Page 38 of Wildfire

Meanwhile, Hermes was staring all around them, pretending he’d never been in a grocery store before. While that didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility for someone like Dean Woods, Wilder was pretty sure Hermes was trying to fuck with him.

When they got to the brownies, they both stopped and stared.

“Dude,” Hermes whispered. “We’ve found the motherlode.”

Wilder sighed at him and started to reach for a box of simple fudge brownies, but Hermes knocked his hand away. “No way. I want the cheesecake ones.” Before Wilder could even shrug and tell him to get those, he shook his head. “No, wait, the caramel ones. Or turtle?” He picked up the first two and held them next to the third, staring longingly.

It was like he’d never even seen brownies before.

“Just get them all,” Wilder muttered, not having the patience or interest in a long discussion about the merits of various brownie types.

Unfortunately, Hermes decided that “get them all” was literal, and he picked up those three, the package Wilder had initially reached for, and half a dozen other varieties.

Wilder raised an eyebrow at him, and Hermes gave that manic, wicked grin. “I’m a growing boy. I need my daily requirement of chocolate.”

“For the next year?” Wilder asked, looking at their cart, bottom layer covered with brownie mixes.

Hermes snorted and waved him off. “If you think that’s gonna last longer than a week, you’re greatly mistaken.”

Wilder looked at the bottle of cooking oil he had been in the process of picking up, sighed, and grabbed two more. And when they got to the dairy section, two dozen eggs.

If Hermes wanted that many brownies, maybe he’d end up making them himself, but Wilder didn’t want to run out of everything in the process.

When they arrived back at Wilder’s townhouse, Hermes decided he was also going to carry every bag of groceries into the house at the same time. Four bags of mostly boxes of brownie mix hanging from each arm, he assured Wilder he didn’t need the least bit of help.

Wilder didn’t roll his eyes too much.

He didn’t think there was such thing as rolling his eyes too much anymore.

The man standing on his doorstep was a surprise, and given the circumstances, an unwelcome one. He didn’t look like the descriptions of Typhon—an enormous, hulking monster whose skin was poison and who sported snakes everywhere—so that was something, but he didn’t look harmless, either.

He was dressed in all black like Lysandros, but unlike the whip-thin goth guy, he was built like a tank, with muscles that bulged under his worn black shirt, and thighs that stretched the legs of his cargo pants tight. His blond hair was shorn short, and he stood at parade rest. When he looked up to meet Wilder’s eye, Wilder had an odd sense of déjà vu. Golden hair, blue eyes, incredibly attractive—despite the silvery scar that ran down one cheek—this could be no one but yet another god.

Beside him, Hermes groaned. “Fuck my entire life. Seriously? What the hell do you want, Ares?”

Wilder stared at the man standing on his doorstep.

No, the god.

The god of war.

He’d known on some level that they were, in fact, at war. Somehow, though, he couldn’t hold back the full body shiver that accompanied the information. Now, it was real.

They were at war, and the whole planet was at stake.

God of War

You know what Hermes had been looking forward to? Brownies. Making brownies. Making brownies with Wilder and licking the spoon. Dragging Wilder’s long finger through the brownie batter and licking it offthat. Licking brownie mix off of every part of Wilder he could smear up.

Okay, so maybe he couldn’t imagine Wilder Pratt as the kind of man who abided eating raw eggs, but there was literally no risk here—well, no risk for Hermes. He’d eaten some truly nasty slabs of meat back in the day, the rot only covered with the taste of smoke and salt and so much pepper. Brownie batter wasn’t going to be the end of him.

Instead, standing right there on the stoop of Wilder’s beautiful townhouse, was Ares, god of war, as likely to break your teeth as to shake your hand.

“All right,” Hermes mumbled when he got no immediate response. “So this is how tonight’s gonna go, huh?”

Ares stared at him placidly, a good little—giant—toy soldier, and Hermes sighed.

“Move please,” he sang, motioning the way ahead for Wilder, shaking all four bags on his arm in the process.

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