She rolled her eyes, shaking her head. She loosened her grip on his tunic to slide her hands up into his hair. Tangling her fingers up in the peppered strands, she whispered, “You’re insufferable.”
“Yes, but I’m yours.” His lips crashed into hers. Twenty years of separation, loneliness, and strife erased in this scorching kiss. This wasn’t the same chaste kiss they shared when he first returned, this was passionate and unrestrained.
His movements were as precise as his bowstring had been. Pulling taut, testing the line between pleasure and ruin. She prayed he would never release her.
Her hands tightened in his hair, keeping him anchored to her as though he might vanish if she loosened her grip. She tugged just enough to make him groan against her lips, and a thrill sparked in her blood.
His hands snaked around her waist, pulling her flush against the hard planes of his body. She whimpered into his mouth, breath coming in unsteady gasps as his lips moved deftly against hers.
His mouth left hers, returning to the trail of skin on her neck. She attempted to steady her pulse, but she was drowning in him. The touch of his lips to her skin, the way his beard scratched against her neck, his hands gripping her against him.
She had forgotten… no… Buried how it felt to be undone by him, to be both held together and unraveled in the same breath. Now, her heart raced not with fear but with reckless abandon, as though the girl who first loved him had never hardened beneath the weight of twenty lonely years.
There had been a time when she would tease him endlessly, make him chase her through the olive grove like a boy in love with the thrill of the hunt. Now she let him catch her.
She would always let him catch her.
His hand found her knee, hitching her leg up around his waist. He moved closer still, encasing her in his smell, his touch. She couldn’t help the way her hips rocked gently against his, eliciting a hiss from her king. “If you continue that, my queen,” he rasped, breaths coming heavier against her skin. “You might break this stoic king.”
Penelope laughed, breathless. “No man has ever called you stoic, you giant oaf.”
He stilled against her all at once. The only sound in the room was their labored breaths. “Penelope…” he whispered finally, voice thick with something other than the desire that coursed through her veins.
She left her hands untangle from his hair, finding his cheeks. She gently guided him, locking her eyes with his. “Speak, husband.” She whispered, running the pad of her thumb over his greying beard.
“I have waited twenty years to hear your laughter.” He said finally, closing his eyes. “Twenty years to hold you in my arms again.” He turned, placing a gentle kiss on the inside of her palm.
“I’m not ready, Penelope,” he murmured, voice thick with something she couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t doubt, not entirely, but it was heavy.
She felt his words deep in her chest, a soft ache that rose with all the unspoken history between them. She understood. The man in front of her, the man she had loved for so long, wasn’t just her husband… he was a man who had endured too much, carried too many burdens, and she knew how much those scars must weigh on him.
“We have time,” she whispered, her voice steady despite the pounding of her heart. “We don’t need to rush.”
His gaze softened, but there was something almost mournful in the way he looked at her, as if his heart wanted more thanhe could give. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and for a moment, she wondered if he was apologizing for more than just the silence that hung between them.
But she didn’t pull away. Instead, she closed the small distance that remained, pressing her lips to his temple in a soft kiss. She would not force him, but she would not let him slip away, either, not when they had already come so far.
18
HE WALKED THE HALLS ALONE THAT NIGHT. The marble was worn, not by his own steps, but by the restless pacing of a son raised in his absence. By the steps of a queen forced to reign in his stead. As the moonlight filtered into the expanses, his fingertips trailed the stones as he passed, brushing over once familiar carvings. This palace had been built by his will, his sweat, his strength. Now, it belonged to them. To a queen who had ruled in his place. To a prince who had grown into manhood without him.
The loom stood quiet in the corner of the great hall, the threads too perfect, too exact. He remembered the way she had laughed when she wove her first pattern, cursing the knots and crooked lines. “I’ll never be like Helen,” she had said, exasperated, her cheeks flushed with frustration.
“Good,” he had replied, pulling her close, “because Helen was never enough for me.”
He clenched his fists. Her loom had become a weapon. Her clever hands had woven lies to outlast the gods. She had held Ithaca,held him, while he had been powerless against fate.
The weight of the mundane pressed against his chest. Penelope had built this world, a kingdom of survival. She hadnot waited helplessly. She had made Ithaca bend to her will. He was a king who had won wars, but she had carried him home on her back.
His ruminations brought him back to their chambers, the grain of cypress wood rough against his palm. Standing here, he was reminded of the first night they shared in this room. He had carved their bed himself, a labor of love and devotion to the woman that now slept soundly on the other side.
He paused before entering the room, mind reeling at the events of the last day. Odysseus would have given anything in the last decade to have had Penelope at his mercy, to have her crushed against him and never let her go, but when he was presented with the opportunity, he froze. He was back on Ogygia, on Aeaea.
He was leagues away from the place of his nightmares, but they still threatened to push him further away from his queen.
He pushed the door open quietly, starlight spilling into the room, illuminating his steadfast wife as she slept. She lay with one hand curled near her cheek, the other resting where he had left her. The sheets were tangled around her legs. She always kicked them off when she was restless.
His heart clenched at the sight.
