He lifted his brows. “Yes.”
I grinned. “It's my favorite.”
Braxen smiled. “Mine too.”
As I may have mentioned, Braxen was stunningly beautiful. Man-beautiful. Women-weeping-beautiful. But when he smiled, he became real. He went from a piece of art displayed on a pedestal to a teddy bear sitting on a bed. From something too wondrous to risk touching to something that required cuddling. The transformation was so startling that I dropped my spoon.
His smile vanished as he looked away, a flush creeping up his neck.
“You should smile more,” I whispered. “You're too beautiful without it.”
Braxen's head jerked back my way. “What?”
“You must know how handsome you are. It's a bit intimidating. Your size makes you even more so. But when you smile, it softens things. Makes you more of a man, less of a god.”
“A god?” He lifted his brows. “I don't think so.”
“Braxen, you're more beautiful than Hermes.”
“What?” he asked again, this time in a whisper.
I shook my head. “You really don't know?”
Braxen frowned. “I'm just a brute.”
“You have the body of a brute, but the face of an angel. The thing is, angels are wondrous, but they are also unattainable. I'd rather have someone I can be comfortable around. Your smile makes me feel comfortable.”
He blinked. Frowned. Blinked some more. I went back to my ice cream and let him work through the complicated compliment. I had my own shit to process. So, we sat in silence, me eating and Braxen staring out the window. It wasn't awkward. On the contrary, it was comfortable, just as I said. I found myself leaning closer to him, my body going lax from exhaustion and food. As if we had sat so a thousand times before, Braxen slung his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in against his side.
Then he looked down at me and smiled.
I smiled back.
“Your smile doesn't make me comfortable,” Braxen said, startling me out of my languor.
“What?” I jerked away from him.
He chuckled softly and pulled me back into place. “It makes me the opposite, but in a good way. My heart races when you smile.”
“Oh,” I whispered. Then I leaned back and grimaced at him. “Cute joke.”
“I had to find my footing after you felled me.”
“Felled you?”
“Knocked me over with your compliments.” Braxen nudged my cheek with his nose. “I'm the one who's supposed to compliment you, not the other way around. But now, if I tell you how lovely you are, how I've never met a woman more beautiful than you, it will ring false or fall flat. I can't tell you how I couldn't breathe the first time I saw you. How I instantly hoped that Rune loved you so that we'd be forced to fight for you. You're a woman worth sacrificing for, Lora. I knew it instantly.”
I cleared my throat. “It's all right. You can still try to tell me all of that. I promise to believe you.”
Braxen chuckled and shook his head. “Now that I've met you, I know that your beauty is irrelevant. You don't just make my heart race, you also lighten it. And that's even more precious.”
I blinked, as thrown as Braxen had been. To be called beautiful was great. Who didn't like that? And Braxen certainly had a way with words. But to be told that I lighten his heart was soul-striking. I didn't feel as if I deserved it. What had I done to make him happy? I barely knew him. And yet, I felt it too. The rightness of him. What should have been insane, what I'd been calling insane, suddenly felt normal. Maybe it was magic.
That thought wasn't as lovely as it should have been.
“Do you think we feel this way because of Hades's spell?” I asked.
There went Braxen's smile, but it didn't turn into a frown. It became neutral. Pensive. “The spell is meant to draw our perfect mate to us. It does no more than that. What we feel is ours, Lomasi. It's real. I promise.” He leaned down and nuzzledmy cheek, then whispered in my ear, “Does that mean I lighten your heart too?”
