Fate Unbound

Excerpt From: Fate Unbound

“The Fates have been cruel, casting me from Greece.” Adrian tossed the chisel from his calloused hand, watching it skid to a stop under the expansive window. Gazing across the private courtyard swimming pool towards the glittering neon lights of Los Angeles, he continued, “Sending me to this modern world, where I am nothing, no one, I—”

“Not even your true father, Zeus himself, can deny The Fates,” Linus said to his friend, trying as he had many times over the past several weeks to remind Adrian that he had no control over his predicament.

“Curse The Fates and curse—”

“Don’t. Have patience.” Linus’ tone was sharp but softened as he continued. “You will regret those words later, when you get the acknowledgement you crave.” Running his fingertips over rough edges of marble that would eventually be two lovers, Adrian scoffed. “Patience?”

Linus set down the brown leather chest he’d just carried in. “Let me remind you, you sought your future from The Oracle. Besides, you will be getting what you want—if you only follow—”

“The dictates.” Adrian’s hand stilled where the woman’s waist would be. “It’s a trick. Commanding me to not seek the touch of any woman, then placing me here, where she is nearby.”

“And what would you do if you could touch her?” Linus asked. “Seek vengeance?”

Gliding his hand lower, he flattened his palm across the area where the lovers’ bodies would merge and pressed hard. There was no room for gentleness when it came to the unfinished business between him and his former lover, Taryn.

He turned away so his friend would not see that cruel truth on his face, but the concealment came too late.

“What good would such an act do? It certainly would not help you achieve what you claim to want. Single-minded revenge does not suit a god—or even a half god. Perhaps the Fates know you better than you know yourself.”

Adrian backed away from the mass of half-shaped marble, stepped down from the wooden platform filling the centre of the space he’d made into a studio and turned to gaze across the new series of sketches he’d started that afternoon.

He admired the outline of the naked woman with her full breasts then scowled as his eyes were drawn reluctantly to the unusually large cock of the man poised above her. Had that been him only a breath away from Taryn, he would have already been buried in her sweet cunt. In two thrusts, he could have had her writhing, begging and… Enough!

Disgusted that he, a son of the great Zeus, would bother to compare himself to a simple mortal man, he spun and paced across the dust covered floor of the room he hadn’t left in days. “What good can come of this isolation?

Am I a child that I need to be torn away from the home I love and belong in to learn some…some…lesson?”

“The isolation is of your own doing. There is nothing in the dictate of the Oracle that keeps you within these walls.”

Adrian’s answer was quick. “What is the point of leaving?”

His companion’s reply was silence, the type of silence one man offers another when he is holding back words better left unsaid. Finally, Linus found something that might offer comfort. “She hasn’t seen you…yet. Perhaps you will accomplish what you must, then can return home with your cherished pride intact.”