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Merry

She yelps as his lips clamp onto hers, raiding the air from her lungs. Anger’s head slants, the vicious grip of his mouth inciting pandemonium across every inch of her body. It’s the clap of a thunderbolt, the crash of ocean waves against breakers, the swirl of a tornado, the soul-crushing crescendo of a song, and the fuming explosion of a pyre. It’s everything and nothing she has ever experienced. The contact is fierce, the momentum reckless, knocking Merry off her damn feet.

Fantasy and reality coalesce. Her knees buckle, her vision is thrown off balance, and the world spins off kilter. The loss of balance is total, her head kicking back under the force of his mouth. It’s powerful enough to relocate continents, bump the planet off its axis, and shift plates beneath the earth.

Merry could go on listing metaphors. However, it comes down to this: the fallen God of Anger kisses the eternal fuck out of her.

Unleashing a ravenous noise, he fuses their mouths together and tugs them into a disorienting rhythm. His lips are softer than she’d expected, yet their hold is firm. Lightheadedness fogs Merry’s psyche, but like hell is she going to swoon and deprive herself of this moment.

No. She’s going to devour Anger, the same way he’s bent on devouring her.

Merry’s whimper hardens into a moan. Her arms fling around him, clasping his nape for dear life, fingernails on the verge of clawing through Anger, breaking his skin, making him bleed. Her breasts flail against his chest, their hearts thrumming as she shoves herself flush against him, because it’s either that or crash to the ground.

Then she kisses him the fuck back. With a long-suffering cry, she draws her tongue across the seam of his mouth, urging him for more.

A savage groan slices from Anger’s lungs. He pries her mouth apart, their panting breaths colliding. His lips snatch her own, pulling on them with a rhythmic, unbridled ferocity. One set of fingers spears through her hair, destroying the bun and yanking off the sequined kerchief, which tumbles from her head. The other hand grasps the small of her back, the fire tattoos searing through her flesh in the most exquisite way.

Heat travels from that spot to the apex of her thighs, her pussy spilling, her walls throbbing. Merry matches the turbulence of his kiss, pushing her mouth into his own, grinding her hips into the hard ledge of his cock. He thickens between them, lifting high and abrading her clit.

Merry whines. Yet there’s more to be savored.

Unable to withstand it any longer, she flicks her wet tongue and runs it against his. It’s a tease, an inducement, and a punishment for vanishing on Merry after that liaison on the motorcycle. This is what he’s been missing, and he’d better not forget it.

Like a thread drawn taut, Anger snaps. With a growl, he rams Merry harder into him and crushes their mouths together. Peeling back her lips, he flexes that hot tongue into her, licking and stroking with the violence of a hurricane.

Oh, my Fates. Oh, my Fates. Oh, my Fates.

This is happening.

This. Is. Happening.

Because Anger is a male of action, he kisses with stamina. His mouth writhes with Merry’s, the furious lap of his tongue putting to shame every time she has imagined this scene. His mouth tears into her, slashes her to pieces, disrupts each assumption she has about romance.

For there’s nothing romantic about this. No, it’s everything riotous, unconstrained, and all-encompassing.

Kissing this god is like kissing the sun. Scorching. Combustible. He burns into her, her flesh blistering, blood sizzling.

Anger is the heat. And yet he takes her mouth as if she’s the light, the source that fuels him, grants him energy, gives him life.

And how she loves it. Once not long ago, Merry had envisioned slow, patient embraces, replete with endearments. Because although she’s had sex with deities before, kissing hadn’t been involved. To that, she resisted, delaying the experience until it mattered, even if it took thousands of years.

She was right to abstain. The wait is more than worth it.

Anger.

Her surly, tortured, lost god. Her opposite in every way.

Merry’s mouth quivers as he opens her wider, his tongue swooping and lashing at hers, slick and fevered. If Merry’s eyes were open, they’d roll back in ecstasy. Instead, she moans as the wet flat of his tongue strikes inside, plunging and retreating, over and over. Sweet Fates, he tastes of fire. Like spices that melt on her palate.

The kiss escalates. It deepens, the effect of which scrambles her brain and swells between her legs, causing the tender area flanked by her thighs to constrict. Arousal spurs madness. Madness spurs thirst. She greedily, boisterously, latches onto his tongue and sucks.

A shudder treks up Anger’s body. He rasps, the sound pulsing into her. Encouraged, Merry sucks harder, and he practically hoists her off the ground.

She’s wrecked. She’s never been so enchanted by a tongue, never been so famished in her life. She wants to bite him, to snack on his teeth like a delicacy.

Her body can’t get close enough. She wants to crawl up his torso and make a nest.

Anger’s palms sweep from her hair, dive under the straps of the overalls, and drag down to Merry’s ass. He clutches her buttocks, the curves covered in satin panties, and crumples the dainty material in his fists, fixing Merry in place while he rips their kiss to shreds. They chase a rhythm, hard lips folding and unfolding, tongues riding one another. It’s a swift tempo, the pace mimicking the frenzy of fucking.

His cock grazes Merry’s cunt, another splash of arousal drenching her undergarments. Her heart pumps wildly, in tune to the piston of Anger’s tongue, his mouth rocking them into motion. Rather than satisfying her, this only heightens the need, her lips charging against his own.

Panting backward, Merry slides her tongue over Anger’s canines, then nicks his upper lip. To her delight, an aggravated noise carves from his throat, a noise she wouldn’t mind hearing over and over, like a record on repeat.

But when she withdraws another inch, the better to view his glazed pupils, Anger’s features twist. Unwilling to tolerate a millimeter of distance, the fed-up god hisses, “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Then Anger heaves her forward and slams his lips against hers once more. One of his hands returns to the back of her skull, fastening Merry while he drives his tongue into her, swallowing every disjointed moan.

Not to be outdone, Merry clutches him in kind. Seizing his jaw, she puts her soul into the kiss, giving as vehemently as she’s getting, to the point where Anger breaks into an awestruck groan.

Their bodies react like a pair of live wires. Sparking and detonating, the magnitude threatens to blow them skyward.

And now she knows what passion feels like.

And then she knows what its end feels like.

The instant Merry’s fingers land on his tattoos, Anger wrenches himself away. He staggers backward, his mouth swollen, gusts of air venting from his chest. Shock pierces the drunken glaze in his eyes, the maelstrom receding to a drizzle.

He releases Merry so swiftly that she stumbles in place. “I can’t,” he grits out. “I won’t.”

“What?” Merry wheezes, struggling to catch her breath. “Why not?”

“This is not supposed to happen. Not with you.”

It’s a stake to the chest. His visceral reply comes out husky, remorseful, and riddled with self-disgust. Unfortunately, that makes it easy to decipher.

“Not with me,” she draws out. “Because I’m not her.”

As they form on her tongue, each word pierces the inside of her mouth. Anger stands there, dazed. Dark hair falls around his sharp features, layers in just as much disarray as hers. His respirations are choppy, his chest inflating from the onslaught of their kiss. The rage god looks thoroughly, amorously attacked, as if they’d been ravishing one another nonstop for a century and have only now found the will to sever themselves.

Because I’m not her.

As the accusation sinks in like a knife, his expression slackens. Matter of fact, he looks uncertain whether to answer no… or yes. Tenderness clashes with contrition, the discord of those emotions consuming his features, the latter rooted in something he hasn’t told her. That much is apparent, but whether it has to do with the present or the past, Merry can’t say.

Her stomach roils. “Didn’t you like kissing me?”

The question is rhetorical. He had enjoyed it for certain. But his level of regret is another matter.

Anger’s irises go up in flames. The rage god takes an unconscious step toward Merry, then stops himself. An unspoken reply balances on the edge of his tongue, yet nothing comes out.

Since he’s not about to disclose where this penitence is coming from, only one conclusion can be drawn. Outrage blasts through Merry’s veins. Despite that, she smooths out her voice, polishing it like metal. “I might not have that goddess’s hold on you, but I certainly wouldn’t want to.”

Anger blinks, taken off guard as if she’d been wrong about his train of thought. But then he snarls, “Love does not have a hold on me. She cut out my soul and tossed it away. She is the reason I’m banished!”

“So this is about how her choices have affected you.” Merry emits a humorless laugh. “You ignorant son of a bitch. You’re too busy obsessing over what you can’t have, that you don’t stop for one second to recognize if you even want it. You’re too busy nursing a grudge to ask yourself the right question: Who sees you?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Who truly sees you?” Merry strides up to him, going nose to nose with Anger, thinning her voice. “Who sees all of you? Every part? Inside and out?”

He falters, eyebrows pinching together, a vulnerable light flashing across his irises. But just as quickly, it disappears like an illusion. “What? You think you do?” His tone lowers to a harsh timbre. “You’re infatuated. You have an idea of me—a vision, a fantasy—but you don't know who I really am. You haven’t lived my life, haven’t been raised in The Dark Fates, haven’t experienced millennia of serving our kind, and you sure as hell haven’t fired a single arrow at a human. You know nothing of how I’ve lived!”

“And yet I do know what it’s like to be cast aside! I know the turmoil of having your origins stolen from you. I know what it means to want something you can’t have. Even if our responses to that are vastly different, I see how you’re handling it,” Merry grounds out. “I may be burdened by feelings that aren’t reciprocated, but I’ll survive. You know why? Because I’m not the one who has a problem getting over rejection.”

“Is that right? So your rebellion against The Fate Court is purely altruistic?”

“Are they?” he counters. “So by rebelling, you’re not trying to prove anything? You’re bold. You’re brilliant. You’re inspiring. You don’t need to prove a fucking thing to anyone, but don’t tell me it has not entered your head.”

Merry flounders, denial stalling her reply. “I… I’m not trying to prove anything about myself.”

Of course, she was wounded and felt unwanted during her upbringing in this city. But she rose above that false notion, forged her own weapon and purpose. Now everything she does is for humanity.

Isn’t it?

Anger bares down on her. “You said you don’t wish to wield love, but to feel love. Why is that? What drives that desire?”

Confusion clutters her thoughts. Maybe a small part still yearns to validate herself. To show everyone she has greater gifts than some arbitrary magic randomly assigned to her, that she can help foster better change in this universe than The Dark Gods.

“You’re a better, truer, stronger, braver, kinder soul than any Dark God in existence,” Anger insists gruffly. “But for all your fortitude, the underlying doubt is feeding on you. And without facing those fears, you will never move past them.”

Her chest clenches for more than one reason now. Because he’s right.

But so is she. “Funny you should say that.”

The sarcasm wrings a glower from Anger, renewing Merry’s torment. “You’re more interested in being valued for value’s sake than actually being who you truly are. I’ve seen you changing slowly, but you’re still afraid of flaws and imperfections.” Then she softens her words while going for the jugular. “That’s why you never earned her heart.”

Anger stops short. His stupefied features pause as Merry sets about giving him a thorough tongue-lashing.

“You riled Love up like Andrew did, but did you ever inspire her?” Merry stalls inches from his mouth and speaks in a painstaking whisper. “You challenged her temper like Andrew did, but did you ever relate to her spirit? You understood her choice of iron arrows, but did you understand her wishes, her dreams, her passions? Did you encourage them? Or did you merely judge them?”

The god stands motionless. Only his chest rises and falls with shallow outtakes.

Merry skims her lips over Anger’s, his mouth compressing like a line that refuses to be crossed, the contact nevertheless making his eyelids hood. “Did you cherish Love for who she was? Or did you try to change her? Did you encourage Love to be her truest self, to be proud of that?” She quests across his lips, both of them sucking in the same oxygen. “Did you admire Love without censoring her? Did you encourage Love to shout her beliefs to the sky? Or did you wish to silence her?”

That last part works like a switch. Anger hisses, “I was protecting Love.”

“That’s not the same thing,” Merry hisses back. “Would. You. Have. Silenced. Her?”

Again, he can’t answer. Nor does he need to. Her breasts brush his pectorals, the friction agonizing, their exhalations hectic. Anger’s pupils eat up his irises, and his teeth flash, yet he makes no response.

“You never wanted her, flaws and all. If you had, you would have declared yourself long before.” Even as her fury rises, Merry gives him a pitying look. “God of Anger. You were her ally. But you were never her best friend.”

His body hitches, as if Merry has speared his torso with a blade. “So yes, I see you clearly now,” she assures him with another stroke of her mouth. “And what I see is a fucking tragedy.”

Then she shoulders past him and marches from the rooftop.