Page 85 of Secrets, Lies and Love

“We can’t do it like this.”

“I’m not going to come inside you, but I want to feel you wetting me. Repeat that you are mine.”

“I’m yours.”

I fuck hard, without pity. “If you are mine, why this detachment, then?”

She grabs my shoulders and starts to open my shirt, kissing my chest, biting me. “Because I’ve never had anything. Neither dreams nor hope. I’m afraid to feed them, to empty myself into them until there’s nothing left of me.”

Dionysus

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Ten days later

“Marriage?”Hades repeats when I tell my brothers, along with the Lykaioses, through our weekly video call, about the possibility that Cecily is pregnant.

I nod, jaw clenched with tension. They are my flesh and blood, and I love them above all else, but I will not allow them to question my decisions. “Yes, marriage. We will know within a few days. However, we are together.”

“You are?” Hades asks.

“In secret, for now. Cecily doesn’t want people to know.”

“Why not?”

“Is this an interrogation, Hades? Damn, get off his back,” Ares growls.

“If she is, are you sure it’s yours?” my older brother Zeus asks.

“Yes. Cecily was a virgin. I don’t remember questioning your paternity when we found out Madison was pregnant.”

“I’m not questioning it, for the same reason you won’t. My wife was a virgin too.” He passes both hands over his face. “Sorry, it’s nothing against Cecily—she seems like a good girl. Maybe it’s a remnant of my dislike for your late wife.”

“Sue and Cecily are water and oil,” Hades interjects, surprising me. “Even I—who is suspicious of my own shadow—am sure they are complete opposites.”

“Sue lied.” Christos speaks for the first time.

Our older cousin never asserts anything without being sure, and now I give him my full attention.

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

“She never looked people in the eye when she spoke. She anticipated the needs of others, aiming to please. I never liked your wife or found her trustworthy.”

“And you waited until I was a widow to tell me you hated her?”

“You married Sue at lightning speed. You wanted our Joseph. We understand that, but we were keeping an eye on her.”

“Jesus, the way you talk, we sound like some kind of mafia.”

“Aren’t we?” Odin mocks. “The only difference is that our line of business is legal, but . . .”

My cousin leaves the rest up in the air, because even with secure phones, designed by his company, there are things we shouldn’t talk about, for example, that we forced Zeus’s enemy—the enemy of all of us, in fact—to kill himself.

Christos shrugs. “I can’t deny that I go beyond the limits when it’s my family that’s at stake.”

“And speaking of family...” Zeus points to his second phone. “In all the rush, I forgot to tell you that Brooklyn woke up from the coma.”

“I knew Athanasios could do it,” Hades says.

---