“I do. Sometimes they flicker with a red glow. Sometimes they’re your usual heart-melting warm brown. Both are beautiful and expressive, and I could watch them all day.”
A tender needfulness crept into his gaze.
“And I could watch you for an eternity with pleasure. Let us return to our room.”
I slowly shook my head.
“You know we can’t. Not yet. How much farther, Zotera?” I asked without looking away from him.
“We are almost halfway there.”
We weren’t even halfway? Each turn and stairwell had pushed him closer to losing control. He’d just cracked the ceiling. And I knew things would likely only get worse. I tried not to let my worry show as I wondered how I was going to keep him from wrecking Hell and Earth if carrying me and kissing stopped working. While my mind raced for a solution, I continued to play with his hair.
His observant gaze missed nothing.
“If you worry for the safety of the humans, abandon this madness. Save them.” Torment twisted his features. “Save me.”
My heart ached for him, and I knew I would do anything to save him. Even expose a painful truth he didn’t want to face.
“Zotera,” I said softly. “Your job is to keep us heading in the right direction. If we stop, get us moving again. Okay?”
“I will, Mother.”
Hades started to shake again, and I wrapped myself around him, settling so my mouth was near his ear. I didn’t kiss him or nibble like I’d been doing. No, I started to whisper how I felt about everything I’d experienced with him, starting from the beginning. How desperately I’d needed that first hug and how terrified I’d been that he would realize I was real.
He calmed as he listened and only halted a few times. Each incident was related to a moment in our story when he’d made me feel something extraordinary. That moment of concern when he’d wrecked his face. That burst of heat when he’d appeared naked in his bath. I spared no detail in the emotions I’d experienced.
And when he paused, Zotera gently nudged him back into motion. She steered us down hallways and up a different flight of stairs.
“I have never wanted anyone the way I’ve wanted you,” I whispered. “One touch of your lips, and it doesn’t matter if you’re not meant to be mine. You’re all that I never knew to want. And now that I know, I can’t stop wanting you.”
He trembled as I recounted what he made me feel in the bathing room and why I’d been so devastated afterward.
“Don’t fear what we have,” he said. “Embrace it. Love me as I love you, and let the world crumble beneath the weight of our adoration for each other. Nothing else matters.”
But it did.
So I continued talking, recounting all the dirty details.
He stopped more often, mostly to kiss me senseless. But Zotera kept her word, and thanks to mine, Hades didn’t make anything shake…until I ran out of things to say.
“We’re close, Mother,” Zotera said softly when I stalled.
Hades immediately stopped.
“No nearer, I beg you,” Hades said. “Let me love you for an eternity as you are.”
I tenderly kissed his cheek then the tip of his nose.
“I can’t stop you from loving me,” I said. “That’s an emotion only you can control.”
The floor started to shake. I stroked my hand over his other cheek.
“Focus on what comes after we’re done here. You and me in that bath again. Only this time, you won’t be the only one tasting.”
His breathing stopped, and a shiver ran through him.
“Do you seek to manipulate me?”
