It’s gone before I can hold on to it, but it only makes what he’s doing with his hand, the thickness of the shaft pressed into my backside, that much…more.
Over and over, and oh gods, over again, he teases. Until I’m moving my hips to chase his fingers. Until my breath hitches in my throat. Until I raise my arms up and behind me to wrap around his neck, anchoring us together.
I might have expected this to be fast and hard. But tender and teasing—gods, I’m already coming undone.
His free hand trails up my ribs to tease the underside of my breast before moving up to cup it, and then he barely brushes over my nipple. Desire sizzles from that touch to the throbbing point where his other finger still teases.
Then that questing finger dips lower, parts me, slips inside me, testing me, and I couldn’t hold back the moan if I wanted to. Not that I want to.
He stops there, finger buried in me. Tormenting me.
“Don’t stop now,” I demand. Mewl, even. That’s what he does to me.
I sense his smile, and then he presses a sweet, claim-staking kiss to the nape of my neck that I feel like a brand. He’s marking me as his. Different from the kiss of blessing on my lips. This isn’t about protection.
“There are a thousand reasons we shouldn’t… I shouldn’t…” he whispers, that rough voice rubbing against my senses. “But I want you, Lyra. I’ve wanted you for a long time…”
He takes a shuddering breath against me, all leashed power and desire. Utter determined control.
His fingers move over me, one teasing, one sliding out, drawing a tremor from my flesh. “I want you the way stars burn.” Another move of those torturous fingers, back in, but it’s his words that are driving me higher. “I want you in the way a storm gathers over mountains only to give in to violent release.”
Finger still buried in me, he brushes his thumb over that spot that makes me quiver. But it’s his words that curl around my heart and make it beat faster. It’s knowing he wants me that way—me, someone who has been invisible and unwanted all my life—that makes me quiver for him. Whimper for him.
Yearn for him.
His lips move to the spot just behind my ear. “I want you in the way the first mortals in the wilderness found their like in each other and…hungered.”
The last word is a promise-filled purr that captures me so fully, I want to hear that sound for the rest of my short, mortal life.
“Good,” I sigh into his tormenting touch, then drop a hand to slip it behind me, between us, wrapping it around him and squeezing, reveling in the way he groans against my skin. “Then we want each other the same way.”
I’ve never touched anyone this way before, and yet it’s so…natural.
The feel of him in my hand is silk-covered iron, and the way he pulses—I made him feel that.
Wondering… I pump my hand once. Twice.
The way his entire body goes rigid before he groans makes me smile my own satisfaction. “Now what I want…is for you to stop holding back.”
He stills. I can hear the harsh in and out of his breath, his chest pressing against me in time. He’s still fighting for control. Then, “I don’t want to hurt you. If I lose control—”
I grip him tighter and revel in his groan. “I want you to fucking break me.”
“Fuck, Lyra—”
He moves out of my grip and pulls his own hands away all of a sudden, and I barely have time for my heart to drop, thinking he’s stopping this, before he grips my hips, so urgent his fingers dig in hard as he spins me to face him, and I suck in at the sight of his eyes. Molten, liquid silver.
The sight makes my heart stutter, heat and something more filling those beautiful eyes—hells, his entire being—with a light that makes every part of me hot.
I have a single heartbeat to absorb all those impressions before he captures my mouth in a kiss that turns to wildfire at the first spark of lips against lips.
A restlessness consumes me—consumes us both, I think—as his hands are everywhere, caressing every part of me, lingering when he makes me gasp. Teasing mercilessly when he makes me moan.
And with each new discovery, with the feel of his hands on me and him under mine, we both turn more frantic. If we only have what little he can give, what we can both give, then I’m taking everything I can and offering him everything in return.
But soon my restless energy isn’t soothed by hands and mouth alone.
I want more.
“Hades,” I moan, winding my arms around his neck, practically crawling up his body to wrap my legs around his waist.
I gasp when he suddenly lifts me out of the water and sets me on the top of the rock ledge, which is about a foot thick. Instinct has me glancing over my shoulder. The drop behind me seems to go on forever, sheer and deadly. I cling to his arms as my stomach clenches, and when I face him again, I’m breathing hard, eyes wide, only to have my heart pound even faster at the intensity of the satisfaction on his face.
And another bolt of his emotions crackles through me.
Fascination.
“I knew it.” He breathes the words. “Danger makes you fight, makes you alive, sets your senses on fire.”
Because you see me.
I think he’s always seen the real me. Because he’s a god, or maybe the god of death, or maybe this is just who Hades is. He sees me.
The same way I see him.
He reaches up and cups the back of my head, bringing my lips down to his, as if my response only jacked his own desire up another notch. This kiss is hard, demanding. He nips at my lower lip and soothes it with his tongue, then draws back. And I’m moaning into his mouth and trying to climb back down to him.
He’s right. Even now, my body feels so…primal. I am like our mingled breaths, like air, floating and flying and alive at his will.
