“Odysseus,” she brushed a lock of his hair off of his face, inhaling sharply as she saw his own cheeks stained with tears. “Let us be whole.” She whispered into the morning air, clinging to him as if he were the only raft in a turbulent ocean.
“I-” he stumbled over his words, eyes searching her face, hesitating.
“No thrones,” she breathed, pulling him down to meet her. She brushed her lips against his. “No gods.”
Her husband, her king, smiled gently against her. “No kingdoms.”
They came together. His lips captured hers, sharing messy kisses, frantic touches. Penelope couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t get enough of him.
As Odysseus shifted, aligned, he took one of her hands in his, pressing it to the mattress above them. “Odysseus,” she sighed, body aflame, hers once more.
Her thumb dragged down his wrist, finding the scar, his own reminder of everything they had sacrificed.
Everything they had given up to be whole again.
He clutched at her hand, at her hip, rooting himself, rooting her. “Penelope, I-” his breathing was ragged, his voice raw with the warmth, the passion that had ignited between them. “I love you.” His words were not soft, they were not the words spoken by a gentle lover. They were desperate, a plea into the world around him.
Like she might vanish underneath him before he could finish his declaration.
Her heart was racing in her chest, pulse climbing higher with every touch, every shift. Tears pricked at her eyes. She clung to his arm. "Odysseus," she whimpered, overcome with need, with the sheer, unbearable ache of him.
Of this.
Of now.
Her body, their bodies, wound tighter and tighter. Arrows waiting to be loosed, chords waiting to be strung. They teetered, standing on the precipice. “Odysseus,” she breathed, “Odysseus,”
The only god she would pray to.
The only one she would worship.
For a moment, the entirety of the world stilled. There was only him, only this. The way he moved against her, the way his lips captured her own.
The way his breath sounded in the silence, the way their whispered pleas echoed off of the walls.
And then…
Nothing.
Silence.
Nothing but him.
As her heartbeat thrummed in her ears, she felt him burying his face into her neck, holding her closer still. His body relaxed, pressing into hers. She held him, hands in his hair, on his arms, across his back.
“My wife,” he whispered. She could still hear the thickness around his words, the tightness in his voice.
Penelope hummed a gentle note in response, in contentment.
Odysseus let out a gentle laugh, the sound warming the queen to her very bones. He lifted his head, gazing down at her. His eyes were filled with so much reverence, Penelope almost shied away from it. “I don’t want to move,” he murmured, a gentle grin gracing his features.
“Then don’t,” she replied softly, running a hand through his hair. He turned his head, pressing a kiss to the inside of her palm. “The world can wait, husband, just for a little while.”
41
TIME STOOD STILL WHEN THEY WERE TOGETHER. She had never known affection like this, adoration like this. In all her years, in all the time she had spent imagining what her life, her role, as a wife would look like… she had never even dared to believe it could be like this.
Odysseus doted on her. In the last three days, she wasn’t sure she had spent a moment apart from him.
