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did not have to let them linger; for the most part, he did not. When Ares killed, he did it swiftly. Well, unless it was someone he didn’t like or who brought him a great amount of trouble. Then Ares liked to take his time and enjoy each scream of pain and plea for mercy that came from his enemy’s lips.
    “You’re not in the ocean any longer, woman. You can stop swimming now.” Ares tried to soothe the sleeping woman, telling himself the answers to his questions would wait until morning. For now, she was exhausted and in need of rest.
    And water of the non-salted variety. Onya was quite right about that. What kind of a host would he be if he didn’t give it to her?
    Holding out his empty hand a crystal goblet of cold water appeared in his palm. He slipped the other hand under her to sit her up in the crook of his forearm. Blood from the wounds he had laid on her back seeped over his flesh as he put the rim of the chalice to her lips. “Drink this.” Tipping the cup upward the water spilled over her, past her lips, down her chin. “Open your mouth,” he encouraged and pried her lips apart. When he tipped the goblet again the water went between her parched lips and then down her throat in small gulps, but then she began to take greedily from the cup. “Slow down, woman, you’ll make yourself ill.”
    At his words, her eyes fluttered open. They were large and as hazy and gray as a stormy sea. Ares pulled the cup away as he believed it appeared she wanted to say something to him but she did not speak. Instead, she reached up and around his head, her fingers entwining thick locks of raven hair. She pulled him down to her to kiss him. Her cool passionate lips pressed to his then parted ever so slightly and the tip of her tongue slipped into Ares’ mouth. What had almost been a quiver just a few moments earlier turned in a shiver that racked his massive frame head to toe as he kissed back, taken by this most delightful surprise. “I love you,” she cooed as her lips pulled away and those stormy eyes began to close.
    “I beg your pardon?” Any other time his words would have been said with authority, now they were nothing more than a whisper slipping from tingling lips. Ares cleared his throat and shook his head to clear it; he gazed down at her with much interest. “Woman. Wake up.” Absently, he licked his bottom lip before touching the palm of his hand to it. He found the taste sweet as honeysuckle. Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of the act but Ares didn’t think he had ever had a kiss quite like that one before. The God of War loved sex, indulged in it every chance he got in a thousand ways or more, however, intimacy was not usually part of it. As such, kisses were a rare commodity. “Loves me?” Ares scoffed, doubting that when her eyes opened she even saw him. She saw someone but not him.
    Just as he stepped away from her and tossed the bear hide back over her nearly naked body, Onya came back into the throne room with Kat. “I did not call for you.”
    “Onya thought she might need my help to dress our new arrival.”
    More likely Kat was just nosey. She thought of herself as his Head Bitch In Charge although Ares did not see things this way. The other women catered to her almost as much as they did to him; they looked to her for guidance and advice. Kat loved it, sometimes too much. “She doesn’t. Go.”
    “My Lord…”
    “NOW!”
    At the sharpness of his voice, Kat jumped. “As you wish,” she huffed and skittered out of the throne room.
    “Tend her wounds and dress her then I will take her up to my room.”
    Onya tried to hold her tongue as she layered the salve on the woman’s wrists and wounded back. Carefully she bandaged the most severe wounds before applying the ointment to the scrapes and gouges on her legs and arms. “This was all I could find. Do you approve, my Lord?” Onya asked as she held up a white linen tunic belonging to Ares. At first she thought he would say no, but