![\"BULL#3covershot\"](\"http:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/BULL3covershot.jpg\")
<\/a><\/h3>\nBy Jove, he likes to say, a joke so inside he sometimes forgets why it\u2019s funny. He repeats it just as Ares, pecs and triceps pulsing, has the bench press at its apex, eyes slanted towards his spotter in irritation.<\/p>\n
\u201cFour-fifty. By Jove, that\u2019s not bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Ares truly needed the help he might have a reason to be angry, but still\u2026 it\u2019s the show that matters. It keeps the gym\u2019s mortals looking on in awe. It\u2019s why the Ledas shimmy through the weight room, pretending to check out the racks of Olympic plates on their way to spinning class. They like strong men.<\/p>\n
There are Ledas everywhere. He still wants them all. He prefers them zaftig, like back in the day, youthfully corpulent, soft and full. BBW it\u2019s called online. Hot and chubby. Ledas sounds better. He can say it when the girls come near and they never suspect. But Ledas are getting harder to find at the gym, so he may go to the mall later, to the food court or Anthropologie, introduce himself to them as Mr. Cob and have a laugh knowing they\u2019ll never get the reference to his swanish proclivities. Or follow one home, never mind the formalities, go in through the window and rustle a few feathers, so to speak. He\u2019s done it so many times.<\/p>\n
He surveys his domain of iron and sweat while Ares caresses the bar, preparing to lift again. The mirrored walls make the room seem to go on forever, like the great silver Styx, leading to eternity. The vastness reminds him of his former home, and for a moment he is filled with melancholy. Ares brings him out of it with a brutish grunt. Four-eighty this time. \u201cSpot me,\u201d he urges.<\/p>\n
A young woman\u2019s gasp interrupts the set. He looks up in time to see her drop a puny, hex-shaped dumbbell on her toe\u2014a mere paperweight. She bends down to massage the tip of her cross-trainer. Her plight is like the scent of meat to a dog, and he leaves Ares in mid press to affect a rescue. Who knows where it might lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you injured, maiden?\u201d<\/p>\n
She furrows her brow, seeming confused and offended at once. \u201cFine,\u201d she says, adjusting cat\u2019s-eye glasses. \u201cI\u2019m just fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must choose the weight wisely, little one. An inch or so and it could have broken your toe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Apart from her milky, pale skin, she is not at all his type. This girl is thin, almost scrawny. A bulky sweatshirt tents her torso, yet he can see she is flat-chested. He pushes his pecs out, flexes one beneath his muscle shirt and looks down on her as if from a cloud. Each of her spandexed legs approximates the circumference of his forearm; her waist equals the size of his bicep. She\u2019s pushed her hair back with an elastic headband, forbidding it from falling free about the neck, the way it should. She is not beautiful\u2014no, not by the classic standards he has enforced for ages. But he can make her beautiful. He can will it, and it shall be so. And the Ledas\u2014by Jove, they are always grateful.<\/p>\n
She turns to go back to her exercise, a pair of pathetic, five-pound weights in her hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n
She hesitates, and eyes him again. \u201cLulu,\u201d she says at last.<\/p>\n
He can change that too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t seen you in here before.\u201d<\/p>\n
The girl rolls her eyes and twirls away from him. She jogs the perimeter of the gym, to the far side, avoiding the piston-like thrusts of men pumping and pressing, channeling proteins and steroids into fleshy mass. There, in a corner, she faces away from the mirrors to begin her curls. Her twiggy arms strain. Her cheeks puff out with every repetition.<\/p>\n
She has an attitude. He\u2019ll see about that. Pretty rare for anyone to dismiss him, even now that he\u2019s getting older, less capable of awesome displays. Maybe the days of leveling temples and altering landscapes are behind him, but he can still change her mind, along with her body.<\/p>\n
A sea of muscle parts as he strides through the workout area. He stops in front of her and plucks a pair of hundred pounders from the dumbbell stand, and then faces her and synchronizes his lifts to hers, mimicking her grunts. She tries to ignore him, to look past his beard and bulk, but how can one possibly do so? She turns away but it does no good, since he is there in the reflection, and when he leans in to check out her ass, she lets the weights chunk into the carpet and heads for the women\u2019s locker room.<\/p>\n
\u201cPervert,\u201d she mumbles.<\/p>\n
He follows.<\/p>\n
How should he appear to her? As a bull, snorting testosterone from his nostrils, threatening her with the twin phalli of his horns and stamping the ground to announce his urge? Or should he become as a lion this time\u2014crouching, stalking, letting his passion build until the moment of the strike?<\/p>\n
She\u2019ll have to come out eventually, so he waits in proximity to the women\u2019s doorway, leaning against the wall and idly pumping one of the hundreds over his head with one arm. He can\u2019t imagine being any more muscular, so there\u2019s no need to put much effort into the exercise. Ares waves at him to come back and spot, but he ignores his cohort. This girl intrigues him. The Ledas, once they get over the shock of his enormous presence, his overwhelming hunger for their bodies, always relent. They shrink into his arms, into the bed, and lie passive while he sweats and strains above them. He suspects this one will fight him and won\u2019t stop, even when his power reduces her to a rag doll, even when he fills her with a pleasure she has never known, an Olympic ecstasy. The challenge arouses him, as it always has.<\/p>\n
In a few minutes, she reappears, ready for the street\u2014black on black as if dressed by Nyx, her torso veiled in gloomy denim and layers of flannel, her legs just barely hinting at their shape in baggy leggings and ankle boots. Yet somehow the sight of her quickens him. She alters her path to create as much distance as she can, but he is lightning, seemingly able to appear both ahead of and behind her. There he stands, bulky gym bag in hand, instantly at the entrance to the club as she steps outside. The sun silhouettes him, casts shadows that chisel him in relief, like a statue of himself. It glints off his oiled shoulders into her eyes. Thanks, Apollo, he owes you one.<\/p>\n
\u201cLulu,\u201d he calls. The name sours his tongue like a rotten fruit. Leandra would be better. Lidia. Lysandra. He fights the urge to call her Leda.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you want from me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGirl, why do you hide yourself in those clothes?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t call me \u2018girl.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shoulder should be bare; the neckline should intimate what pleasures lie below.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat pleasures?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAh, let me instruct you. Let me show you ecstasies mortal men could never imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you for real?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA dream and reality at once.\u201d He smiles and holds his palms out. The old sense of confidence hasn\u2019t left him yet. \u201cWith these hands, I can make you a goddess.\u201d<\/p>\n
She takes a step backwards. \u201cI think your hands are going to have to take care of your own ecstasy…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/h3>\n“Ledas are getting harder to find at the gym, so he may go to the mall later, to the food court or Anthropologie, introduce himself to them as Mr. Cob<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-joe-ponepinto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6375"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17512,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375\/revisions\/17512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}