Page 18 of The Perfect Matchmaking (Cupids & Goddesses #2)

“I love you.” She whispered, and Athena threw her arms up and jumped up and down, Rocky-style.

“Yes!”

“You dork, wait, wait! How about the whole ‘I wronged and hurt you’ part? Did you not hear that bit?”

Athena just jumped in place now, looking so happy and so adorable. Aphrodite’s treacherous heart kept skipping those beats even as she wanted to eat her up.

“I did. And did you not hear the part where I don’t think you are either selfish or wrong?”

“But I am,” Aphrodite sighed and gulped around the lump in her throat, “I made my choice without thinking about whom I might hurt.”

“Dite, you’ve been a virtual prisoner of your powers since time began.

Zeus was gunning for them yet again. Whatever his real reason was, who the hell knows, but he was.

You finally stood up for yourself. And you did it in style.

Classy, strong, powerful. How can I begrudge you making your own choices?

Love… It’s never selfish. Love is letting go. ”

“And love is waiting for her to come back to you, if she is truly yours…” Aphrodite closed her eyes, trying to stem the tide of tears, as she whispered reverently.

“And to sit on your porch and freeze nearly to death rather than knock and ring the bell. Because she loves you and is overwhelmingly, absolutely, truly yours after all.” Athena finished her thought quietly.

“So you were waiting for me to come back?” Aphrodite could not quite believe this woman, her strength, her compassion, and understanding.

“Well, I had little hope. But I also knew it was just my luck falling for the Goddess of Love, and that there would never be another like you. That nobody else would ever do. And so I resigned myself to the idea that you had some feelings for me and eventually we’d cross paths again, or that there would be other lovers, but none would ever compare.

” The grin on Athena’s lips was decidedly evil.

“Other lovers?” Aphrodite frowned. “Absolutely not. Over my dead body.”

“You’re immortal, love.”

“My point precisely.” Aphrodite pouted for a moment, before kissing Athena again.

“So is this a happily ever after?” After a myriad kisses and smiles, Athena was suddenly serious, traces of uncertainty marring the beautiful countenance.

“Do you want it to be? Relationships between opposites that attract and those that began as lust-at-first-sight are notoriously rocky.” Aphrodite bit her lip to hide her smile and watched as emotions raced across Athena’s face.

“Are these the tropes that apply to us?”

“Oh, we fall under so many clichés, you don’t even want to know. We did the whole dreaded 80% drama, the running away after making love, the grand gesture, the saying ‘I love you’ among other things. We are batting way above average, dearest.”

“Well, I was always an overachiever, baby.”

“I can’t figure out if I like that you call me baby or not.” Aphrodite frowned and traced Athena’s sharp cheekbone before running her fingers through her even-more-disheveled-than-usual hair, tugging a little as she went, making her close her eyes and moan in satisfaction.

“You are so easy.”

“I’m easy? I’ll show you easy. Brace yourself, Dite!”

Aphrodite barely had the presence of mind to take off running up the stairs and into the first room that appeared in her path, only to realize that she’d ended up in the bedroom. Athena chased after her and was now slowly advancing, crowding her closer to the bed. Aphrodite didn’t mind one bit.

“That was a dirty trick,” she whispered. Breathing heavily, she watched in fascination as Athena’s kind eyes darkened, mesmerized by the rise and fall of Aphrodite’s chest.

“Such a breasts woman, aren’t you?”

“Oh, I am a very Aphrodite kind of woman. Goddess of Love, the most beautiful on Earth, and all mine. Knock me over with a feather. And then she loves me. Take my heart. And then she makes me come just by orgasming in my mouth after riding me like there’s no tomorrow. Blow my mind.”

After that, there were few words as Athena spread her out on dark navy sheets that smelled of her, pinned her hips and knelt in front of her.

The vision Aphrodite had in Vegas coming true with remarkable precision.

Oh, glorious, glorious precision, just like that mouth that surely had to be illegal in most Southern states.

Thank the gods for boring, yet liberal Connecticut.

Athena lifted her head for a moment and laughed, perhaps because she’d said all those things out loud.

Whatever, she’d better get used to over-communication.

So Aphrodite tugged Athena’s hair, and raised her hips up, more in demand than supplication.

Athena smirked, but went back to work. Aphrodite did not even have the brain power to think anymore, let alone talk.

And then, oh, blessed Hades then, right before Aphrodite was about to reach the peak, Athena paused and looked at her with decidedly wicked eyes before planting a wet kiss to her inner thigh and, her chin on her abdomen, smiled.

“Dite, why were you freezing on my porch?”

Aphrodite, panting, wild and hungry, almost feral for a release, ready and about one second from begging for it, stared at her in absolute shock.

“What?”

Athena, smiling widely yet, planted another wet kiss, this time right above her belly button, and asked again.

“On my porch, just then. Why didn’t you knock?”

Aphrodite flopped back onto the bed and closed her eyes in exasperation. Perhaps this was the punishment for almost breaking Athena’s heart.

“Darling, can an explanation about my irrational—as they turned out—fears that you wouldn’t want me, and my legitimate—as it has been confirmed—hope that you would forgive me were warring inside me, wait till you just make me come already for crying out loud!”

“Oh, really?” How could one woman draw out two words into what surely was a whole paragraph that lasted way beyond Aphrodite’s ability to listen? So she reached out and closed her fingers around the gorgeously messy hair and pulled.

The surprised and no longer smirking mouth stopped an inch or so away from her own. It was Aphrodite’s turn to grin as she whispered, “That is so, but since you are inclined to play games, darling, allow me to show you one of mine and how well I can play it.”

And then she was running her fingers along the length of her own slit.

Goddess, Athena had gotten her so ready, she could hear the almost obscene sounds of wet flesh parting under her touch.

Athena could clearly hear it too, because her surprise turned into shock and then hunger, hot, and burning, as her eyes darted between Aphrodite’s face and her fingertips now dipping gently and circling her own opening.

Somehow under that raw, fierce gaze, it was even better to touch herself, and so she moaned.

It was the moan that undid Athena, who reverently glided her own palm along Aphrodite’s and then there were two fingers inside her, in perfect sync, aligned and doing marvelous things to her.

When Athena’s lips closed over hers, they lost themselves in each other. And it felt better. It felt as if they had made love for centuries, as if they had known each other forever and would love each other til the end of time. Lovers. Equals. Free to love and free to make their choices.

Granted, Aphrodite thought, those choices mostly consisted of mouth or fingers or toys for the next ten hours or so.

Athena had fantastic taste in toys. Athena had fantastic taste in most things.

And Athena tasted best of all. So they had a lot of options.

But they were free, and they’d decide unencumbered by anyone’s opinions or power plays, unless it was Athena’s making Aphrodite come seven times in a row, simply to prove a point.

They were together and even if, by some cursed happenstance Fates might still throw their way, their happily-ever-after did not endure, it was certainly a happy-for-now.

And a very very long ‘now’ at that. A centuries-long ‘now’ if Aphrodite had her say.

A til-the-end-of-time one if they asked her.

And ask her they better, since she was the Goddess of Love and it was finally her turn to get some of it too. All of it, actually.