WHO Ares and Melpomene WHEN Sunday night WHERE Ares’ fighting arena WHAT Inspiring the Muse WARNINGS It’s Ares, so, violence, death and sex
The boy led Melpomene down to his car, a dark red beast waiting on the street, and opened her door for her to climb in. The second he touched the ignition, the stereo exploded into life, a wave of bass Melpomene felt in her bones. His hand shot out and turned it off, and he muttered a quick “sorry” that did not seem in keeping with his general air of hard, rough, don’t-give-a-shit. The car surrounding them growled like a demon as it pulled out onto the street.
After a minute he said, “You can turn the air con up if you want.”
Melpomene gave him a sly smile. “War boy’s got manners." He twitched his lips, not willing to give anything away, but Melpomene could see the reverence in his eyes. It would be overflow from his reverence to Ares, of course, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to bask a little.
She did dial down the temperature a few degrees, since the backs of her bare legs were going to stick to the seats.
He remained quiet, though his face never quite got there. Muscles danced around his eyes and lips as his mind moved, from the look of his skin Melpomene thought he should have more colour in his cheeks than was there. If he was a first draft, she rather thought it was one of barely constrained fear. So what twist of fate had set him here in front of her?
Her eyes roamed over him, from his shorn hair down the curve of his neck, the black fabric of his tank, the story of ink written on his skin. “What’s your name, war boy?”
Dark eyes flickered over to her. “Ronan,” he said, as Melpomene turned in her seat to focus her full attention on him. It was unnerving, on a day he really didn’t want to be unnerved, especially not by the woman boss’d sent him to pick up.
“Are you a fighter, Ronan?”
“I’m gonna be.” He hadn’t been planning to talk at all. Pick her up, deliver her to where Ares wanted her, go back to mentally preparing for tonight. That was all.
Then Melpomene reached out and touched his arm, the tattoo, black lines, crudely done, ugly but without a doubt the best thing he’d ever done to his body. Where’s your story honey, she thought, why are you here? “K M,” she said, tracing the lines on his skin. “Who’s this?"
"Brother," Ronan said, and heard the words pulled out of his throat in a rush: "Everything I do I do for that kid."
Ah, there it was. Melpomene smiled.
"Will he be watching you fight?"
"No ma'am," Ronan barely stopped himself swearing fuck no. He'd had to bite down a lot of swears around the kid, still wasn't good at it. "He's too young." Too good. Ronan would rip the world apart before letting Kaden follow his footsteps. Kid was too soft, he'd break. Kid was too smart, he could be something else. Not this.
"You're young," she said, probing deeper. "Must have been working out for a while, for these arms." His biceps clenched where she touched him.
Truth was he'd been fighting his older brothers all his life; raging back when they hit him was the only thing they’d respect, and what were his other options? Let them beat him? Run away? Never gonna happen. And when one brother then the next joined Ares ranks, they discovered that there wasn’t anyplace in the world that’d make them stronger, and if Ronan didn’t step it up fast he’d never get his ground back. They’d continue shitting on him the rest of his life and he’d continue to amount to nothing and give Kaden another year and they’d start on him too.
Ronan had been training, desperately, in secret, knowing that if he proved himself in that ring he’d’ve proved himself anywhere. Make his older brothers scared of him, save his younger, cos once he was in for real he could make sure Kaden stayed out.
He shut his mouth abruptly. Every one of his thoughts he’d said out loud. His stomach dropped. He didn't spend a lot of time around women but Barak wasn’t quiet about his opinions of them. Women were cunning, were manipulators. Ronan figured his brother was full of shit but maybe he had a point. Her smile at him made him shiver, though, and it wasn't entirely bad.
Oh no it was – it mostly definitely was. Ares’s woman should not be giving him shivers. Fuck!
“He’s a lucky boy, to have someone like you on his side,” Melpomene said.
Ronan narrowed his eyes as he turned a sharp corner. “Yeah well, I’m all he’s got.”
“No parents?”
“Dead. Prison.” He couldn’t stop talking. Why couldn’t he stop talking?!
“And what happens to him,” Melpomene asked. “If he loses you?”
Ah, now that shut his mouth. Leave Kaden to the mercy of the world? Never. Survival was everything because that kid was everything.
Melpomene sat back in her seat, tapping her lips. Hard though he looked, there was a sweet innocence there. How much of that innocence would he lose, before survival was worth it?
Well, they’d all soon see, wouldn’t they, for there they were. Ronan killed the engine and moved swiftly, pulling open her door for her. That overflow of reverence, again, but she smiled at him anyway, and stepped out into the baking hot air of the night.
The building that housed Ares’ gym/fight club was a fairly modern build, if austere in its outlook. A lot of white walls and exposed brick. A reception desk inside gave it a veneer of respectability, even though it sat in front of a security booth that watched cameras on the perimeters and entrance ways like a hawk.
Ares pulled the main doors wide as the car pulled smoothly to the curb, hands out to greet his date for tonight’s event. “Melpomene,” he said smoothly. “Welcome to my humble abode.” Although humble it was not, with the large reproduction sculpture of Ares in the foyer. Two large dogs followed their master- one a doberman, black, sleek and fierce, and the other a pitbull, large around despite her muscular shoulders, heavy with pups. She was panting and looking adoringly up at Ares. The black one watched Melpomene, following his master's lead in allowing her in.
Melpomene laughed at the audacity Ares had to call anything humble when they were standing in the shadow of his huge likeness. He could be tremendously funny. “Oh yes, it’s very civilised,” she agreed, joining in on the joke. “Well,” she added, as her eyes tracked over his body, taking in that vast untameable element that was Ares just waiting to crack open that veneer. “Somewhat civilised.”
Ares stepped forward and kissed her, asserting ownership, but he didn’t make it last long. "I'm glad you like it. These are my babies- Boss Bitch and Sparta." He bent to fondle the bitch's ears. "Back to your bed now girl, tonight is not for you. Go on, bed." The dog whined at being separated from him, but waddled away obediently. Sparta stayed by his side, his nose twitching as he sniffed at Melpomene without moving towards her.
He took her arm and lead her through the foyer towards a door to the side that lead to a flight of stairs that went down three floors, spiraling back and forth, the dog padding along behind. He ignored any doors he passed until they reached the bottom. There, there was a set of double doors that swung open with a bang when he shoved them apart.
The arena was a deep room, and they stood at the top of the stairs that lead down into a circular centre. Concrete steps ringed the room, creating a small amphitheatre, and around the walls at the top was a frieze of Ares himself at war, fighting and spilling the blood of his enemies in low relief. At the bottom of the stairs and to the left was a small dais on the level of the first step, and two chairs stood centre stage, waiting for their regal occupants. In the ceiling above was a circular light well with inset electrical lights, giving the fighting ring and its floor of sand the central focus it deserved. There was a smaller door on the other side where a group of about thirty young men of varying ages were entering and making their way down to the centre, milling about in anticipation.
As the doors slammed open, they all snapped to attention and bowed towards their god. Ares paused dramatically to receive it.
Melpomene’s imagination was extremely good, in her as-humble-as-Ares opinion. But this... whatever she had been expecting when Ares had mentioned this place, it wasn’t this. The oppressive light and the pressing smell of old blood and sweat did not surprise her, she regarded the muscle-bound dogs with the same even look as they'd regarded her, and the frieze of Ares was a very nice touch, she had to admit.
But it was the circular amphitheater that made something shift inside her. Stepping down into it, as the men bowed their heads toward them, it felt like nothing short of coming home. And that was a feeling she had not thought to expect.
In the knot of men, she caught sight of Ronan. Though he’d looked large while he was standing to attention in her hallway, in comparison to the others he was very much not. There were men in that crowd who looked like they’d pick their teeth with his bones; one man, near the middle, must have had giant’s blood.
And all of them had some variation of a raw, vicious strength about them, and all of them bowed to Ares, and it made Melpomene’s blood sing: this was power.
Power that filled Ares as he stepped down into the amphitheater, towards the blood and the dust and the raw power of his men. He lived for these moments. They made him feel like the war god of old for a little while, sword and shield in his hands, armour and helm on his body, the light of battle in his eyes. He lead Melpomene to the dais and to the slightly smaller of the two chairs, then turned towards the waiting crowd.
“TONIGHT!” Ares opened his arms wide to the assembled group. “The training you have undertaken has come to this! The final test of your worthiness to join my War Dogs!”
The group all howled in unison, stomping their feet and beating their bare chests. Ares paced in front of them, feeding off the masculine energy they exuded.
“Ronan! Andre! Step forth!”
Two young men, still in their teenage years but on the cusp of adulthood. Both had struggled through hazing and violence to reach the position they were in now.
“Tonight, one of you will prove yourself worthy to join us. Tonight, one of you will meet a warrior’s death in battle. Both are honourable ends.” He put a hand out to each of them, clasping their shoulders, looking them both in the eye. Both boys stood a little straighter, chests puffed a little higher, looking to the twin statues of Ares that stood on either side of the entrance. Only one of them would be walking out of that door tonight. As Ares turned away, Ronan glanced to Melpomene, where she sat on the smaller throne.
“First, there will be two bouts, to please my lady, who so thirsts to experience the thrill of true battle. Alexis. Jason. Will you honour us?”
The two men stepped forward, beating their left fists to their chests in unison. One was the giant Melpomene had noticed before, the other more wiry and quick-looking. The rest of the men peeled back to sit on the perimeter of the arena, to watch the fight and cheer for their favourites.
The fight was brutal, neither man holding back from spilling blood into the sand. Sweat dripped down bronzed skin, running into rivulets of red caused by fists breaking skin. It only ended when one of the two, the wiry one, dropped to his knee after a stunning blow to the chest and couldn’t get back up. The arena echoed with the cheers and chants from the other men, proclaiming their victor, and Ares rose to congratulate him.
Oh, Melpomene thirsted alright, Ares was not wrong there.
He’d offered her a throne, in an amphitheatre; this was the most heady thing that had happened to her in an age. Melpomene let this feeling fill her, and it did, sinking its claws into her stomach, her chest. The way this was playing out was akin to the Dionysia of old, though the huge crowds of Athenians and visitors who thronged to the city at the end of winter had been replaced by a mass of shouting, hollering men. And the fact that they were here for Ares, not Dionysus... but all the same, she was here, at his right hand, drinking it up. He’d said these fights were to please her and, well, fights... plays... did it really matter that the subject changed if the dedication was true?
Unflinchingly, she watched the fight, the moves so fast her untrained eyes could barely keep up. What she did notice though: the unfettered aggression behind the eyes of the faster, the animalism in the way the giant pulled back his lips to expose a mouth half full of teeth.
And she noticed the way the rest of the chorus of fighters watched them, the screams that ripped out of their throats or the way their own bodies tensed or flinched to mimic a punch they would have thrown, had it been them. They were men convinced they were ready for anything. Ronan, practically silent, watched the fight with eyes that knew what they were watching, eyes that knew when a kick that would buckle a knee was coming, knew to anticipate that final, finishing punch. Melpomene found Andre in the crowd too, howling in delight for the victor. His eyes met Ronan’s and he licked his teeth.
She liked the way some burning emotion intensified in Ronan when he did. Oh yes. Now there was a fire she wanted to stoke.
The second bout went much the same way as the first. Ares was enjoying himself properly now, yelling for each hit, laughing with every crunch of bone. He had forgotten Melpomene was there, he was so engrossed in the action in front of him. His dog lay at his feet, also watching, but he hadn’t forgotten the lady was there, looking towards her every now and then.
When the second match ended, Ares got up again to anoint the winner, then held his hands up for silence.
“The time has come. Andre. Ronan.” He beckoned to the two young men. Andre sprang up immediately, coming to his place before Ares. Ronan was a little slower, but he looked no less determined. “The gods watch over you both.”
There was a soft, slow stomp of feet and exhale of sound from the surrounding chorus. Gradually, the beat grew louder, and faster, sweeping up the combatants in the growing hype, until the walls echoed with the bloodlust and the name of their god chanted over and over. The two young men shook hands, and then stepped apart, cracking necks and swinging shoulders to loosen up. Ares looked around the circle, his eyes ablaze with the fire of the battle, until he had turned to make eye contact once more with Melpomene.
“Does this please you?” he growled, his chest heaving with the intensity.
As the beat picked up and up it took her pulse with it, the adrenalin rising as if she was the one about to step into the ring. Centuries upon centuries had passed since she was last surrounded by mortals screaming out the names of one of their gods like this, and the feeling of pure want might crack her ribs open. Fuck, they’d all been living on scraps for so long.
When Ares looked at her it was as if he’d dug a fishhook in under her ribs, and she stood, and came to him, and kissed him ravenously on the mouth for her answer. And by all the gods he would fuck her right now, right there, if he didn’t have this bout to adjudicate first. His arm went around her bare back and he pulled her in tight so she could feel how hard he was. The chanting filled his blood, in time with his pulse, and it seemed to intensify with the kiss, until he pulled away from her with a snarl, turned to the baying crowd, and bellowed, “FIGHT!!!”
It was like a band snapped between the two combatants. Andre roared at Ronan, muscles pumped and straining as he flexed his arms wide. There was no hesitation there; Andre lunged and Ronan countered. Feet moved swiftly over the sand. The boys hit, hard, scuffled, pulled back. The next time Ronan lunged, sidestepped to make Andre turn and hit him while his defences were a fraction too open because a fraction might as well have been a wide open fucking door. Andre retaliated, and his elbow crunched into Ronan’s nose as Ronan’s foot smashed down on his instep.
The boys broke apart, circling each other, always moving. Ronan spat a mouthful of blood into the sand.
Were the others still chanting, still beating their feet against the floor, still baying for blood? Ronan heard nothing but his breath in his lungs over the roar in his ears.
Again they hit, clashed, messier than before. Andre’s weight and momentum made his feet slip backward over the sand and for a moment all Ronan could do was dig his heels in and hold - teeth gritted jaw pulsing - till his training kicked in and he shifted his weight, twisted his foot in Andre’s and knocked him to the ground. This time he did hear the roar of the crowd - briefly, before Andre swept his feet out from under him too. He hit the ground with a crack and Andre was instantly on top of him and shoving a handful of filthy sand down his throat.
He’d trained for pain, and knew how to fight through being winded, and he’d anticipated blood in his eyes, sweat in his eyes, sand in his eyes, and knew how to deal with all of those. Not a lungful of sand, though. Not his lungs fighting while Andre buried him alive with little more than a fist.
Ronan lurched forward and cracked his head against Andre, feeling the bones in his nose give but feeling his skull rattle, too. He rolled up and back to his feet, choking. A splatter of mud, dark with spit and blood, fell on the dry sand between them.
He was on his back foot when Andre came at him again. In his mind he’d been ready. It was kill or be killed. This he knew. But there was death in his lungs now, and he’d had no practice at this.
Ares watched avidly, hands still holding Melpomene but eyes on the action. He didn’t miss a single scuffle or beat, waiting for the slip, the spill that meant there would be a winner and a death.
Andre could hardly see through the blood in his eyes, but he shook his head and spat, fist connecting with Ronan’s face, and then a foot to the inner thigh to force him to the ground again. He snarled and punched, his hand cracking but hardly feeling the pain, just needing to win, to kill, to prove himself worthy of this, his place, and Ronan was still hacking sand and trying to block but failing, his ears ringing, his little brother’s face in his mind as his vision narrowed, and he just couldn’t leave him- but he was dying - he was dying - this was dying, and his heart was lurching so fast, so alive in its rebellion. His lungs kept trying and trying to live. His whole body a machine that just wanted to live.
He opened his mouth and hacked in a breath and did the only thing he could think of to save himself.
“I yield!”
Utter.
Silence.
The chanting stopped. Melpomene held her breath. The victor, standing above with his fist raised for the killing blow, looked to his leader, uncertain.
Ares stepped forward to the edge of the dais and then down into the sand, eyes bulging, teeth bared with bloodlust, dragging Melpomene with him. His dog stalked beside him, hackles up and a hint of teeth showing. “You can’t yield. No mercy!” he shouted, his voice rising in volume, and he looked to Andre. “What are you waiting for!? FINISH HIM!!”
The victor looked down at the blood-soaked, filthy face of his victim, knew he had to do it- and hesitated.
Just for a second. But it was enough.
These babies, Melpomene thought.
So full of wanting and pride, bristling with ambition. These young babies. Both their lives a question hanging in the air, how high would they climb? How far would they fall? (If Andre hesitated a fraction longer, would Ares kill them both?)
(Yes, she thought. Doubtlessly.)
Melpomene didn’t want two bodies out of this. She wanted a hero, reborn in this sand, bloody as the deserts of Troy.
As Ares screamed for it to end, she lifted her left foot and deftly hooked her toes under the hilt of the knife in her right boot. She let it fall in the sand. In reach of them both.
Caught Ronan’s bloodshot eye as Andre hesitated - and then Andre lunged -
And Ronan, on his back, lunged - spun - rose -
And the blade whistled as it was snatched up, and then thudded through the neck of the almost-victor. He looked down in surprise, hands raising, and then the knife was ripped clear, and blood spurted into the dust, splattering across all four of them.
Ares stared as the boy fell dead at his feet, and Ronan fell to his knees beside him. The war dogs waited on edge, the smell of blood thick in the air, for the first order that would unleash them. But Ares laughed.
He looked down at the battered and bruised body of his newest recruit and waited for him to slowly, achingly get to his feet, just so he could knock him down again, but the cuff was playful, amused, if not still painful. “You sly dog. Dirty underhanded trickster.” He grasped the boy’s arm and pulled him up again, still laughing. For a second Ronan's eyes lost focus as a fresh wash of pain hit, but only for that moment before the rush kicked back in and he came right, planting his feet in the sand.
“We have our winner!” Ares declared, and all the men cheered and howled until the arena rang with the baying for blood. Ares held his fist high, drinking it all in, giddy with it like he’d downed a glass of Dionysus’ wine.
“You owe my lady your life, boy. You owe her obeisance until your dying day.” He indicated Melpomene, and drew her to him. “Clean her blade and return it.”
Ronan looked up at the witch-woman who’d loosened his tongue, standing tall and terrible beside Ares, the ring of lights a halo behind them both. She wore Andre’s blood without flinching, without disgust, like a sash across her white dress, flecks of it splattered across her bare skin. It wasn’t just the pain that sent him to his knees in front of her.
The knife - her knife - he clutched in his hand. He wiped the blade on his clothes, then held it reverently out toward her, his head bowed.
“My lady,” he said, taking Ares words and trying to do the best with them, through a ragged throat and rattled brain.
Melpomene knew she was good at her job, and was proud of the extent of her powers. She moved people, she knew that, made them think different, act different, enjoyed the power in it.
But no one had bowed to her, really bowed to her, for an age.
She bent to reach down and grab his chin, tilting it toward her face. “My name is Melpomene,” she said. It was not a name she’d given to mortals for long and long, and he didn’t know it, of course, not yet, but a small frisson went through him, anyway.
“My lady Melpomene,” he said, and if Melpomene had been a fraction less poised a persona she would have reached out for Ares arm to steady herself.
My lady Melpomene.
The smile on her face, and in her eyes, was hungry and dark at those delicious words. Had she been writing this moment herself, the word she would have used for the feeling was dangerous.
As it was, the word she came up with was divine.
Ares looked at her, feeling proud and strong and immense. This was a gift for her unlike anything anyone could have given her in a long time. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the body in the sand. “Clean him up and prepare him for a warrior’s end,” he called, and a couple of men stepped forward dutifully to pick the body up and carry him away. Another man came forward too, to stand by Ronan, looking fierce and a little proud.
“I will take my brother to be cleaned up for tonight’s celebrations,” he said, and Ares nodded, waving a hand, but then paused.
“Wait. A new name for you, boy. You’re a man now.” He looked to Melpomene for inspiration, and got it. “Tragos. You’re a war dog now.”
Ronan - Tragos - took in the name in a silent moment, then bowed his head again to Ares. “Thank you, Sir” - He’d been a moment away from saying my lord to go along with my lady, though the words felt alien in his mind. But then... the feeling of ripping through Andre’s own throat felt alien too. The look of pride in his brother’s eyes most alien of all.
“Tragos,” Melpomene said, turning her eyes to Ares as the others departed, a dark twist of a smile on her face. Her chin was held high, and there was a dark scatter of blood drops decorating her bare neck. She knew she’d made a mark here, made a mark on him, by Chronos it felt so deeply fantastic, she let herself throw back her head and laugh.
Ares clasped Tragos on the shoulder, then nodded them away- waved them all away, shouting at them to fuck off when they didn’t get the message fast enough. Then he turned back to Melpomene, his hands sliding up under her dress to hold her hips, his expectations how very clear.
“What happened tonight won’t happen again,” he said, just the very edge of a warning in his tone before he kissed her before even all the men were gone from the arena.
Melpomene’s return kiss was fiery and combative, her hands grasped round the back of his neck. “Which part?” she growled against his lips. The fights to please her? Her interference with the knife? The glorious dedication? Her presence here at all? Now that she’d tasted them, some things were going to be harder to let go of than others.
“There is no mercy here,” he growled, walking her back the few steps towards the dais. “By rights I should have killed them both. But for you...” He slid his fingertips inside her underwear, tugging at it, wanting it gone. He needed release and she was entirely too dressed.
Glancing over her shoulder, he realised the dog was still standing there, watching them, so he whistled sharply and pointed to the door. The dog went, padding up the stairs to lay down by the door, keeping guard over his master.
His fingers drew a guttural moan of desire out of her, and her own hands went to his belt. “For me,” she said, with a toothy, satisfied grin, and she gave his belt a hard yank as she unbuckled it, jerking him closer.
“Just this once,” he said, lifting her ass to sit her on the edge of the dias and bend to unzip her boots and pull them off, followed by her underwear, tossed aside. “And once only.” He liked that she knew what she wanted with him, and was meeting his physicality with her own, and he bent his head to kiss her throat, nipping the spot where the knife had gone through the young man and ended his life.
Oh, Melpomene didn’t know about that only once promise, the intoxicated way she was feeling definitely made her cocky enough to believe she could pry a few other delicious things out of him. She tipped her head back as his teeth met her skin, letting her eyes flutter closed. She didn’t need to see, though, to continue working on his pants, shoving them down so she could wrap her hand around his dick. “I’ve never seen anything like tonight,” she purred in his ear, stroking her hand down the length of him. “All those men, chanting your name. Ready to kill for you. Ready to die for you.” She’d felt how hard he’d been when he pulled her against him, earlier, and wanted his ego stoked even higher. Fuck, it was what he deserved, as a god, it was what they both deserved.
He wanted to hear her call his name in this amphitheatre too, and he pushed against her hand, absorbing her words. He stepped free of his clothes, naked in the arena (as it should be, by rights), and he took the bottom of her dress and drew it up over her head in a much more controlled move than last time they did this. Maybe she was earning respect, standing with him like this. Maybe her hand on his cock was mellowing him out for a moment. He pushed her back, crawling over her so she was forced to lie on her back on the dais, looking down at her breasts and her body and needing to own this too, like he owned everything here. “Say my name,” he hissed, nudging her thighs apart with his knees.
“Say mine,” she growled back, underlining her demand with another firm stroke of her hand. Was she really daring to ask this? Yes - she only questioned herself a second. Yes she fucking was. Her dark eyes blazed up at him. “Ares, god of war, Thêritas," she added, hand still moving as she chose a few of her favorite epithets. “Khalkeos.” Beastly Ares, brazen Ares. "Obrimos," she pushed herself up and dragged her teeth across his ear. "Deinos." Ares, mighty and fearsome. “Say my name.”
Ares stared at her, his face dark and unreadable. “Melpomene Areia,” he said after a moment, because she had earned it by being here tonight. Her hand seemed to be guiding him in, and he bent his head over her to take her breast in his mouth, tongue moving roughly over her skin. She called him brazen and bold, but what was she if not that? Her cunt was hot as he entered her, needing to take her and end this, shoving smoothly deep inside as her hips rose up to meet him.
Melpomene Areia - if my lady Melpomene hadn't made her wet, that sure as fuck would have done it. If it hadn't been for his tongue, first, and his dick, second, she might have laughed again, triumphant. As it was, her voice rang out across the empty amphitheatre, louder for the acoustics of the seating, or just louder because - because she was being fucked by a war god on a dais in a theater and right now it was everything.
No, she thought, fucking a war god. In the middle of a greedy, covetous kiss she pushed back against him, hard and fast, and pinned him to his back with a rush, never pausing as she thrust against him. Melpomene Areia, godsdamn right she was.
She was getting much more confident the more they did this, Ares thought, grasping hold of her hips to find a good rhythm. He usually only let Aphrodite mount him like this, but being in the centre of the amphitheatre was very almost her home space, where chorus and tragedy played out, and she seemed to be growing stronger off the back of it. He was glad he’d had a rug laid down here, but he barely felt the hard stone floor as he bent his knees up and she rode him, breasts thrust outward and her mane of hair thrown back. She was so fucking gorgeous and he grunted through his teeth with his thrusts and watched her, his hands almost exactly over the bruises from the last time she was like this.
It was hot as Hades down here, hot as a fighting arena buried deep underground, hot as two gods fucking, and Melpomene's skin was shining with sweat in the lights from overhead. It glistened down between her breasts, running pink with Andre's blood as she arched her back, hips tilted in a way that drove Ares deep, deep into her. One of the beauties of being immortal: you had all the time in the world to figure out exactly what you liked, exactly how to move to get yourself off, and it didn't take long at all for the pleasure to start cresting. Panting, and vocalising, with each thrust, she reached back and dug her nails hard into his thighs, moving faster and faster till she was crying his name. “Ares!” she wailed, the pleasure breaking her voice as the poetry slipped out of her mouth "Magnanimous, unconquered, aah! - in darts rejoicing, and in bloody wars - fierce and untamed - whose mighty power can make the strongest walls from their foundations shake - mortal-destroying king, defiled with gore, pleased with war's dreadful and tumultuous roar. Ares - Ares!"
How could he help but answer that call with one of his own? Ares thrust up into her and cried out in pleasure, his wordless shout echoing behind hers as he came, hands like vices on her hips. Melpomene, muse of tragedy, dragging this show out of him because he couldn’t help himself with her, both of them showing more brutal sides together than they would apart. He climaxed hard, watching her, her own quivering self taking every last bit of him until he was done, lying on his back, chest heaving for breath.
“Melpomene,” he murmured, his mouth lazy, and he laughed and shuddered as she flexed around him a final time.
Melpomene slowly collapsed down onto him, collapsed like an empire onto his heaving chest. Her name in his voice sent another aftershock of pleasure through her, and she clenched around him once more, hard as she could, and ran her tongue over his skin to show her appreciation. "Again Ares, the limb-loosener, rattles me," her voice low like a distant thunderstorm, satisfied and proud, stealing Sappho's words because, fuck it, bitch had stolen hers in the past, and she felt nothing now if not limb-loosened and rattled. She eased herself up on one elbow so she could raise her head, and kiss his lazy mouth.
He wanted to kiss her back hard, to bite at her mouth, but he was sated and done for now. “I’ll rattle you any day,” he said, kissing her back, one hand pushing her hair back off her face. He had vague memories of them being like this, decades ago, during the first world war, when men died in trenches and the shine of armour and clash of sword on shield were swapped with mud and artillery and bombs. War was always a messy business, but it really had not been quite the same that time around. “Did we fuck in a hospital tent?” he asked her, holding the side of her face with one wide hand. “In that fucking war. There was a hospital tent. We fucked, and half the men died, and I got my leg blown off by a mortar.”
Why was he returning to that space? This space here, the circle of the arena, this place made him feel alive and strong.
“Mmmm,” Melpomene crooned, languidly, in agreement. “There’d been a nurse,” she murmured, barely moving, because Ares cupping her face like that was a gesture not to be taken lightly. “Bled herself out, trying to save the wounded. I remember.” She’d been a nurse too, at the time. She remembered dying in the arms of a very handsome young soldier, a few days after fucking Ares in that tent. She’d carried a copy of the poem the soldier and written about her death in a little locket for years after that; there were depressingly fewer things more inspiring to a young man than watching a beautiful woman die. “The war to end all wars,” Melpomene said, and laughed, remembering how all the world had hoped in vain.
“More mortal foolery,” Ares said. “War never ends.” After a moment, and with a deep sigh, he sat them both up, keeping Melpomene straddling his lap. He kissed her again, satisfied, and Ate’s words to him flashed in his mind, asking if he ever was truly done. And honestly, he never was. There was always another fight to win.
He ran his fingers down over Melpomene’s ribs to her beautiful ass, and cupped it with both hands, holding her close a moment longer. He knew he had to go and attend to his men, to celebrate the new ascension into his elite ranks, and to that, Melpomene was not invited. Some things were truly sacred. The moment held though, and his kiss was a lot less demanding, less invasive. “You are something else,” he said quietly, then sucked his teeth and grinned at her.
'Yes," Melpomene agreed, the extra moment she took to respond was only because she was preoccupied by the way he'd kissed her, by his hands on her ass, this unexpected moment (this whole night of unexpected moments) and not because she had any doubt that she was, in fact, a singular creature. She returned his grin with one of her own, like the grin of a she-wolf. "And so are you," she kissed him again, one last deep kiss before she’d make a move to climb off him. "Let's neither of us forget it."