Chapter 14
History Lesson
"Those who desire power are not fit to wield it."
Edith Hamilton
I stood there in awe of the man, the god who stood before me. It made sense, his beauty, his voice, his skin and not to mention the other things he can do. Even though I guessed at it, the truth of it still amazes me. A son of Zeus, the King of the Olympian Gods. However incredible that fact may be, I knew it to be true.
"No last name?" I asked. In that moment, it was all I could think of to say.
"Not even mortals had last names when I was born." Ariston said to me.
"When was that?" I asked.
"July 16th of 3052bc by the calendar you know." Ariston said to me. Suddenly his ancient eyes looked even older, but they were still the same eyes I know so well, the eyes of the man I love.
"You are a god." It was not a question.
"I am." He replied. I looked at him, almost as if I were seeing him for the first time. His face was placid but I could see in his eyes something was bothering him. "We have much to speak of, there is much I must tell you but I do not think this is the place." He said, I nodded.
"We can go to my apartment." I said.
"I can bring us there," Ariston told me.
He slowly stepped up to me, as if not knowing how I would react to him. I smiled to him and he seemed to relax a bit. He smiled, a small smile but still nice to see, as he slipped his arms around my waist, I placed my hands on his bare chest.
I gasped as his whole body began to glow a warm golden light until he looked how his essence felt, he was literally made out of light, even his eyes glowed but they were still the same sky blue I know so well. Deep down I realized that I was seeing Ariston in his truest form. The golden light surrounded me, he surrounded me, and a moment later the light was gone but I was still lost in his eyes.
"Shall we sit?" Ariston asked.
He removed his arms and sat down as he buttoned his shirt, to my great disappointment. I looked around and saw that we were in the living room of my apartment. I sat down next to Ariston on the white couch, not able to take my eyes off of him.
"Where would you like me to begin?" He asked.
"What were those things, those cold, dark creatures you fought?" I asked.
"Every culture has a name for them." Ariston said. "The Christians call them Demons. In Buddhism they are called the Seizer's. The Chinese call them Gu, while the Japanese call them Oni. We simply call them the Shadows. They were created aeons ago, before even my grandfather's birth. Their original purpose was to torment evil doers, they go inside of a mortal's body and bond with their soul and in doing so put the mortal in their own personal hell. They did their job well until a certain god freed them." He paused. "To understand the Shadows, I must tell you of the darkest time in the History of the Gods, the time when my grandfather overthrew a good king."
"Your grandfather Cronus." I said, remembering my Greek Mythology. Ariston shook his head.
"That was not his name." Ariston said. "Truth be told, I do not know my grandfather's name. Cronus, however, is my sister's husband and a great and honorable god of nature."
"Why do you not know his name?" I asked.
"One of the greatest punishments and shames in my world is to become a Nameless One." Ariston told me. "Many do great and evil things so that their name will stand out in history and live on long after they are gone. When an immortal commits a truly horrible act, they are imprisoned in Tartarus, an unimaginable hell in the deepest pits of the Underworld, and their name is destroyed so that not even they can remember it. From then on they are known as a Nameless One. This punishment has only been dealt to two immortals, one was my grandfather." Ariston explained.
"And the other?" I asked, his expression darkened.
"The other is the immortal who tried to rape my sister when she was fifteen." His voice was as dark as his expression. "Back to the story at hand." He said. "My grandfather was powerful, clever and ambitious. A truly dangerous combination. He wanted more power, and at some point he got it into his mind to bond with a weak Shadow." Ariston told me.
"Why would anyone want to do that?" I asked Ariston. Who would want to torment themselves in such a way?
"Some can handle darkness. They can turn that darkness within them into a great strength, a power few can match." Ariston explained. "The Nameless One was desperate for more power and so he did the unthinkable. It worked at first, but the Shadow began to feed off of him and became stronger than my grandfather. It corrupted his mind, his very soul. The Nameless One soon discovered that he could control the Shadows because he had one within him; he became their king. But it was not enough for him, he still wanted more.
"After years of planning, the Nameless One overthrew a great god who was king at the time, King Ouranos." Ariston continued. "If there is one thing to be said for the Nameless One, it is that he is smart. He did not openly attack Ouranos, he began with words, not swords. He privately accused King Ouranos of an unspeakable crime, going from one god to another to see who would believe and follow him. When he had gathered enough deities, he proclaimed to everyone else the lie he created. Those who believed him fought at his side when the time came, those who did not were locked up in Tartarus.
"As powerful and wise as King Ouranos was, he was no match for the Nameless One and his minions, and he knew it. Before he was taken, King Ouranos spirited his wife Queen Gaia and their young son Prince Cronus away to the Isle of Crete, where Ouranos created a web of his own magic to hide his wife and son from detection.
"King Ouranos did not struggle when they took him down to the Underworld. Some say it was because he knew of the prophecy." Ariston said.
"What prophecy?" I asked him.
"Simply put, it stated that the Nameless One would be cast down from his high seat by his own son, who was yet to be born. And that son's eldest child would be the one whom would one day kill the Nameless One. Ouranos knew what he had to do. He had to make the Nameless One think that he had won, he needed to stay out of the way so that this son of the Nameless One could be born.
"The Nameless One requested of King Hades that Ouranos be locked away in Tartarus for his crimes. Hades is no fool, he saw what was going on, but for the sake of his kingdom he kept his lips sealed and agreed. However, when the Nameless One and the others left, Hades gave King Ouranos a comfortable place to stay in his palace to wait out the days until his return."
"The Nameless One was outraged that he could not find Ouranos' queen and heir, but he found a way to use it to his advantage. To make himself appear merciful, the Nameless One decided that instead of hunting down and killing Queen Gaia and young Prince Cronus, he proclaimed them exiles, while naming himself King of the Gods.
"Many years later, unaware of the prophecy, the Nameless One wanted a child. Even though he did not intend on ever giving up his throne, he wanted a son who would be the living image of himself. He soon took Ouranos' eldest daughter to be his wife. Her name is Theia.
"Theia soon bore her husband the son he wanted so badly. They named him Zeus. It is tradition that when a child of a god is born that they are taken to the Moirae, the Fates, to find out their destiny. And so the Nameless One and his bride went to the Underworld with their newborn son. It was there he was told a prophecy of a ten-year war that would end his reign, and that his newborn son that his wife now held in her arms, would be his undoing.
"When someone has attained great power, what they fear most is losing it. Theia feared for the safety of her son. She did not know how far her husband would go in order to keep his throne.
"The Nameless One and Theia went back to their home on Mt. Athos. As much as it killed her to admit it, Theia knew that even if her husband did not harm Zeus, he would not raise him correctly either. She could not bear to have her son become like his father, a god she had once loved, but came to hate, and so she called for her brother Cronus and asked him to take her son away and raise him with their mother Gaia. Cronus, of course, agreed.
"The Nameless One was furious when he found his son was gone. No matter what he did to her, Thiea would not tell her husband where their son was, she would not risk Zeus falling into his hands.
"When asked what had become of his son, the Nameless One told the gods that the Moirae prophesied that his son would commit a great evil and so he had no other choice but to have him reborn into a mortal body where he could not be of harm to the gods.
"Cronus was a father to my father, which is where Mythology got the stories mixed up." Ariston said with a smile. "Cronus taught him everything he knows and raised him as well as he could. My father has said time and time again that he does not know who he would have become if it had not been for Cronus and Gaia."
"When Cronus was twenty-three they found a way to free his father from the underworld, and with his help they began gathering followers. It was not difficult, seeing as how from the day he took power the Nameless One neglected his duties. The Nameless One wanted the title of King but had no interest in the work it entailed.
"The gods grew lazy under the Nameless One's rule and forgot their duty to the mortals. The humans began to starve since food was no longer growing, that was the beginning of cannibalism, there was nothing else for them to eat." I was horrified at the thought. "Believe it or not, it was Hades that kept the mortals alive, but that came at a price and not one of his choosing."
"What price?" I asked Ariston.
"Hades is not only a god of death and King of the Underworld, he is a god of the earth. All the things deep within the earth belong to him, and so in order for him to be able to reach up that high to make food grow, the mortals had to make a sacrifice of blood and sprinkle it on their fields. The purer the blood, the more food grew, and so young virgins and even children were plucked from their mother's arms for this purpose. In time the mortals came to accept this sacrifice, they saw it as an honor for their child to be chosen for such a task, for the child's death would keep the village alive. Through that blood Hades was able to make scant amounts of food grow, but it was never enough.
"Hades still cursed those that killed their children for such a purpose, or for any purpose. In the eyes of the gods there is no crime so great as that of harming a child, whether it be through words or actions. Hades has since sworn to never honor such a sacrifice again, it sickened him to do so.
"Some of the gods saw this happening and were sickened that the mortals were not being cared for. They went to their King and demanded an explanation. Instead of taking responsibility for his doings, the Nameless One blamed the mortals. He claimed that he tried to help them, but every miracle he sent their way they threw back in his face, killing their own children as a sacrifice to Hades instead of accepting his gifts. He told them that he had been watching the mortals and he found them to be petty, jealous creatures, thinking of nothing but themselves. He stated that such a race did not deserve the beautiful, lush world they had been given, and that he feared that the mortals might have to be destroyed in order to preserve the Earth. The other gods said that surely he was misunderstanding their actions. He told them that perhaps they were right." Ariston shook his head. "The Nameless One is a master manipulator, he knows how to make people believe what he wants them to believe and do what he wants them to do.
"Unbeknownst to the gods who followed him, to prove his point, the Nameless One gave his Shadows free reign of the mortals and told them to possess whom they pleased. Since the Shadows were only supposed to be able to possess the wicked, the gods believed the Nameless One to be telling the truth, that the mortals were more corrupted than they feared. It was to the point that they considered destroying the mortals, but the Nameless One, always being the voice of reason, said that perhaps the mortals were not evil." The words twisted in Ariston's mouth as he said them with heavy sarcasm. "He wanted the gods to beg him for permission to destroy the mortals so that he could never be blamed, and so he bided his time.
"Once Zeus, Cronus and his father King Ouranos had enough followers, the war began. A war that is now known as the Titanomachy." Ariston pronounced it 'Te-Tan-O-Ma-He-Ah'. "After ten long years of fighting, the Nameless One relented and went into hiding, promising that he would avenge this 'grave injustice.' Try as they did, the gods could not find the Nameless One." Ariston paused.
"This all really happened?" I asked, only half believing it.
"Yes, it did." Ariston said. "It happened fifteen thousand years ago. It was more than ten thousand years before my birth, and there is much more to the story."
"After years of purging innocent mortals, only to have them infected with Shadows again, it became clear to King Ouranos what he must do." Ariston said. "As much as it pained him to do so, he melted the ice that was over much of Europe and North America and flooded the hills and valley's of Earth. Billions were killed in the flood, whole civilizations were destroyed, but there was no other way. There were simply too many mortals for the gods to purge.
"Those whom lived higher up in mountains and such, survived the floods, but there were only thousands of mortals left on the Earth. Even then it was a challenge to purge their souls of the Shadows, there were so many Shadows that once one was out of a body and destroyed another would jump in.
"In time King Ouranos grew tired of this ceaseless fight and passed the crown down to my father Zeus, since Cronus turned it down. My father married his wife Hera and not long after, the destined child of his was born. To their surprise, it was a daughter, not a son, my sister the Crown Princess Ennina." Ariston said with the second smile I had seen on his lips since he began the story, but it did not last long.
"Do you know the story of Pandora?" Ariston asked softly, not looking at me. I nodded.
"Zeus was angry with Prometheus for giving fire to the mortals and wanted to punish him." I began. "Pandora was created by the gods, she was the most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen, some stories say that she was the first mortal woman. She was given as a gift to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus as a bride. Pandora was given a box and told never, under any circumstances, to open it. She put the box away but her curiosity got the best of her, and when she opened the box all the evils of the world poured out until the only thing that was left in the box was hope." I have read many different versions so I repeated the basis of the story.
"That is what Mythology will tell you, however that is not exactly how it happened." I saw sorrow and worry within his eyes before he glanced away. When Ariston looked back to me a moment later those emotions were gone. "After the Nameless One's reign, the world was consumed in darkness. The Shadows were in almost every mortal in the world and their master still ran free, hiding among them. It was shortly after my father had taken power, he was still trying to bring peace to the world after what his birth father had done.
"Pandora was a mortal woman with a powerful secret, she was a Demigod, a daughter of Zeus. She was one of the first children he fathered that was not by his wife. With his wife he had already fathered three children. The twins, Ennina and Ares, and his daughter Hebe. Like Ennina, Pandora was immune to the shadows, they could not harm her the way they could harm others, her soul was made of too strong a light for them to be able to corrupt. My father protected her of course, but she knew that she had to stop the evils that were plaguing the Earth, she knew it was her destiny.
"Pandora found out what she had to do. She had a box created for her, a box made of light, beauty, love and hope, the strongest things that are good in this world. The box was able to hold a vast amount of Shadows, and she made it so that only she or those of her bloodline would be able to operate or find it if need be.
"Pandora discovered that she had a power that not even the gods possessed. When Shadows neared her, her hands grew hot and a pure light would burst forth from her palms, a light so powerful that it would destroy any Shadow it came into contact with." I looked down at my hands, remembering the times they grew hot when I felt the darkness, wondering once again what I am.
"Pandora, went from mortal to mortal, village to village, and removed the Shadows that had taken such deep root within them and stored them in the box." Ariston continued the story. "After living their whole lives in chaos, the mortals had to be taught how to live in peace again, which was where the gods came in. Ennina joined forces with her sister, helping to protect her as she went on this journey. In the end, Pandora locked away almost every single Shadow in existence. The few that remained were easy prey for the gods, and it was not long before the Nameless One himself was captured and imprisoned in Tartarus. Pandora was honored by the gods for what she did, her name immortalized by giving it the meaning 'the gift of all' and she was granted immortality, a gift few that are not born to it are given.
"Pandora kept her box with her, hidden and safe. Pandora married Epimetheus and they had two beautiful daughters, Alexis and their youngest Reina." Ariston finished and I smiled.
"That is a beautiful story." I said to Ariston.
"If only that were how it ended." Ariston sighed then continued. "Eight years later disaster struck. No one is certain of exactly what happened. Epimetheus came home and found what was left of Reina, his youngest daughter, lying on the floor. He held her in his arms as she died, disappearing into light, becoming nothing. The Shadows had murdered her, that much was clear. The box was gone and Pandora was nowhere to be found. Some believe that Pandora opened the box, and after the Shadows killed her daughter, she fled with the box in her grief. However, those who knew Pandora say that she would never do such a thing.
"They searched for Pandora for millennia before they came to accept that she must be dead. We still search for the box, some of the gods believe that the Shadows took the box, and so we search in places where the Shadows are the strongest." Ariston finished.
It was a lot to take in. Ariston gave me a moment as I tried to sort through what I had just learned. One thing was clear however.
"Why not just finish him?" I asked. "There must be a way, and it is more than clear that the Nameless One will only do harm." Ariston cracked a smile.
"We are of an agreement there Mera. We would destroy his soul, if we could find him." He said.
"Find him? You said he was imprisoned within Tartarus?" I was confused.
"Mera, you do not understand. He escaped the Underworld almost a thousand years ago." I stared at Ariston in shock.
"You mean to say that he is free?" I asked in horror.
"Sadly so." Ariston said. "He has made it clear that he is bent on destroying the human race. For whatever reason, he blames them for his down fall. He has been wreaking havoc on the world since his escape. It is all we can do to keep up with his madness. Each and every time he has risen up against us we have beaten him back, however there were times when it was close. The closest the Nameless One came to destroying the human race was in the twelfth century, with the Black Death. It killed over 75 million people in just twelve years."
"That was him?" I asked in disgust. Ariston nodded.
"The Black Death was of his creation. There were many reports of dark creatures that would come before the Black Death, they were the ones who were said to have spread it. They would come in black robes with monstrous faces and claws for hands. Sound familiar?" He asked.
"The Shadows." I stated simply.
"The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of his, as well as the World Wars. But he has never been as close as he is now. He has never had so many followers." Ariston said. "Our numbers have increased as well. There were just under a thousand gods in the Worlds during the Titanomachy. Our numbers are currently in the tens of millions, and that is only counting the Gods and Immortals. There are other creatures that are of light who have fought with us before, and will fight with us again." He was silent for a moment before he looked at me, I smiled and he sighed. "Are you okay with this? With who and what I am?" Ariston asked.
"Mm, because being a god is such a turn off." I said with a smirk and he smiled.
"I am not human." He stated.
"I already knew that before I told you I love you." I said.
"How?" Ariston asked.
"When you held me before I left for New York, my ear was over your heart, but I heard no beat. I knew that you were something more, I just was unsure what exactly that was." I told him. "May I ask you something?"
"Anything." He looked as if he just had the weight of the world lifted off of his shoulders.
"If I had not witnessed what I did tonight, would you still have told me who you are?" I asked him.
"Yes, I was planning on telling you tomorrow. I never wanted to keep the truth from you." He said.
"Then why did you?" I asked.
"I wanted to ease you into this truth, so that I was not just suddenly telling you that I am a god. Though I thought I had more time, then tonight happened." Ariston said, I remembered the subtle hints he gave such as telling me that his towels are made out of clouds. He sighed and looked down at his hands before adding, "I also waited to tell you, because I was not certain you were ready to know who you are." And here we come to the other part of this mystery, something I have been wondering about since the first day of school.
"What am I?" I asked, hoping for once to get a straight answer.
"You are a Descendant of the gods, Mera." Ariston answered.
Something hit me then, something that made my heart stop and erased the smile from my face. Am I a Demigod?
"Mera, what is wrong?" Ariston asked, concern clear in his voice.
"Is George my father?" I asked with tears in my eyes, I could hardly breath.
I have always loved my father, I am like him in so many ways. I could not imagine my mother cheating on my father, but the very thought of it broke my heart and made me question everything I knew to be true. How else could I be what I am? I must be the daughter of a god.
"Yes, he is your father. George and Anne are your birth parents, you are not a Demigod." Ariston said quickly. I looked into his eyes and saw that he was telling the truth. I let out a huge shaky sigh, relief washing over me.
"What am I then?" I asked.
"As I said before, you are a Descendant. Allow me to explain." Ariston said to me. "A Demigod is the child of a mortal and a god. Descendants are the children, grandchildren, great grandchildren etc. of a Demigod. Although Descendants are in mortal bodies, they carry divinity within their genetic structure. It is hidden so well that most mortals could not find it, even if they knew what to look for. The gene lays dormant in most Descendants, but some are born with that gene active within them, and because of that they can have access to certain abilities, though nothing beyond the minor ones while they are within a vessel.
"Active Descendants are in between, not divine but not necessarily mortal either. They can walk in both worlds because their human body shields the radiance of their souls. The Shadows are less drawn to Descendants, and because of that, they can do their work with more stealth than a god can, and so they come in quite handy. When two Descendants have a child together, the chance is greatened that the gene will be active within said child. We watch for this. How much do you know about Norse Mythology?" Ariston asked.
"Only a little." I admitted, he nodded.
"Do you know the prophecy of Ragnarök?" Ariston asked.
"Ragnarök is supposed to be the end of the world, a final battle between good and evil. In the story some of the gods are supposed to die. The story goes that the Norse Gods are gathering the Descendant's of Oden for an Army to fight in the final war." I said what little I knew.
"The Aesir are not the only family of gods who are gathering an Army of Descendants, all of the Five Factions are training theirs. We all are preparing for this war." Ariston said. he must have known my next question because he answered it before I had the chance to voice it. "There are five main royal families of the Gods. The Greeks who are also known as the Olympians, the Norse who are the Aesir, the Hindu, the Egyptians who are the Ennead. The Chinese and Japanese Gods are one in the same, though the cultures differ greatly. It is like the difference between the Greeks and Romans, yet their gods are one in the same, only they have different names. Those families make up the Five Factions." I saw in Ariston's eyes that there was something he was leaving out.
"What does all of this have to do with me?" I asked Ariston, looking into his eyes as a dozen emotions ran through his gaze, dread being one of them.
"You are also needed to destroy him, the Nameless One." Ariston said.
"Me?" I asked, completely surprised.
"Yes Mera, you." Ariston said as he looked into my eyes. "You are far more important than you know, and not only to me. You are the Descendant of all Twelve of the Olympians, and of Pandora." He took my hands into his own before speaking again. "You have barely begun to tap into the power you possess." He looked up into my eyes with a slight smile. "Your ancestry is unheard of. To not only be descended from the Twelve, but also from Pandora?" Ariston shook his head. "You are very rare indeed. I did not believe it at first when I was told of you, I thought it was one of Hermes jokes. I had to look over your family tree myself before I could take it for a truth."
"Wait a moment," I said. "How can I be a Descendent of all twelve gods? I thought Athena and Artemis are virgin goddesses?" I asked in confusion.
"It has been thousands of years since my family was worshiped, much has been lost to time. Both Artemis and Ennina are married." Ariston stated.
"Ennina?" I asked, not familiar with the name. He pronounced the name Eh-Ne-Na.
"My family were not always Greek Gods. Long ago they were the gods of the Sumerians and before the Sumerians they were gods to others." Ariston said. "The Sumerians worshipped my sister by her birth name, Ennina. Many thousands of years later, the Greeks took up my family's warship and they called my sister Athena, a name very close to her birth name. Then when the Romans began to worship us, they called her Minerva." Ariston was quiet as he looked into my eyes.
"I was sent to you to see if you were willing to join this fight, and if so to bring you back to Olympus where you would become part of the Army of Descendants." Ariston told me. "When I saw how you reacted to battling that mugger… how it affected you, and when you told me that you did not want this… I made a decision. I went to my father and asked him to stop your training."
"My training?" I asked.
"Why do you think you never remember your dreams?" Ariston asked. "Just like every other Active, your whole life you have been trained through your dreams so that you would be able to protect yourself, and also so that when the time came you could join the Army if you chose.
"My father thought it over and it was on Friday he agreed to stop your training." Ariston told me. "My father would not force upon you a life you do not want, he would not do that to anyone. There must always be a choice, or else we are no better than they are." Ariston paused as he looked into my eyes. "When a Descendant turns down a place in the Army, which is rare, it is the decree of the Twelve that the Descendant be left to their life. Having a god around would only attract Shadows, as tonight proved. Even though the law states that I would have to leave you, it does not apply if the god and the Descendant are in love. I knew that I loved you but I did not know if you were in love with me.
"I could not have left you, that much I knew. I decided that if you did not want a relationship with me, I would be your friend and follow you for the rest of your days. Just to be near you, to be in your life would be enough, no matter how much I wanted more. I also knew that I would keep you safe at all cost." He smiled then, his breathtaking crooked grin. "On Friday night, when you said you love me, and when you asked me to come to you tonight, I heard you." Ariston told me with such a smile.
"How?" I asked, a smile on my face.
"I am a god. You called to me," Ariston said simply before elaborating. "You were not just saying the words, you were reaching out to say them to me. I cannot describe the… euphoria you brought me that night when you said you love me for the first time. I cloaked myself and went to see you in your room. I almost appeared to you right then and there and proclaimed my love for you, but I decided against it." He looked into my eyes with wonder and love in his, and chuckled once then sighed.
"I was not supposed to fall in love with you." Ariston said with a tender smile as he caressed my cheek.
"Nothing goes as planned when love is involved." I told him and with that, he leaned in and captured my lips with his own, the kiss was half way between sweetness and passion.
I rose to my knees and clutched him closer, my fingers going into his warm curls to deepen the kiss, forgetting everything else but him. My heart pounded in my chest as he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer, making me gasp before continuing to enjoy his insistent kisses. I felt like I was on fire as we clutched onto each other. Elvis said it best, "What a lovely way to burn." I wrapped my leg around Ariston's waist so that I was hovering over his lap, his face tilted up to reach my lips. We moaned as I deepened the kiss and his hands ran up and down my sides, feeling the curves my body has to offer before he broke off those heated kisses we shared.
"Mera, we do not have to do this tonight." Ariston said, his voice breathy and his hands not moving from their places.
"Why wait?" I asked, kissing him again. He pulled back to look into my eyes.
"Mera," He began again.
"Just this once can you not be a gentleman?" I asked in almost aggravation. He smiled and raised his hand and slipped something in between my lips, it felt like a seed.
"Eat this." Ariston said.
I chewed and swallowed it and he kissed me deeply, French kissing as we had been doing when he broke off our kisses. I had never liked it with Aaron, but with Ariston it drove me crazy, he tasted like nothing else. Not to mention, he knew exactly how to kiss. I could feel him giving into me, opening up to me, his essence surrounding me again. Ariston guided our actions from there, I enjoyed that. His lips left mine and made a trail of kisses down my neck, then along my shoulder where he slipped off the strap to my dress, but the bodice was tight enough that it left me covered. He lifted me up then moved so that I was lying on the couch with him on top of me. His hands roamed over my body, much like he had in my dreams of him. His lips returned to mine with a mind-boggling passion. I held him close, wanting him, wanting this more than anything.
My hands slid under his shirt as I clutched onto his marble-like back, I could not seem to get him close enough. Next thing I knew I was sitting on the couch with my legs crossed and Ariston was nowhere to be seen. I was dazed, just a moment before he had been close, so close.
He disappeared, I realized. Although I do not know why that should surprise me with everything I have seen and learned tonight. I was about to call his name to see where he was, when the door opened and Margret came through it with Jack, they were laughing and kissing.
"Oh, I thought you would be asleep." Margret said, somewhat embarrassed when she noticed I was sitting here. "We'll be going." She said as she led Jack to her room by his hand. When her door shut behind her I found Ariston sitting next to me, I gasped.
"Forgive me, I did not think you would want them to see us like that." Ariston said with a smile. He was right. "I should be going." Ariston said standing up. I stood up in front of him and placed my hand on his chest.
"Must you?" I asked, pleading with my eyes for him not to leave.
"We both know what will happen if I stay." Ariston said, his voice low and full of meaning.
"Why do you think I am asking?" I said, a slight smile on my lips. He sighed.
"Did you really want your first time to be on a couch with a man you hardly know?" He asked.
"I do have a bed." I said. He shook his head.
"That is not my point." Ariston said, placing his hands on my arms gently. "Mera, I want you to understand me. Yes, I desire you, far more than you know, but sex is not the only thing I want from you. I am not looking for a tryst, I want a real and lasting relationship with you. I do not just want you for one night, I want you always. Someday I want to marry you. For now, I would like to court you. I want to know you and I want you to know me on the deepest levels of understanding. Please, allow me to do that, to build a relationship and a future for us, before we make love." He said. I smiled at his words. What a man he is.
"Alright, but no chaperons." I told him. He laughed.
"As you wish." Ariston said with that smile. "Besides, I enjoy spending time alone with you far too much to have a chaperone. Unless you wished for one of course."
"Just one thing though." I said.
"And that is?" He asked. I placed my hand on his cheek then leaned up and kissed him. He held onto me.
"Do not keep me waiting too long, I may not survive." I said when thoughts started flowing though my mind again. He chuckled. "Are you sure you do not want to stay?" I asked, hoping he would change his mind while at the same time knowing he would not.
"Yes, I do want to stay." Ariston said, sending warm shivers down my spine, and then he sighed. "But I will not, not tonight."
He caressed my cheek and kissed my forehead then looked into my eyes. He did not have to say the words, his eyes whispered 'I love you.'
Ariston smiled and I returned the smile without even trying to. He reluctantly let me go and then made his way to the door. His hand was on the knob when I could not take it.
"Ariston." My voice had a tone of desperation within it as I rushed to him.
He turned to me just in time to catch me as I leapt into his arms and kissed him. He held me, my feet a foot off the floor, as we breathlessly kissed for a few minutes before he pulled away.
"Don't go." I begged him.
"I must." He said.
I shook my head and kissed him again, deeply, and he turned so that my back was against the door, as he kissed me over and over again passionately. When he stopped kissing me, our breathing was ragged.
"Why must you tease me so?" Ariston asked, his voice breathless and filled with desire.
"You know why." I said, brushing my nose against his. He smiled that perfect crooked smile and kissed me again. How am I supposed to make it through the night without him?
Ariston held me close for a moment and turned us around before lowering my feet to the ground. He looked into my eyes as he caressed my cheek.
"If you need me, say my name and I will hear you no matter where you are." He said, I nodded with a smile. "I love you Mera, with all my soul I love you."
"I love you, Ariston." I said to him.
He placed a sweet, lingering kiss on my forehead with his hand on my arm then walked out the door. I leaned against the door, my head spinning. It felt as if everything had fallen into place.
