The Heart of War (7 page)

The scratches on her back, however, came from the brooding man calling himself Ares. Whether he had actually been a wolf when he marred her could have been a dream or a delusion. That chalice of water appearing in his hands from thin air was no cheap magician’s trick, nor was it a dream. Neither was the fact that he’d disappeared right in front of her, all seven feet of him, just faded away from her sight and then he was gone.

Head tingling and reeling, but her body refreshed both inside and out, Maggie found she was hungry, ravenous. That hunger set Maggie walking off toward the other side of the island where she hoped she would find not only food but also some small thing to prove to the handsome but arrogant man back at his cave that she had been shipwrecked.

Be nice to prove the same thing to her self as well.

There had to be some bit of wreckage that washed ashore with her. A crate. A lifejacket. Anything.

The island was larger than she had thought and she just kept walking and walking. Here and there she could see the other side, or the water off it anyway, but it seemed to be most difficult to get there. She saw several rabbits hop for cover as she neared them, a few deer grazing on the tall grass, snakes slithering past, birds chirping in the trees and gulls echoing their cries higher overhead.

Making her way along, she stepped on something that squished between her toes and looked down to see a lump of black mush. “What’s that?” she asked herself as she looked around and noticed the ground was full of black things that looked like turds. Rabbit or deer perhaps.

However, they were not turds at all.

They were olives.

Maggie looked up to see olive trees laden with full, black, ripe olives surrounded her. She grabbed handfuls and greedily stuffed them into her mouth, spitting out the pits even as she swallowed the meat. Not satisfied with what she could get into her hands alone, Maggie held up the gown and ripped the olives from their branches along with the leaves, letting them fall into the makeshift basket of the gown. When it was full, she sat beneath the shade of the tree filling her belly, wishing she had something to bring some of that fresh cold water with her. Looking around she saw wild grapes growing off to her left and beyond them was a familiar tree. Walnuts. The nuts would be raw but the meat would still be good. Clearing off some dirt from a nearby rock, she put her stash of olives on it and proceeded to grab bunches of thick juicy purple grapes from their vines before she pulled handfuls of walnuts from the branches.

If this was a dream, it could be a good one, and if she was crazy, well, at least there was plenty to eat and drink, even if she did have to put up with Mr. Pushy and his comrades. Bringing her new goodies back to her place under the olive tree, she munched on the grapes while she smashed the walnuts open with a rock. As she ate greedily, the mess dribbled out of the corners of her mouth down her chin and landed on the white linen. Maggie brushed it off quickly and swiped the palm of her hand over her face.

2

Ares lumbered around his cave at a restless pace. “Why doesn’t she believe me?” he asked Kat, who was nearby. “What do I have to do? Throw a war?”

Like the other mere human beings on the island, Kat could (begrudgingly) understand the new arrival’s reluctance to take Ares at his word. It was a difficult thing to come to grips with here in 21
^st
century; the idea of Ancient Gods watching from high hidden places was absurd, if not a bit disturbing.

“Why let her trouble you so? This is your home, your island. If you don’t want her here….” she led and then let her voice trail off for a moment. Kat walked up to where he stood by the fire. She was a tall woman, tall enough to reach up and touch his hunched and knotted shoulders. She began to massage him. “If she’s going to cause you so much distress…” again her soft voice trailed as the unfinished thought lingered in the air between them.

Ares let out a loud grunt as he snapped his thick neck quickly to one side, his bones letting out a loud cracking sound as his upper lip started curling. He should have killed her! Yet, he was glad he did not. Once he got a look at that chastity belt and realized that she might be Fey and actually belong to Cernunnos, well, it was best to let her live no matter how frustrating she was going to turn out to be. Recklessly slaying the property of another God was just bad form. It caused all kinds of problems, and Ares would know since he did it so many times in the past. There was no love lost between the Olympians and the Celts, just a large pool of bad blood. No sense in stirring up that hornet’s nest again. If Cernunnos did send someone to come looking for her, Ares would be able to hand her over hale and hardy, without too many scratches, and not much worse for wear. It was better than giving the old bastard a corpse.

“What can I do to take your mind off your troubles, my Lord?” Kat cooed as her hands ran hungrily along his back, kneading tired, aching, and wonderfully thick muscles. “Any little thing?”

Ares glanced over his shoulder to look down at her. He knew that tone and that look in her eyes. He also knew she was trying to assert what she saw as her place. Being so stressed and feeling the need for release, Ares was apt to let her. “What did you have in mind, woman?” Now he turned around and the hands that had been massaging his shoulders were now on his bare chest.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kat teased as she traced her hand through that deeply creviced space between his pecs, letting her finger entwine in the coarse hair there as she softly blew a long breath of air out of her lungs and watched his dark skin prickle to life. “Are you thirsty? Shall I bring you Nectar?” She stared up at him with sultry eyes as she bit down on her bottom lip. “Perhaps you are hungry, my Lord?” The fingertips on his chest began making their way down his taut torso. She loved to touch him, could never get enough of touching him and having him thrust away inside of her. Kat, like everyone else who lived here, had never encountered a man anything like Ares before they met, well, Ares.

Ares put his own large fingertips under her chin to stare deeply into her blue eyes. “I think it’s you who are hungry, woman.” His eyes cast downward to take in the sight of her scantily clad breasts behind the rabbit fur halter. They heaved up and down hypnotically; one hand descended from her shoulder to grab her left breast and hold it firm. Kat let out a moan in a rush of air and those tits of hers began to rise and fall like the tide. The gentle fingertips still under her chin suddenly became talons on her shoulders as he shoved her to her knees in front of him, keeping hold of that heaving breast as she went. “Aren’t you?”

Kat did not fight him; she just sunk down to her knees as her tongue flicked out to wet her lips. “Very hungry, my Lord.” Right there by the hearth in the throne room where anyone might walk by—and she sincerely hoped that little bitch did just that— Kat unlaced the leather pants around his waist with one hand while she cupped the part of him that was coming to life below the thick material. She would show him who was boss around here, who was Top Bitch. It wasn’t that gray-headed old bat who’d so unexpectedly arrived in Ares' home to disturb Kat’s peace and threatening her pride of place. With lust-laden excitement, Kat slipped her fingers between the waistband and his skin to push the bothersome pants down to his knees. That overgrown bulge met her eye. Ares did not understand the concept of underwear and did not own a single pair. Kat liked that—it made him so much more accessible to her. Like its owner, Kat had never seen a cock like this before. On her deathbed she would swear that if one could remove it from him, they could easily use it to hit a grand slam home run out of the park and deep over the wall. Running her hands along the hardening shaft, Kat remembered the first time she came this close to it and how frightened and then how very intrigued she had been by it.

Exuding sex, power, and raw masculinity, it wasn’t enough that Ares looked and sounded as though he’d just stepped out of some Queen’s erotic dream; he had to be hung like a horse, too. If ever the Total Package walked the Earth, he was standing nearly naked in front of her right now. Kat let the raw animal heat between them warm and then fill her as her mouth descended over the shaft of his burgeoning cock. It was easy to get lost in him and do whatever he wanted with much delight.

Ares sucked in air over his teeth and his eyes closed, one hand on the back of her head and the other still cupping a heaving breast. While Onya and the others were young and sweet, there was definitely something meaningful to be said for the wisdom and skill that came with age. There was a reason he let Kat get away with so much and what she was doing now, so expertly suckling him and running her tongue along the shaft of his hard cock, was definitely on the top of his list. “You do have your uses, don’t you, woman?” Kat’s eyes opened and she looked up at him with a mouthful of cock, those eyes smiled at him as she secured her place in his life and his home. She didn’t hear the soft sounds of bare feet on dirt, but Ares did and he turned his eyes in that direction just in time to see Onya backing out of the room. “Where are you going? Come here.”

The younger woman was happy for the invitation to the festivities, but it was clear from the expression on Kat’s face that she was not so enamored with the idea. Ares nodded toward the woman on her knees between his legs and Onya knew what he wanted her to do. She didn’t speak to him but she did stop to brush her hand along that rippled matted chest, wishing she could lay her head there tonight before she got her knees behind Kat, picked up the short rabbit fur skirt which matched her halter. Bending forward, Onya ran her tongue along the wet musky space between Kat’s legs. Kat would rather it was Ares’ tongue but it felt good just the same, even between when a slender feminine finger parted those moist folds of skin and slid into her. It was Kat’s turn to moan as she took Ares down deeper and thrust her hips backward toward the pleasure offered to her.

Looking down at the two women before him and taken by the feel of Kat’s mouth pumping around his hard cock, Ares felt the fire ignite in the pit of his washboard stomach. He grabbed for the fireplace mantle with the hand that had been kneading Kat’s breast. The hand at her head tightened, pushed her further, closer to him as the fingers wrapped around tresses of blond hair and began to pull her back and the push her forward again. To this Kat only sucked him hard rather than giving out any protest. Even when he first met her, she could never get enough of doing this for him, and now that she was starting her own climax as Onya worked with both tongue and fingers between her rocking quivering legs, she was even more like her name than ever before. Her back arched high in the air and that ass swung back and forth to the rhythm of Onya’s thrust, matching his own at the other end of Kat’s long slim frame. When Ares came in a great heated rush, Kat lapped up every bit of salty cream he had to give and let go with her own climax.

However, the God of War wasn't done.

3

With her belly full, Maggie thought she could just lay down in the shade of this very kind olive tree and go to sleep, but there were other things to do. Taking up the remains of the wild food she had gathered into the gown, she began making her way toward the other side of the island once more, snacking as she went. After another mile or two, she noticed she was on a downgrade. Soon after that, she came to the beach on what had been the far side of the island when her journey began.

She walked the beach from one end to the other, her eyes scouring the sand and the horizon as she went, and found nothing. Not a scrap of cloth or bit of metal. Not a life preserver. Looking back the way she’d come, she realized she
had
washed ashore on the other side of the island. There were no cliffs here. This side of the island was nearly flat. Deciding that she should walk all the way around the island on the beach—wild creatures on the south be damned—and if she couldn’t find any sign of wreckage, then at least, perhaps, she might find the boat Mr. Arrogant said he didn’t have.

She had to get off this island. If this was not a dream and she was not crazy then she had to get out here as fast as possible.

The trip through the sand was not a pleasant one. The belt between her legs bit into her tender skin with each step. All of her snacks gone and no fresh water in sight, Maggie trod onward under the descending sun.

Wherever this island was, it was not a tiny rock in the middle of the ocean. If she had to guess, she would say it was bigger than the island of Manhattan, maybe even bigger than Long Island. Onward and onward, she went toward the southern end of the island with no sign of wreck and, worse yet, no sign of a working boat or any boat for that matter.

“This is a nightmare,” she mumbled to herself. “What if he really is Ares?”

Head low and growing more dissatisfied, Maggie reached the southernmost tip of the island and found nothing but more sand and sea. She could continue walking around on the beach until she ended up at the cliffs where she started. There was a small path off to the right; if she had the dimensions of the island right in her head, once up there it should be a straight shot back to that cave. Where, undoubtedly, she would have to beg and plead for a way off this rock. Holding up the hem of the gown stained with grape juice and olive leavings, she made her way up the small grade and into a deeply wooded area. Here there were no paths at all, only the dense forest.

Maggie wandered through the brush, watching wild life skitter past her. More rabbits. Squirrels. A few snakes slithered past, making her jump and pray they were not poisonous. If this was Ares’ idea of dangerous beasts then they had a difference of opinion on that subject. All seemed very quiet here.

SWOOSH

Something flew past her head. Thinking it a swift moving bird, she looked off in the direction she thought it had flown but saw no bird.