Heph: Modern Descendants 3, page 11
+ + +
After the night of silence from Phyre, I sought her out the next day, but she hadn’t come from her room. Hestia allowed her to stay upstairs, although she typically refused to let the girls wallow. She agreed Phyre might have caught a cold sitting on the wet riverbank for too long. I found it impossible that a girl who could produce fire would be chilled, but I let it slide. Hestia wanted the women to live a life as normal as possible; perfecting their gift was part of that normal. After that, she treated them as humans.
“A day in bed never hurt anyone,” Hestia teased as she poured me coffee, her cheery tone so opposite her words. Hestia did not believe what she spewed. Life wasn’t all work, but she abhorred laziness. She didn’t appreciate cowardice either, but I couldn’t fault Phyre. I was the one who hadn’t been brave enough to mention my recent past.
phyre
To my surprise, Hestia let me stay in bed. I used my monthly curse as an excuse. Lying on my side, I stared at the window. A gray sky filled the fall day. It was the perfect day to linger under the covers. My mind meandered over the night’s events: learning the truth of Heph’s engagement, knowing he went to Adara first, meeting Hades, catching Solis and Veva kissing.
My thoughts drifted to my late-night visitor. Veva had come to the door.
“Can I talk to you?”
As I nodded my assent, sitting up in my bed, Veva entered and began.
“I want to apologize.”
I blinked in confusion but she blazed forward.
“I’ve only known Heph a short time, even if he is my brother. I instantly fell in adoration of him. I love him.” She smiled sweetly, like a proud sister, and helped herself to the edge of my bed. The candle at my bedside danced in the slight breeze from the open window.
“I’m so sorry my mouth got ahead of me. It happens sometimes. I react before I think.”
I smiled slowly. I knew the feeling.
“I’ve never seen the gleam in Heph’s eyes like he had when he looked at you. And I crushed the heat in yours, when I burst out information you clearly did not know.”
I began to shake my head, ready to speak when she raised both hands, waving them at me.
“No, listen. He didn’t love her. It was an arrangement of some type. Heph did it only to please his father. That’s what he does. He tries to please others.”
She sat up straighter at the thought.
“I mean, he doesn’t go around trying to please women, just does what he thinks is best to satisfy others.” Both hands covered her mouth. “I’ll shut up now,” she muttered behind her palms. I couldn’t help the giggle that escaped me. One hand came forward to my crisscrossed knee. “Please forgive me. And don’t hold the situation against him.”
I turned away, looking at the simple candle flame. I’d misunderstood the situation, and I misunderstood Heph’s intentions. I cursed myself for falling for him, because that’s what was happening. I was the blue flame from the thrower, torched and burning for more of him.
“I don’t really know Heph either, and I can’t fault him for loving another girl.” My fingers picked at the quilt over my bed. “I just misunderstood his intentions with me.”
“I can tell you, Heph isn’t calculated like that. He doesn’t form intentions. He acts and walks away. The fact that he stood behind you, stroking your hair? That was not Heph. That was not random. That was my brother falling in love.”
My head sprang up.
“How can you know?”
“Oh, honey. I don’t think we ever know. We can’t see it coming, and then, boom, you’re flying over a valley, holding on for dear life, hoping to make it to the other side.”
My brows pressed so tight they kissed.
“But once you get to the other side…the things you learn. The things you experience. It’s…it’s heavenly.” She exhaled deeply, and a blush rose on her face. I smiled and looked away. I don’t think I’d ever carry that expression. I liked Heph, liked him a lot, but love was a whole new level.
A second knock came at my door and bright blonde hair popped around the wood.
“I can’t take it anymore.” Persephone entered and shut the door silently behind her. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I need to go see him. I don’t know why I sprang all that on him.” She addressed Veva, and I tried to pretend I didn’t know what I knew. In an instant, she told me the shortened version.
“Hades and I are…complicated. Separated. I tried to go on a normal date. Be a real girl. I’d been talking to someone in class, and we’d been to a few study sessions together. He was pleasant and attractive. I think I thought if I gave it a try, something might spark.”
I sat up at the comment.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Heph had done that with me. His patience proved he’d let us try. But when I thought of all his marriage proposing, my heart ached. Maybe that’s what he meant. The more he proposed, the closer he’d get to getting it right. Did it even work that way? I had no idea. I’d never had a relationship. I had failed attempts at intimacy, and one night of misplaced trust.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He kissed me, and I let him for about five seconds. It wasn’t Hades, and I knew no man would ever compare.” Her head lowered. “That makes me a bad person, doesn’t it?” Her voice lowered as well.
Veva’s hand covered her friend’s as they both sat on the edge of my bed. My room was becoming a confessional slumber party.
“Honey, he told you to live. He wanted you to have experiences. You were doing what he wants.”
“What about what I want?” Her free hand slapped my bedcoverings. “Ugh,” she groaned. “I don’t know why I let him keep doing this. Each time I think I’m finally accepting that he will not be part of my life, he returns. My heart can’t take the rollercoaster. I want off the Ferris Wheel.” Her head flopped dramatically onto my bed.
“What happened with the other boy?” I asked sheepishly. Was it so easy to disregard someone else? She waved dismissively.
“I never liked him. It was just an experiment.”
My heart dropped. I didn’t want Heph to think he was only an experiment to me. Was I only an experiment to him? I liked him. He meant more than some trial-and-error romp, not that that’s what Persephone had.
“I’m so tired of this, tired of denying myself.” Persephone groaned again. “He told me he wanted me to live, but I’m tired of living without him.”
That thought stopped my memory. I was tired, too. Tired of hiding and not knowing who I was, who I could be, and what I wanted. I wanted to live freely, and for me that meant giving into what I felt for Heph. It was going to hurt when the fires with him blew out, and he left me behind at Hestia’s, but I would not be Adara. I would not wallow in the pain of losing a man. I would enjoy every second Heph gave to me, if he would give me more. I would not let my life burn away to ash, but rise up, like a flaming Phoenix reborn. Tomorrow, I decided, as another cramp claimed me.
+ + +
I rolled under thick covers to see the dark black of night and felt a malleable wall behind me. Startled, my head spun to find Heph sleeping, over the blankets, next to me. I twisted completely to face him and stared at his large face. The bright spotlight from the barn reflected partially into my room, and his features outlined in shadows. His breathing was shallow, and his crooked nose didn’t appear so bent. I risked a fingertip down the curve of it, and his nose scrunched with an itch. I smiled to myself and fluttered shaky fingers over the scratchy scruff on his cheek, cupping upward to his ear and sliding down to his jaw. His nose twitched again. My thumb brushed tenderly at his lower lip, and his hand came up to swat away the nuisance disturbing his sleep. I drew back before he touched me, and his eyes opened abruptly. Staring back at me, blinded by the light behind me, his eyes appeared glassy and uncertain of his surroundings. After a turn of his head to the ceiling, he fell back to his cheek on my pillow, biting his lip.
“Hi.” The groggy sound of his voice did things to my insides, and I melted against the sheets.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “You aren’t allowed to be up here.”
“I haven’t seen you all day. You’re avoiding me.” Caught at the truth, my lids lowered to avoid the intensity of his gaze. Heph was right. I’d been hiding all day.
“We need to talk,” he said, but then he paused, waiting for me to speak. The first thing on my mind burst quietly out of my mouth.
“Do you love her?”
“Lovie?” He chuckled, and something on his face answered for him. “No. She is beautiful, but not for me.”
I nodded in understanding, although I didn’t understand. How was a beautiful woman not for a man like Heph? He was incredible. Tender and kind. And terribly good looking, to me.
“What about Adara?”
His silence worried me and I feared for the worst. He had loved her.
“She’s more complicated. I thought I did, but she didn’t love me. When I realized it, I already had plans to leave, so I left. I did not return as I promised. There is nothing left between her and me.” He’d been looking at the ceiling again as he spoke but his head rolled back to face me. Our eyes met and we stared at one another. In that moment, we shared something I couldn’t describe fully. He was begging me to accept his answers, and willing me to understand. A shaky hand reached for his cheek again and my thumb returned to his lips. He kissed the pad.
“Hestia says you’re sick.”
“It’s a woman thing.” I smiled sheepishly and removed my fingers from his face. He grabbed my wrist and dragged it back to his scruffy cheek.
“Oh…oh…are you okay? Can I do anything?”
“How?” I giggled, knowing the logistics of my condition could not be helped.
“I don’t know. Don’t you suffer nausea, headache, aching of the lips and stiffness for more than four hours?”
I stared, unblinking, before I burst into laughter and turned my face to suppress the sound in the pillow. Finally recovered, his smile filled with white teeth beamed back at me.
“No, Heph, no.”
“Oh. That’s just me then.” His hand slipped to his waist, and he adjusted his pants. My eyes travelled south.
“Want me to rub your back or something?” Shifting my eyes back to his rugged face, my body relaxed at the sweet gesture.
“I want you to kiss me.”
My request was met tenderly at first, hesitant as only Heph could deliver, but quickly it heated. The fires stoked inside me. My breasts ached for his touch; my stomach fluttered with need. Knowing I couldn’t follow through on anything other than kissing intensified the desire. Our mouths molded and meshed, warming one another as Heph slipped a knee between my covered legs. I kicked at the sheet to release me, and one leg looped over his hip. A thick hand cupped under my knee, hitching my leg higher as our tongues danced and our lips waltzed. Not certain how much time passed, I was out of breath when he finally released me. Hesitant to touch his face while my concentration was in the kiss, my hands remained placed over his rolled shirt sleeves, but itched to climb and feel the heat of him.
“I should probably go before I stay all night.”
The exaggerated pout of my lip warranted another round of crackling kisses and sparking embers that could not be taken to the next level. Drawing back from me, he said: “You should go downstairs. You missed dinner. I’ll sneak out after you leave.”
With a final peck, I rolled out from under his leg, missing the weight of it over me and stood. His eyes roamed my attire. My comfort clothes were a long sleeve T-shirt and his red boxer briefs.
“You’re killing me,” he chuckled as he rolled to his back and rubbed exaggeratedly over the thick length at his zipper. Stepping toward the bed, determined to get at him and relieve the pressure for him, his hand rose to stop me. I’d climb that man like an oak tree and build a house to live there, if need be.
“No,” he chuckled softly. I smiled at his playful tone and retrieved a robe to cover me. Once covered, he perched up on an elbow and we took another moment to drink each other in. Looking at him was like sipping hot chocolate on a cool day. He warmed my insides. Finally turning to leave, he called out my name softly. His large frame filled my bed as he sat upward and stretched his long legs.
“You are so beautiful.” With those words, I didn’t care who he loved before, because in that moment, I felt like he loved me.
+ + +
Downstairs was a bevy of activity despite the late hour. Seraphine spoke to Adara in the breakfast room while I quietly gathered some leftovers for my midnight dinner.
“He loved you,” Seraphine said.
“I was too late.” Adara’s sad tone froze my motion of scooping out salad on a plate. “When he told me, I didn’t tell him that I felt the same. I panicked. If he knew the truth of why I wanted to leave, he wouldn’t have felt the same way about me.”
“You didn’t know that. You should have trusted him. You trusted him with everything else.” Seraphine’s husky voice sent home the image of Heph with Adara, and I released the lettuce between the tongs in my grasp. I didn’t need to hear this. Heph had assured me it was over, and I had to believe him.
“What about you?” Adara chuckled without much humor. “That was quite the greeting.”
I imagined Seraphine shrugging a shoulder and tipping her head to swipe back the dark hair with blue streaks. Her eyes matched the color, and the wideness of them would tease back at Adara.
“It was nothing. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him. Hades was there for me at a low point.”
The silence for a beat assured me they understood one another.
“We’ve all been there.” Adara’s voice fell softer, and I wondered if there were more details to Adara’s escape than I knew. Her youngest sister was almost raped by the drunken slob who was Ashin’s husband. Adara killed him when she couldn’t get him off her sister. Eshne recovered enough over time from the experience, and I’d learned she didn’t want to stay at Hestia’s. She didn’t possess the gift, and being here was a constant reminder of what had happened, when all she wanted was to live a normal life and forget the whole situation. Ashin, on the other hand, felt beholden to her older sister for saving her from a difficult marriage. Unsupervised at a young age, she’d made a huge mistake in accepting his proposal. Adara claimed she had her own issues at the time, but rectified the situation when it all came to a boiling head.
“You still need to go,” Seraphine said to Adara.
“I know. But I don’t know how. I don’t know where to even begin to look.”
“Heph would still help you.”
“He would,” Adara sighed. “But I can’t ask him. His interests lay other places.”
“Phyre?” I straightened at the sound of my name and left my dinner plate on the edge of the counter.
“I see the way he looks at her, like he used to look at me. I gave that up because I was afraid to tell him the truth.”
“He’d understand. Tell him now.”
“I can’t.”
What truth? I spun at the pressure of eyes on me. Spinning back, I saw Ember leaning against the dining room door frame. Our eyes locked for a second as I was caught eavesdropping on sisters.
“He won’t last with Phyre any longer than he was with you,” Seraphine spoke confidently. “Look at this other engagement fiasco. How many other women wait for him?”
All my bravado and confidence fell to my stomach and the salad before me repelled my senses.
“He isn’t like that,” Adara defended.
“How do you know?”
The silence that followed answered Seraphine’s question. We didn’t know much about Heph’s life outside of our home. How many others awaited his return with empty promises and filled hearts?
heph
Leaving Phyre’s bed left a hole in my chest, and I woke grumpy from another night of lonely rest.
“I saw Callie before I left. She asked about you.” Solis’ stood beside me, his words burned deep. Callie was a sweet girl, but not for me. How did my life become this tangle of women, yet not one of them wanting the real me? Not the escapee. Not the false fiancé. Not the lusty lover in a shower. Then my thoughts slipped to Phyre.
“I want you to kiss me.” The sweetness of her request did things to me. My heart thudded. My dick stood at attention. She wanted me, and it felt different, inside me. Heat lingered and embers of lust burned, but it was more than fire that warmed me. Her fingers on my face let me know she took a risk and trusted me. She believed in herself not to hurt me, and that gave me comfort. She felt safe with me. Home.
I worked while Solis watched, wiping at his brow in the heat of the barn.
“I’m not interested in Callie and you know that.”
His eyes shot forward, and I spun to find Phyre behind me. My smile grew tenfold before falling to my feet. What had I said to deserve the look she gave me?
“Who’s Callie?” The fierceness in her tone lit the fire in me. I was tired of explaining myself. Tired of the misunderstandings.
“A girl from home. No one.” I spun my back to her, but she stabbed me with her next words.
“Is that what you’ll say to her about me? A girl from Hestia’s. It was nothing.” I dropped the iron, ready for a fight, but her slender back and waving hips told me to stay back.
Fuck this. I removed my apron and followed after her.
“Hey. Hey!” I shouted as she picked up her pace, rushing out the barn and briskly walking for a path cut in the woods. I knew where this trail led, and I hadn’t been there yet this visit. “Don’t you dare say you’re nothing to me! When I look at you, I see everything I want.”
She tossed her hair over a shoulder as she stomped ahead; keeping her back to me when I’d just spilled my heart angered me.
“I’m tired of explaining myself,” I barked. “What about some truth from you? How many lovers have you had?”
