Last Courtesan of Olympus (Lovers of the Gods, #1)

by Amanda Meuwissen

Few could be as lucky as me and be gifted with true perfection. My curls were both golden and reddish, like tales of heroes and kings, my skin gently tanned but still fair, and eyes the bright blue of water closest to the coast. Rounded muscles gave way to clean lines of definition, and my ass was so coveted that Zeus himself would have relished in holding these mounds between his mighty palms.

“Can you imagine?” Dax asked, eyes drifting around the room at the other gods. “Being courted by the divine, like in one of the epics?” “No thank you,” I scoffed. “You wouldn’t want to be pursued by a god?” “And which would you want pursuing you?” “I always had an attraction toward Apollo,” Dax said with a glance at the sun god’s statue. “The one who killed his lover with a discus?” “That was an accident!” Depending on which version of the story was told.

“Who else? Would you want to be fucked by a bull?” I gestured at the bearded statue of Zeus. “Turned into a monster?” I continued at Poseidon. “Or how about mutilated by one god who wants to slight another and you’re merely convenient fodder?” I added with a flourish at Ares because no matter how much prowess he might have in the bedchamber as one of few gods deemed worthy by Aphrodite, he was still the god of war. One would be better off with the trickster Hermes, who was least less bloodthirsty. “Best case would be courtship by a troll,” I finished with a sneer at Hephaestus. “I don’t know why they house a statue to the ugliest of the gods in a room meant for pleasure.”

I had caught the attention of Zeus. I knew him instantly, for he was everything stories and depictions of him said and more. He towered over me, a head taller at least. Some imagined him with white hair as the leader of the gods, but the truth was not so. His hair was black, though I could see reddishness in it, long and curly with a full, masculine beard to match. His tan skin betrayed no lines as signs of age, yet he had a presence of being older, wiser, powerful. Blue eyes pierced through me like the boom of his voice, and if there was any doubt about who this was before me, his all-white robes were clasped with brooches shaped like bolts of lightning. I dropped to my knees once more and prostrated myself upon the ground with head bowed. “My lord Zeus, I am honored beyond measure to be chosen as courtesan—” “Rise, child. I didn’t bring you here for me.” Thank the gods.

“You are a gift.” “A… gift? For one of the other gods?” Zeus grinned, and the expression unsettled me. “Not one. Though worry not, I know your preference is for men alone. You are to be a gift for all the male gods.” “A-all?” “Including Dionysus. He is a demigod but does so loathe being left out of the twelve.” My mind went blank. All the male gods of the major pantheon, including Dionysus, would be seven. “And Eros of course. Aphrodite insisted. You are special indeed for her to believe you can teach a thing or two to her son.”

“As a courtesan, I am meant to serve one master, so that I might give my all to their specific needs and passions.” “And you will. This is a trial run. All will get to taste you, but only one gets to keep you. And the best part is…” Zeus lowered his head from his gargantuan height to bring his handsome but imposing face nearer to mine and lifted my chin with his large hand. “You decide which one.” I was going to die here. Or be turned into a slug. Or be torn limb from limb in Tartarus for all eternity.

“I… I thought those on your platform were worshipers thrilled to be in your presence,” I dared counter. “Yes. And I believe many mean well, but it is difficult to enjoy feeling as though your only worth in another’s eyes comes from what you can do for them.” I lost my tongue, holding positively dumbstruck. The literal point of my life was to be of use to others, but to him, it was a curse, because no one saw him as anything else. Even as someone who should have worshiped him for the god he was, I’d often mocked his statue. I didn't know what to say.

Hephaestus dragged his hands down, and his thumbs teased next along the softer skin around my puckering. I’d never been with someone so strong, so large, a giant who could leave me broken and weeping on the rocky shores like a thousand tales of ogres. He evoked the look and presence of a brute, but his touch… his touch had yet to match that. His roughened hands, lightly callused, remained gentle, upward to my knees, thumbs grazing my sac again, and then down, low, and inward to circle my entrance. He repeated the cycle. Again. Again. Like all he wanted was to see whether my cock responded to his hands on me. Surely, I was proving it did.

I moved to the base of the bed, got between his feet, and lifted the clubbed one into my lap to massage it. Hephaestus flinched, almost like he might pull the foot away, but I knew it wasn’t from pain. His eyes narrowed like he waited for me to flinch, but I kept on, digging my thumbs into the twisted ball of his foot, and smoothing my fingers up his ankle. He grunted, and I saw some of the tension begin to leave him. I could do this. I was the best. The best. Which meant giving and taking pleasure that celebrated love, beauty, and sex in tandem. Even with a god who others called ugly and broken. As I had.

As I lowered my face between his legs, I was caught between my training, talent, all I knew I could offer him, and the overpowering recollection that this was a god beneath my grasp. You are the best, Aikos, I reminded myself. Even the gods would weep, and plead, and praise. They would. They will. And hopefully not condemn or dismember me once I choose one over the rest.

Hephaestus growled in my ear, breathy and possessive, as his meaty thumb replaced his meaty cock to prod where his tip had wetted. These were worker’s hands—those of a blacksmith, sculptor, and painter too—and he twisted his thumb inside me like carving away clay to reveal the true beauty beneath. Beautiful I was for him then, grinding back to take him deeper and inviting whatever else might enter me. My job was to spur my master to passion by showing how impassioned he made me, in whatever ways was most to his tastes. It was no job at all but a privilege when that master had such hands and strength that my loins ached with the promise of what lay ahead.

“You…” I splayed my hands across his now exposed stomach and up his chest, touching any scars I found with reverence. “You’re incredible… beautiful. Everything you make… everything you are.” I meant it, and it was a wondrous thing to mean my praises. Anger, disbelief, grief all passed over Hephaestus’s expression, but where his furious sorrow stopped was hope.

“You… are so beautiful,” he echoed my words and reached for my face, admiring me like there was something godly in my visage. I knew then that my fair face and golden hair reminded him of someone else. He longed for Aphrodite, he loved her, but I didn’t believe he saw nothing of me. If he enjoyed the aspects of me that were like her, I wasn’t offended. I was honored. She was my patron, after all, and I was meant to give all of myself to my master. Here, in his bed, Hephaestus was mine.

He narrowed his gaze further. “You mean to mock your god again?” “No. I mean to offer penance for any time I did mock you by speaking plainly. Ask Aphrodite to bed without asking. ‘You will join me in my bedchamber,’ tell her. ‘I have wonders to show you.’ Then walk away, turn your back on her and head straight here. I guarantee she will be too curious to resist. Wait for her on the bed so there is no mistaking who is in control. Be confident that she will want you. Believe in your beauty, even if you doubt she sees it. Enthrall her and show her what you have shown me—that you are strong and capable and a craftsman of beauty only worthy of her.” My demise was not yet certain, for Hephaestus’s sternness softened. “I believe my craftsmanship is also worthy of you.” He touched my cheek. I was beginning to grow quite fond of the texture of scars. “I will do as you have said, a clever and kind way to not wound me that I would never be your choice.”

“You will forget me, if not after the next, then after the rest. I know I will not be your choice, but you are the one gift Zeus has given me that, even if he meant it cruelly, as he often does, I do not regret.” Hephaestus kissed me, and that zing of being with a god was still present. I felt a great exhaustion overcome me like he was infusing me with the comforting warmth of a home’s hearth to put me to sleep.

There was a mirror in the large bath chamber behind the bed, and when I reached it, I paused again to look at myself in the godly crafted finery that framed my cock. Even with it wilted and many stains on my thighs and leaking down between them, this might be the most beautiful I’d ever looked. I would prove the same to whichever god came next. I had to.

I removed my fingers from within him and lowered my tip back to his mouth. His grin spread wider, and he leaned up to meet me, tongue snaking around my girth, until he took me in like he could swallow me whole. “Who knew the great god Hermes would look so fitting with his mouth full,” I taunted, curling my fingers in his hair, and rocking my hips. He growled like a pulse, buzzing around my length. When I pulled up to fight the urge to spill down his throat, his lips were shiny and reddened, and all I could think about was tasting them. I clutched his hair tighter and coaxed him upright, urging him to kneel as I was knelt and kissed my own taste from his mouth. “Yes,” he rumbled with a nip at my jaw. “What a worthy consort you are.”

“Agreed.” Hermes chuckled and clutched my neck to pull me closer. “If you choose one of the others, I might have to steal you.” “You could,” I made my gamble, “but think how much more worthwhile it could be if still having me was a secret, your secret, that no one else knew, even if I did choose another? After all, who else could move fast enough to cover his tracks?” “That… would be far better than keeping their secrets. And keeps you quite safe from any godly wrath, doesn’t it?” Fuck. Only the stab of panic I felt at his words eased when he kissed me sweetly. “You are cunning, Aikos. I like that.”

It was as I slipped into fresh sandals—not winged ones, I am disappointed to report—that an arrow pierced through the opening between pillars into Hermes’s bedchamber and wedged into the wall. It was gold and gleaming, glittering, its head the shape of a heart as if to say love could pierce without mercy. “Impatient brat,” Hermes muttered, and then pulled me close, allowing me to stand with him for the first time and notice my greater height to the slight god. “Careful. Whoever you choose, I do hope there is something left of you to steal.” He kissed my cheek, and when he pulled away, he was gone, and I was no longer in his chambers.

“Help?” Eros repeated. He retrieved the goblet and tossed it from the bed where I heard it clatter and roll away, and with a wave of his hand, the wine stain vanished. As he curled up beside me, all down the length of me, I felt his breath on my neck and the press of his hardness against my hip. “But you are asleep, in the company of a creature you know not the nature or appearance of, and you won’t, you won’t dare move either, but will pretend to sleep until it is finished with you. Should I finish with you. If you please me, I might never let you move again but keep you here to be enjoyed at my leisure.” Fuck. It seemed the god of desire was the god of depravity too. This radiant man who was nearly my twin was my only equal, and I supposed it was fitting that I would be my own doom.

“I see that Hermes has decorated you as a peace offering.” Eros hadn’t straddled me, but remained hovering, filling up my vision, and I felt a soft-skinned hand travel down my chest to the golden chain around my waist with its rubies. “This was mine once.” Of course it was. “I like it on you,” he said. His fuchsia eyes were captivating, maybe more so because of the beauty they were framed in, or because of the wings I could see framing the rest of him, more physically different from a mere mortal than the other gods I’d been with so far. “You… who look so much like me.”

We really did look alike. Perhaps Aphrodite had truly blessed me if she’d granted me beauty so like her son’s, so like hers. “Be careful of the lesson of Narcissus,” I attempted to keep the mood light, despite the uncertainty lodged in the pit of my stomach. I’d been trained to seduce, to command, to control each encounter even when bound, but I’d never been bound like this. “Are you careful with that lesson?” He teased his fingers along the golden chain. Then I felt them stray lower to the edge of the cloth wrapped around my hips. “Not often,” I said. He kissed me again, gently, without the fervent press of his tongue. “And shall we drown in each other, Aikos?”

The eroticism building within me wasn’t slowing, wasn’t cooling, and if I could have moved, I might have rutted against his thigh. But if this would end in either torture or salvation, I had to strive for the latter. He kissed me, as firmly as he’d pressed me to the bed in a sudden swoop, and all the sluggishness was removed from my body as if he drank into him whatever drug had passed my lips, and there it became dormant. I gasped at the release of our mouths when it was proven I could turn my head, twitch, sag, relax, and oh, to move when having been denied made everything ache. “Show me then,” he said.

Eros roared, like the emotion had been thrashing to get out of him, and he bucked harder into me with its exclamation. At last, I looked up, and I tell you now, there is nothing more worthy of being immortalized by a sculptor’s hands than a work of art like me, oiled and adorned, being pounded into by the winged god of fervent fucking himself. Eros roared again and threw his head back, meeting my gaze in the mirror. That was the image worth being immortalized, with both our faces framed in the glass, and his wings spread wider, as his cock vanished within me, and mine bounced its approval.

He flapped his wings, lifting him and pulling him back to between my knees, where he buried his head and swallowed my cock. I rocked between his lips with the madness I’d been pretending I didn’t feel, anchored myself in his curls, and looked up at our reflection once more. I was being fellated by the god who’d perfected the craft, and he sucked and swallowed until his hollowed-out cheeks brought me halfway down his throat, and at last, I spilled. There was no mirror, no me, no him, no bed. Only bliss.

“I know you won’t choose me now that you’ve seen how ugly I can be,” he said, sad, unbefitting of such a creature. Then again, he wasn’t the first. “Are all the gods so devoid of confidence despite being worshiped?” I kissed the side of his hair—my golden, radiant twin. “If I don’t choose you, it would be because another needs me more. That is my duty as courtesan, to provide for my master’s needs, and you don’t need me. You need time. You are the mender of hearts, who makes them flourish and beat with abandon. Now, you need to mend yours.” Eros shuddered, his wings fluttering, and held my chest tighter.

“If you ever tell my family you saw me sob, I will fill you with so many arrows, you will go mad from the overwhelming passion you’ll feel that you will never again be able to sate.” Clearly, Hermes wasn’t the unhinged one. But that was alright. This madman I understood. “I can agree to that,” I said and tilted his face toward mine to kiss him.

I wanted to present myself to Ares as simply as possible, for I feared he could make a tool of torture out of anything made of metal. I was honestly terrified that he might scar my yet unblemished body. Or worse. Oh, I knew he could do worse. Eros complied by removing me of every embellishment Hermes had provided and gave me a plain white chiton. The one thing from Hermes I kept was the sandals, as I made my way from Eros’s chambers toward those just down the hall from his mother’s that belonged to the god of war.

No one had ever denied Ares’s attractiveness. After all, he’d been one of the few to earn Aphrodite’s devotion. I could see why. He had dark skin, the deepest olive of the gods so far from countless battles in the elements. None of it marred the perfection of his face. He was ruggedly handsome, not fair beauty as one might describe Eros or Hermes. His hair was long, wavy, and a rich, dark brown. He wore a beard, a short one, close to his face. He had scars, but they were more delicate than the jaggedness of Hephaestus’s. One cut across his nose, and another through an eyebrow. More could be seen on his body, where his arms and legs were bare.

He wore black and brown leather like Hephaestus too, but more obviously a soldier’s garments, a commander, with a red tunic beneath, and all clasped with brooches shaped like that same upward thrusting fist. He was tall and powerfully built. Only Hephaestus and Zeus were larger. But what captivated me most were Ares’s eyes. Red. Not hibiscus pink like Eros and Aphrodite, but true blood red. I wondered what he thought about me looking so much like his son, but maybe that was why he’d slighted me, to distance himself from such thoughts.

“I wonder if you are as talented as I’ve been told.” Ares faced me with a smirk and a glint in his eyes like I imagined he had every time he sunk a blade into someone and watched their mouths fall slack. “Will you disappoint me?” This was a man who’d once turned himself into a boar to gore another for stealing the attentions of Aphrodite with his beauty. I was grateful for not having attraction to both men and women, for my focus on men seemed to have spared me from catching Aphrodite’s eye for herself. Unless… Ares resented all beautiful men, even if his lover didn’t want them. I had to stay strong. I could beat him too. I could win this. “I never disappoint,” I said.

“I will not use a single implement in this room on you.” If…? Unless? “You are to use them on me.” All sound in the room dimmed like having water in my ears, but I dared not question him. Was it a trick? A trap? A test? “You are to make me beg and submit. You are to not let up until I plead and weep for the reprieve to spill my seed. You are to be the master. Understood?” Oh.

Though I hid it well, I salivated over Ares’s magnificence, as the red fabric fell from him and bared him to me fully. He could not have been more different from Eros. Larger, more muscled, with dark hair down his tanned and further scarred chest, all the way to a tantalizing point near his navel. The smoothness below it eventually gave way to an added thicket of hair framing his cock, near enough in size to Hephaestus’s that I mourned a little it wouldn’t be thrusting within me. But there were plenty of gods for that. I have no preference for smooth beautiful men over burly, masculine figures. A lack of facial and body hair might be more the fashion, but all types of men have their appeal. Having just finished with my own near twin, Ares was a bounty of welcome contrasts.

I thought of Hephaestus’s bashful assurance that no one could ever want him. I thought of Hermes feeling like the background in his own stories. I thought of Eros spurned by love when he was meant to be one of its incarnations. And now Ares, so set in his role of furious warrior that he couldn’t admit to his subordinates or his peers that he was the opposite of how they all saw him. I washed him in return and went to kiss his lips, to settle in his lap in the warm water.

“I am not allowed to taste you twice.” Ares pushed me from him, floating me backward through the water. “Unless you choose me.” How was I to choose? They had all proven to be more spectacular than the high priest of Acrocorinth could have ever been, but not one more obviously than another.

“I believe you need to be fed again. Come.” Poseidon held out a hand for me to take, and I grasped it, eager for whatever wonders were in store for me beneath the waves and possible storms above that had bested and drowned some of the greatest heroes at this god’s command. “Let me show you how a king wins a courtesan.”

I sagged at the instant spike of delight. None of the other gods had focused so much on my pleasure first. Even Hermes’s teasing had partially been just that, and to rid me of my previous master’s claim. The tentacle gave tighter twists and pulls than a pumping hand, the little bits of suction massaging me, and the topmost one drawing out what was quickly becoming a flood of prerelease happy to feed it. The other tentacles rubbed just as kindly, keeping my legs spread and caressing across my thighs. I could only imagine what one might feel like slithering inside me, but I needn’t imagine for long. A fourth tentacle arrived to tickle my hole, and I rocked back, allowing it easier access. The fabric Poseidon had crafted over me was no more than a short one-shoulder chiton with, again, no undergarment. Such a thing served so little purpose to me now.

I drank more wine and grinned at Poseidon slyly over the rim of my goblet. “What sort of pleasures, my lord? I have yet to feel any.” His ocean-blue eyes flashed with luminescence again. I sensed in him the most romantic of the gods, one who liked the chase, the challenge, and capturing someone worthy of being caught. Of course, in the stories, that hadn’t always been what those he pursued wanted. Did I want Poseidon and a kingdom beneath the sea?

The suction cup at the tip of his fourth tentacle began to suckle my bud. He was making a good argument so far. “I often want things with such passion, I cannot allow them to not be mine,” Poseidon said, casual, drinking from his own wine or taking a bite of food, as if he wasn’t ravaging me beneath the table. “The stories misunderstand. Like Medusa. She and her sisters were always ravishing snake women with serpentine hair. I have an affinity for partners with scales. Not only those who are scaled of course.” He smiled again, and the tentacle at my hole swirled with a smear of slickness and be...

He might be spreading my legs, stroking my cock, and twisting a dexterous tentacle with greedy suckers deep inside me at a banquet table, but that was my purpose—to be a pleasure for him and to bask in what pleasures were granted to me in return. He needn’t fear rejection from me, not this first time together, this trial run of which master I would choose to keep. But was he a possessive lover? A rageful loser? What were his true desires to fulfill that would guarantee he was never made bitter toward me? The tentacle coiled deeper inside me. I could feel the body of it slickly twisting, higher and higher, while the suckers clung to my walls, contracting and expanding. I grunted into my next gulp of wine.

“That's all?” I was limp, barely able to hold upright in my chair with how he thrust into my sensitive hole. More tentacles appeared to grip my arms and held me steady. “Do you really know me? Do you care? Do you even know why you want me? For beauty alone? Is that all you proved to Medusa? To your wife? Then it is no wonder they scorned you.” The table flipped with an explosion of tentacles, and yet another wrapped around my middle, all lifting me from my chair and slamming me back against the banquet hall wall. I walked a dangerous road, or treaded a dangerous current, but one could not provide true pleasure to a partner without understanding what they wanted and where they failed.

Poseidon continued fucking one tentacle into me while others held me to the wall. I was so over-stimulated that it ached in a way that made me squirm, but my cock betrayed how much I enjoyed it. The sea god grinned to watch it bob upright from out of my upward floating chiton as if it had never softened from releasing earlier. A second tentacle probed my hole to join the first. I could see them now, the source of them, as Poseidon rose from his throne to join me where I was pinned. He no longer had legs, only tentacles. There were ten, maybe a dozen, difficult to know with how they wriggled. They alternated colors between the same blues and greens as his robes, and I knew, somewhere within their bundle was one with the girth of a cock. “I am no longer certain you are worth my hospitality,” Poseidon said with a flash of his brilliant blue eyes gleaming and a whip of the tentacles not currently on or within me.

When I pulled the tentacle from my lips, Poseidon’s pupils had taken over his eyes like the black pits of the siren and other creatures of the deep. I licked the glistening remnants from each sucker, licked my lips, and said, “You love your wife… more than anyone you’ve ever pursued.” He stopped the thrusting tentacles completely, but they remained in me, and the pressure only built and ached and quivered from the pulses of his suckers. “Yes.”

I moaned around the newest tentacle fucking my throat, and it finished just then, causing a choke I couldn’t avoid. He let me breathe, let me sputter, as he pulled that tentacle free. More moans were fucked out of me as his cockhead drove deeper, and the prying tentacles rotated like before, widening me to receive its mass. If I hadn’t already won, I might have had to give this one to Poseidon.

Whether I’d drank from each of the other tentacles or not, I wasn’t sure, but the ones down my throat finally retreated, his focus entirely on those breaking me open. The prying tentacles spilled, so much at once that I felt a surge of warmth in my belly. The new slickness allowed the cockhead to thrust faster, work deeper, and though the other tentacles were spent, they coiled together around their partner, creating something no mortal man should be able to bear. I bore it—and went lax and blind and possibly dead in the Underworld for one glorious moment, as Poseidon spilled in me for the last time. And I wanted more. I wanted the next god, and the next. Dax had been right. Being courted by gods was a dangerous blessing, but a blessing, nonetheless. I hoped that continued to be true.

I couldn’t miss the sunrise. I was leading it. And oh, Apollo driving his chariot across the sky to bring about the dawn was luminous. Before Eros was born, he’d long been glorified as the most beautiful of the male gods. Everything about Apollo was gold, as he held the reins of his four fiery horses. His golden hair, almost fiery itself and ruddier in color than the soft yellow or dark blond of Eros and Hermes. His sun-kissed skin. His gleaming eyes that glowed like Poseidon’s blue, their own separate little suns. He was clean-shaven like the fairer gods, for surely the rest of him would singe any stubble to its roots.

I paused to look at him, and his eyes burned with challenge. “Then you will be pleased to know I never do.” I kissed him again, deeply, more passionately than before with my tongue exploring. He burned more too, so hot that I snapped away with a harsher hiss than his. He was growing warmer every second, just like the true sun following us, bringing the dawn. “Isn’t that a lie?” “Diversion and deflection, I would argue, are not lies if the promised end is the truth.” “Hmm…” He seemed to consider that and shifted on the bed to tilt his spread thighs toward mine.

Apollo dipped a hand between us, collecting our mingled prerelease, and brought it to my lips. It smelled like the flower he’d named after his lost love and tasted like tears. He rutted against me harder, faster, like we were wholly untrained youths desperate to reach our first taste of heaven. But it was too hot. It was growing too hot, and when I instinctively squirmed, he wouldn’t let me go.

He kissed me, and what I thought would melt me to my bones finally gave way to relief. The burning cooled, but the threat of what this god could do to me remained. He wanted me to know how vulnerable I was, like Hyacinth, who’d died from one unfortunate strike to his skull. “I barely got to know the bliss of his love before I lost him. Keep going,” he whispered hot at my ear. I’d nearly forgotten that I was meant to lead. With the fire between us less scorching, I clung to him as he held onto me. I ran my hands up and down his chest, around to his backside and down over his cheeks, between his cheeks, latching onto his throat again, as I canted against his slick prick.

With one arm trapped beneath him, and us both on our sides, I kneaded into him like massaging Hephaestus’s thigh or Eros’s wings. But this was Apollo’s insides I breached, thrusting in my fingers, while our hips continued to collide. The building heat between us made me fear that this time it might never stop, and I’d be but cinders by the end. He didn’t want to burn me though. He didn’t want to have someone else taken from him. He was possibly the unluckiest in love of all the gods, having lost everyone he ever sought or held dear.