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“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet.

He hesitated.

Fuck, why was this so hard?

“Let me get your clothes,” he mumbled and shuffled away to retrieve her shirt and her pants.

“Thank you,” she whispered as he handed them to her.

They dressed in silence and then sat beside each other in front of the fire just as they had before they’d fucked. He could still feel her on his skin, smell her sex in the air. He was hyperaware of how she felt beside him, both close but also so distant.

“Do you regret it?” he asked suddenly.

Her eyes widened and she met his gaze. “No. Do you?”

“No,” he said. “I never will.”

Dionysus woke with one arm hooked around Ariadne’s stomach. The other was under her head and numb. After they’d had sex, they sat in a strained and awkward quiet. He had meant it when he’d told her he would never regret what happened between them, and while she’d said no in the aftermath, today was a new day, and it was possible she might see everything that had transpired between them in a different light.

Even with these doubts, he marveled at her beauty, hardly able to comprehend that he had woken up to her.

When she stirred, dread crept into his chest, roiling in his stomach as he tried to prepare himself for her rejection, but when she opened her eyes, she didn’t roll from his graspbut turned to face him. He found he was just as confused as he was last night after they’d had sex. He no longer knew what to do with his hands, though he was highly aware of where they lay, splayed across her lower stomach.

“Good morning,” he said.

She smirked, her eyes dropping to his lips. “Good morning.”

He felt like that was enough of an invitation and kissed her, his lips brushing hers softly. He had every intention of letting that be enough, but he had not accounted for her enthusiasm, which was like a hot claw curling into his stomach.

Her mouth widened and he took her deeper, tongues clashing. She pulled on his shirt, luring him on top of her, and he gladly obliged, his hips settling against hers, and as they descended further into this mad passion, his thoughts went wild—they were going to fuck again.

This was more than he’d ever imagined.

A sudden, sharp bleating tore them apart.

Dionysus wasn’t sure what it was about the sound, but it had sent his heart into a complete panic, and when he looked up from Ariadne, he saw a sheep at the entrance of the cave, its narrow pupils unnervingly focused on them.

Ariadne giggled.

“Go away,” Dionysus said, throwing a small pebble in its direction. The sheep offered another wavering cry.

“Don’t hurt him!” Ariadne said, pushing against Dionysus’s chest as she sat up.

He wanted to groan, knowing there was no reclaiming what might have been now that they had been interrupted.

“He’s lucky it’s just a pebble,” Dionysus said. That was twice now he had been cockblocked by a fucking sheep.

He hated this island.

He fell onto his back and stared up at the cavernous ceiling while Ariadne inched closer to the animal. It was lucky Ariadne was nice, because if Dionysus had gotten near it first, he would have tossed it across the island like the cyclops had done yesterday.

As he worked through his frustration, the cave, which was full of morning light, darkened. He turned his head in time to see a large eye block the opening, and then a giant hand shoved its way into the mountain’s side.

“Ariadne!” Dionysus shouted as she screamed, enveloped by the cyclops’s fingers. As the monster tore her away, parts of the cave came with it, and the ground shook beneath his feet. Dionysus summoned his thyrsus and dodged falling rock, racing toward the edge of the cave, catapulting through the air to rescue Ariadne, but the cyclops’s other hand closed around him. Trapped beneath his fingers, Dionysus thrust the sharp end of his thyrsus into the cyclops’s palm. The monster screamed and then slung him away.

He flew through the air and hit the earth, moving through each layer as if it wasn’t a solid thing beneath his body. When he finally came to a stop and managed to climb out of the hole his body had made, Ariadne and the cyclops were gone.

CHAPTER XXXII