We all dug in at that point, the silence extremely comfortable between us after a late afternoon in bed. A shallow yet real intimacy as we enjoyed the meal. Brenna was as good a cook as June, as far as I could figure, and she probably knew a lot more recipes with sixty years of experience doing it.

  It was hard to look at the barely legal and sexy as hell redheaded beauty and keep that in mind. She’d raised daughters, had a bunch of grandchildren, and the oldest of those had given her great grandchildren. I intended to fully heed her wisdom when appropriate. Not just about the details and hidden dangers of the supernatural world, but about life as well.

  She winked at me, her eyes questioning what I was thinking, while staring at her so intently.

  “This is fantastic, thanks Brenna.”

  She smiled, “All part of the service, angel face.”

  We were about halfway through dinner when my phone and June’s went off simultaneously. There was a weight to it, as I reached for it. There’d only be one person texting us both at the same time, and that was the lieutenant.

  I wondered if now was the time that I’d derail that horrific future, or if now was the time I’d become a slave. Lose my free will and become the puppet of an insane goddess bent on destruction. I hadn’t had nearly enough time with June and my wild witch yet. The powers, being a god, none of that mattered to me in that nervous moment as I reached for my phone and June reached for hers. My new life was amazing, but it came with dangers and a high price, and I could very well lose what was most important that night.

  If I did this, was I changing the future, or playing into it? If she escaped, she’d be more determined than ever to hunt me down and control me. I could wind up making the future happen, by trying to stop it. A self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

  I didn’t really believe that. It felt right, what I was planning, but this was all too new for me to feel it deep in my gut.

  Sure enough, I saw that Clarissa been spotted entering a Brownstone on the rich side of Manhattan. By a secret service agent no less, who was on duty guarding a congressman who lived across the street.

  There wasn’t much detail, save the address and that they were in route and would be there in fifteen minutes with SWAT and the FBI. I needed to be there faster, and finish this, before they chased her off. I’d have to kill her before she could speak, or teleport away if she chose to flee.

  The owner of the brownstone was probably some very rich person she’d compelled to house her. Did he or she have a family, kids? Could I afford to hesitate if they did, if a family died in the action, I was still saving the world. Could I live with that collateral damage? Could I afford not to?

  I blew out a breath, brought up google maps to see the overview of it, then used farseeing over the next couple of minutes, zooming out and sliding the view in the right direction, until I found the mansion.

  I couldn’t use farseeing on her directly, but farseeing the house worked, and because she was in it I could see her and exactly where she was. I could see her, because I was focused on the room, not her, if that made sense. Regardless, she was eating a chicken cordon blue dinner, with a white wine. I checked around the house, sliding the view from room to room, and I didn’t see anyone else, which was a tremendous relief.

  The owner must’ve still been at work, or perhaps she’d killed him, or compelled him to stay somewhere else so he wasn’t underfoot, it was impossible to know. In the end, it didn’t change anything no matter what it was, save that I didn’t have to kill an innocent to save humanity and myself from a nightmarish future.

  “Alright, I see where I’m going.”

  I stood up, only to have June jump against me and she started kissing me deeply.

  She blushed as she backed away, “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  I started to glow with a powerful light, building up the power inside of me, around me, then I teleported to my farseeing point, right behind the goddess of love. The power exploded out of me in a wave of destructive light, heat, and plasma.

  Her body slammed into the table, then the table disintegrated, and she kept going. I focused all my power down to her body, covering her with the power of my mantle. The sun’s light, heat, and plasma.

  The walls blackened, everything in the room started to burn, and the silver candlesticks falling to the floor melted. The ceiling and walls were on fire, and still I didn’t relent as I poured it all into her. The effects on the room were merely a side effect to the true heat and plasma burning into the goddess.

  I felt sick to my stomach at the scent of burning pork, and the look of shocked confusion on her gorgeous face. She was tougher than I imagined, no shield against my power, no active power, but her potent magic kept mine at bay. I couldn’t incinerate her directly, but the plasma and heat were doing a fine job just a couple of inches away from her body as the firestorm surrounded her.

  Her dark chocolate eyes narrowed as she reached for her power to push mine away, even through the agony of it.

  But it was too late for her, I’d been too fast and too focused. Her body combusted, and her golden light flickered out as she lost her focus on it and the pain overwhelmed her. Perhaps one of the other gods would’ve successfully fought me off and killed me, or taken me over, but the goddess of love was not one of martial mind, even in her insanity. It had been her split-second hesitation that had been my ally.

  Then it was over.

  I looked around in shock, the wall behind her was completely gone, and the house was in flames. Being wreathed in sunlight and plasma protected me from the heat of it as well as the smoke. I dropped it as I teleported home, it all felt a little surreal. Almost too easy, though the road to the confrontation had taken some work. It’d also been a simple plan.

  I was fairly sure the nightmare was over with, but I’d know for sure when I dreamed later that night.

  June and Brenna both had me in a hug, and I put my arms around them. They felt really good in my arms, like they belonged there. Belonged to me, the former by our power as gods, and the latter because I’d claimed her. Declared her mine. I was starting to realize there had been power in that, a bond that connected us, though nothing as profound as the one I had with June and would have with the other muses.

  “Well?”

  I nodded grimly, “It’s done. I’ll double check tonight. There might be some cleanup to do, if she made any of those monstrous hybrids for instance. Any compulsions she had out there should’ve broken though.”

  I kissed then both, then sat down and started to eat.

  They stared.

  I shrugged, “It’s delicious, and I’m still hungry.”

  They both giggled, and then sat down to join me…

  The world wasn’t burning, but it was broken, and breaking.

  After dinner, we’d chatted for a while and then had another wild threesome. After Brenna had gone to bed, because as a witch she needed her sleep after all, I’d made love to June, and then took a nap with her in my arms watching over me. She could wake me, if anything happened.

  Regardless, I was checking around, and New York, Chicago, and San Francisco was a destroyed and brutalized mess, and the monsters were travelling through the countryside, heading to other cities to continue their dark work of killing humanity and breaking their cities. Their numbers were huge, they must’ve bred like cockroaches.

  She hadn’t had time to seed cities elsewhere in the world, but before I could end her life, she had managed to seed three of them. They must have already had orders to wait another two weeks and five days before attacking. Building up their numbers.

  Which begged the question, where were they now? Where were they hiding in those three cities? Once unleashed they’d be almost impossible to eradicate, even for me, without destroying what I sought to protect. I obviously needed to locate them before the day of destruction came, and then wipe them out while they were all together in one spot.

  It wasn’t over yet, and I sighed. There was no way to find where they were now. When I focused on the idea, nothing came up. I could only assume she had witch wards up and running, and that they were preventing my seer abilities from seeing their nest.

  I could search the cities, search for witch wards, but the cities were huge. It’d take a long time to find even one of them, much less New York, San Francisco, and my hometown. My detection range wasn’t that big, so walking the streets wouldn’t be enough. They could high up in a building, or deep beneath the cities in the infrastructure tunnels and levels.

  I couldn’t do it alone, maybe Brenna would have an idea how to locate them, or to get help to locate them.

  I flinched away in the way I did, that would either wake me up, or bring something else to the fore.

  New vision, SWAT teams, FBI, and a whole bunch of Chicago’s finest, out in front of our house. I frowned as I let the vision play out. We’d made a mistake somewhere, and they’d tracked the fire in NY back to me somehow. Cops weren’t stupid, but I didn’t see how.

  Until the vision told me. We’d had the lieutenant destroy the sim card and burner phone, but the man still had our numbers in his head. Which a witch brought out, after someone suspected he’d been messed with. We hadn’t told him to be subtle about it, just to immediately destroy the burner cell as soon as he verified Clarissa’s death. So he’d done so violently right in front of hundreds of witnesses.

  Something to keep in mind for next time. There was no subtlety in compulsion, no room for common sense interpretation, and they’d do exactly as ordered.

  Well, shit.

  I took it to the end of the vision, then started to do my research on all of them. It took what felt like days in the vision, but I knew it’d be just a few minutes in the real waking world, before I felt prepared.

  Then I flinched away again, and that time I woke up.

  “We’re not done, and there’s another wrinkle…” I explained succinctly as possible, then asked, “Can I borrow your laptop and printer?”

  I didn’t have one, I did all my online stuff on my smartphone, but I needed to type out some reports, and print everything twice. Thumb typing would just take too long for what I had in mind.

  She said, “Of course, sir.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  She giggled, “Well, the honey blonde in the back of my head is getting a little antsy. I think she’ll need to be kept in line often, sir. The dirty slut needs to be punished and fucked hard, sir, or she’s going to wind up being naughty and disobedient.”

  She blushed cutely after admitting that, but her sparkling blue eyes didn’t leave mine. It was hot, but still spun my head in circles, even as she fogged my head with lust. She was so painfully beautiful. Innocent angelic beauty that played in perfectly to her shifting attitudes. If she’d been the blonde, she’d have said it shamelessly without blinking, but as herself… I guess I was still trying to figure her out that way. She was shamelessly joyful and uninhibited while engaged in sex or roleplay, but when just talking about it as her normal self, her sweet innocent blushes came out to play.

  She was a mystery, and I hoped I never figured her out completely, it was more fun that way. She took me by surprise.

  “Well, a man has to have his priorities, sexy. You and your needs will always be at the top, unless lives are on the line in that moment.”

  She bit her lip, her eyes absolutely smoldering at my simple heartfelt statement of her worth in my eyes, then she got up and ran into the closet like her ass was on fire.

  She came out a moment later, as the honey blonde with sexy light gray eyes and fairer skin. She had on what was for all intents and purposes, a skintight denim thong. The ultimate expression of booty shorts as she spun for me with a smirk, showing off her bare ass cheeks, just a thin strip of denim disappearing between her ass cheeks. Up top she had on a black sports bra that was just transparent enough to make out her tightened nipples and pillowy flesh, if not the exact shade of them. She also had on red knee-high boots, with four-inch stiletto heels.

  “If you think you’re wearing that outside, where other men can see you, I’m going to tan that ass.”

  She smirked, as she sauntered over to the bed with a sexy swish of her hips, “I’d like to see you try. I wear what I want, when I want,” her eyes daring me to make an issue of it.

  I got up and grabbed her arm and spun her around me as I sat back down on the bed. She went over my legs with a gasp, then started to squirm in a pathetic yet extremely hot attempt to escape me.

  Which is when the first swat fell.

  Her shocked, embarrassed, and indignant shriek of pain as the sting radiated into her, made her squirm in a different way and start to pant for me.

  “How dare you!”

  I swatted her again, so hard it hurt, which felt both wrong and hot. I’d swear she meant it, if I didn’t know better. Then I swatted both ass cheeks again, in quick succession. Her howls of pain and the shocked anger in her eyes as she glared over her shoulder at me, was a sharp and wicked counterpoint to the way she was squirming and panting for me, the wicked pleasure on her innocently beautiful face hit my libido powerfully.

  She squirmed harder, as I reached under her and unsnapped the jean shorts, then pulled them over her hips, revealing her puffy, soaked, and ready labia.

  “Are you going to behave?” I asked sternly, or as sternly as I could with my rapidly beating heart and head fogged with lust. She drove me absolutely insane with the roleplay, especially the naughty honey-blonde, and I wasn’t sure what that said about me.

  Her lip trembled and her body shook, as she continued to glare at me with a stubbornness and heat in her eyes.

  I gave her two more swats, and I wasn’t sure who was more shocked, her or me, when she cried out, “Oh my god!” in a voice twisted with pain and pleasure. Her whole body bucked and her backed arched, and she squirmed wildly for me while cumming from a spanking alone. Her body glistened with sweat, and her eyes glazed over with the euphoric combination of dirty pleasure and sweet pain.

  I only hesitated a moment, before sliding her onto the bed, standing behind her, and then driving into her hard. Her pussy convulsing and grasping me needily still in the throes of ecstasy, clenching around me so deliciously as I pounded my way deep inside, while pulling her honey blonde hair to arch her back and raise her ass higher.

  “Tell me.”

  She gasped, and said in a breathy and tremulously repentant voice, “I’ll behave, sir. I’m sorry, sir. Just fuck me, and I’ll do anything you want. Anything. I need it, and it’s all I wanted, sir. Your strong hand and rough cock.”

  I growled and started to pound her hard and fast, pulling back on her hair firmly to control her, but also added the deep contrast of sensation by gently stroking her reddened ass cheeks with my fingertips. That really worked for her, the tender and the roughly commanding at the same time.

  As for me, I was in heaven, she was working so hard to make it good for me, rolling and gyrating her hips, her hot flesh so tight as it gripped and sucked in my cock, so silken and wild as she clenched around my most sensitive skin.

  “You won’t dress like a slut?”

  She breathed out, “Just for you, sir. Harder, fuck me harder. Use me for your pleasure. Don’t worry about mine, just take yours, sir.”

  That was it, I was done for with those naughty begging words.

  I grunted, “Babe,” then felt the surge hit me like a tornado touching ground.

  She whimpered, “Yes!” as she felt me start to empty into her, and her whole body arched and clenched around me tightly, as she joined me in the heights of pleasure.

  After I came down, I collapsed next to her on my back and pulled her against me.

  She giggled, as she cancelled the spell, “She has less slutty clothes, for any dates you may want to take her on. That was bedroom only, but I loved the possessive jealousy, sir.”

  I caressed and kissed her softly, feeling a deep welling of protectiveness and possessiveness from within me. After being so rough.

  “You came from a spanking,” I teased.

  She giggled, “Partially, I suppose I did. The mental and emotional stuff was a huge part of that too, I wouldn’t come to anyone else spanking me, even if it’d probably wind me up if Brenna did it. Your firm touch, jealousy, your firm orders and threats, the embarrassment and shame of it, all of that contributed to pushing me over.”

  “Well, it’s up to you when they come out, and for how long they do, except when you ask me to pick. They’re all still you, but if you want me take honey-blonde on a date that will be your choice on our date nights.”

  She blushed, “You think I like to be kept in line?”

  I grinned, “I do, sexy. Not because you need it in the classical sense, you wouldn’t stray from me or act out, I don’t think. You’re doing it all to seduce me, but you’re also creating those alter egos to part out your naughtiest desires and needs. Rough sex and discipline, titty fucks, and worshipping me. I think that first one, keeping you in line, makes you feel owned and safe, and that you need to feel that on occasion to be confident in my regard of you.”

  She bit her lip, “I think you’re right. My focus was on you and your pleasure when I came up with the idea, seducing you and being more for you than just me, but I did slip that in as part of it, even if only subconsciously. You don’t want to be the one in charge?”

  “Not of that. You in control means you’re using it to seduce me. Me telling you to do it is choosing a fantasy over the amazing reality in my arms, and I won’t do that. You’re doing it to seduce me and drive me crazy, if I made all the decisions then it would take that away from you.”

  She chewed her lip, “You’re right, I didn’t think of it from that angle.”

  “Plus from a more practical side, you’re the one that feels a certain desire at a certain time, what if I pick the wrong one and frustrate you? What if you’re in the mood to be taken and put in line, and I ask for the brunette to worship me? No, it makes more sense from all angles for you to decide who comes out when, from my all-in-one harem.”