Free Banished by Tamara Gill Page A

passion, heat and love before. She wanted to shatter
around him, break into a million pieces of pleasure just to do it again.
    Cian sat up and
the calluses on his hands skimmed along her back. He kissed her neck before
biting just beneath her ear and she came in a blinding rush. Her release went
on forever. Delicious sensations spiraled about her body—a continuous line of
pleasure she never wanted to end.
    Cian rolled her
onto her back and thrust hard once, twice before his own release followed. He
gasped and watched her, his dark eyes burning with need she fully understood
only added to her pleasure. She pushed back the locks of hair falling over his
brow and sighed.
    She had missed
making love to him.
    She had missed
him.
    “I love you too,” she whispered.
    Chloe woke the
next morning to the smell of coffee. She rolled over and noted Cian wasn’t
under the blankets with her. She touched the pillow where his head had lain and
smiled.
    They had talked
into the early hours of the morning, and with each hour that ticked by a little
bit more of her past memory came back. Chloe doubted there was anything left to
know of her previous life as a goddess.
    She heard Cian
in the kitchen and jumped out of bed. Walking into the bathroom, she stared at
herself in the mirror. She couldn’t recognize the woman who stared back at her.
With plain clothing and hair askew she hardly represented the god she was. Hundreds
of years, a multitude of lives and here she was once more. In a life that she
was never born to live.
    Zeus had a lot
to answer for.
    Chloe turned on
the shower and let the hot water run over her aching muscles. An ache she would
welcome again if it meant she was able to sleep with her highlander. Memories
of their night fogged her mind and an pain of a completely different nature
thumped between her legs.
    “Do you want me
to wash your back, lass?”
    Chloe smiled. “I’d
love you to.” She turned around and watched Cian undress and join her. Water
ran down his muscled chest and her body quivered with need. “You look delicious
wet, Cian.”
    “Whereas you
just look delicious,” he replied before taking her up against the shower wall.
Hard.

Chapter Eight
    “It’s been a
long time, my dear.”
    Chloe gasped and
turned at the voice that had a multitude of layers of tone. Her father stood before
her in her lounge, dressed in regal silk robes. His eyes as old as time itself.
    “Zeus,” Cian
said, loathing all but dripping from his tone.
    “Do not address
me, druid.” Zeus turned back to her and smiled. “My dear, Chloe. You remember
me. It seems my powers have worn thin over the many years or,” he shrugged, “the
powers within you have grown restless and refuse to lay dormant any longer.”
    Chloe opened her
mouth to reply but no words formed on her lips as the memory of all the things
she could do swamped her mind. Remembered all the tricks her father had taught the
children of the immortal court when she was a child.
    She imagined Cian’s
Castle and within a moment was standing in the great hall. A startled maid screamed
and dropped the pile of laundry she was carrying. A grin quirked Chloe's lips. Now
this was more like it.
    She stood and
waited and was soon rewarded with Zeus’s presence. She walked around the god of
gods and marveled at his grandeur and power. Pity she would have to fight him.
No longer would she allow him to leave her in this mortal existence. For hundreds
of years he’d played his game with her, made her a puppet while he held all the
strings. But not anymore.
    “I will not
chase you for long, Chloe. Do not take me for someone to play with, for it will
be yet another mistake of yours I shall have to remedy.”
    Chloe scoffed
then laughed. “You are the keeper of Heaven and yet you have the blackest heart
which belongs in Hades. Damn you for doing what you did to me.”
    Zeus shrugged. “You
would not listen and you put us all in danger. Humans have long lived oblivious
to our