after the second time. I can feel all of his hard solid muscle pressed against me, telling me that it’s okay, that he’ll protect me, and I don’t know why I believe that–that he’s sorry, that he won’t hurt me again, but I do. I believe all three of them, and I know that there’s no leaving now. There’s only whatever the four of us can do against the powers that have turned this town into hell, and we’ll either succeed or go down in flames together.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, his forehead pressed against mine, and I nod, tilting my chin up to kiss him with lips drenched and salty with tears. He takes my face in his hands, long fingers pressed against my cheekbones as he kisses me back, and it’s not a kiss of lust so much as one of comfort, a promise to use his body for me in every way that he can–to protect, to pleasure, to hold, to defend. He doesn’t have to say it aloud, I know it by the way he’s kissing me, by the way his lips move over mine, slow and soft and gentle. This is the Jaxon I remember, the one that I wanted long before I thought I should, the one I kissed out on the cliffside, the one who said he wouldn’t hurt me. The one that I wanted to give my virginity to.
His hand slides over my body slowly, from my shoulder down to the curve of my breast, tracing it with a finger before sweeping his palm over the dip of my waist and the slender swell of my hip, and it feels good to have him touch me like this, slowly, learning the paths and valleys of my landscape instead of taking me hard and fast. This isn’t about lust, it’s about comfort, and I find that he does that as well as the other. “You can stop me anytime you want,” he whispers as his hand trails over the top of my thigh, as if he wants to make up for what happened before, reassure me that it won’t ever happen again.
“I know,” I tell him, tilting my chin up to kiss him again. “I wouldn’t let you if I didn’t want it. Not anymore.”
Jaxon chuckles against my mouth, his hand slipping between my legs. “I believe that,” he says, and he groans when his fingers dip between my folds and he feels that I’m growing wet for him. “You want me, baby?” he asks, his voice deepening as he kisses me again softly, running his tongue over my lower lip.
I don’t say anything, only reach for him, my thumb teasing the piercing at the tip of his cock as my fingers wrap around his length, and Jaxon moans against my mouth. “You have to say it out loud,” he says, his fingers still barely touching me. “You have to tell me you want it, Athena. Or I won’t give it to you.”
He always calls me by my name. Notpet, orlittle Saint, just my name.Athena.
The name of a warrior. A goddess. A woman who never let a man touch her. I’ve failed on that last count, but I intend to never let another man lay his hands on me again unless I want him to, not without consequences.
And I want Jaxon. I want him slow and careful, I want him to remind me that there’s something else in this world beyond pain and hurting and sickness and flames that consume everything you love. I don’t want him to burn me up, I want him to heal me.
“I want you,” I whisper. “Just like this. Slow.” I run my fingers down his length just like that as an example, slowly, and I feel him harden even more under my touch, his hips arching into the caress.
“I want to taste you,” he murmurs, his fingers sliding upwards, pressing against my clit and making slow circles, and I shake my head.
“I just need you inside of me. I need to not think right now, Jaxon please–” I arch up into his touch, feeling the tendrils of pleasure spreading through my body, through veins and blood and bones and over my skin, and I want more, want to feel him fill me up.
He’s over me in an instant, his muscled body pressing me back into the pillows, down into the bed, and I gasp at the feeling of him, big and hard and ready for me, slipping between my thighs. “Slow,” he murmurs, and he does just that, the head of his cock parting me and barely entering me at first, just rubbing against my slick, sensitive flesh until I moan, my arms wrapping around his neck as the sensation washes over me.
“More,” I whisper. “More.”
Jaxon grins, his expression almost boyish as he tilts his hips forward, his cockhead slipping inside of me and making me gasp again, a shock of pleasure arcing through me at the sensation of him stretching me, filling me. His dark hair falls over his face, into his eyes, and I can’t stop myself from brushing it away as I lean up to kiss him again, my tongue teasing the edge of his lower lip, slipping into his mouth as he groans aloud and pushes forward another inch.
He keeps going like that, slow and steady, sliding into me inch by inch so that I feel every bit of him, drawing it out until finally he thrusts forward with a grunt, seating himself fully inside of me. Jaxon runs his hand down my thigh, reaching for my leg to wrap it around his hips, and I cling to him, moaning as the pleasure builds. He feels so good buried inside of me, moving in slow thrusts that slide his body against mine, all of that hard muscle pressed against my soft skin, and I know thatthisis what I wanted since I first met him, for him to hold me like this. For the two of us to come together without fighting or punishments or games, just us in a bed alone, two bodies seeking out pleasure and forgetfulness together.
“I–” The word hangs in the air between us, and Jaxon breathes in, pressing his forehead to mine as he pushes deeper inside of me, our bodies moving together in sync. “God, Athena, I can’t say it.”