And then he was kissing me again, searing and desperate. It was the kind of kiss that tore roofs from houses and split seas in two. Months of stolen glances, of words swallowed back, of longing honed sharp enough to wound—all of it poured out, burning hot between our mouths.
He moved us toward the bed with the relentless pull of a man starved, one hand buried in my hair, the other gripping my waist as though he feared I might slip back into the dark and vanish forever. When the backs of my knees struck the mattress, he halted, but only for a breath. His eyes swept over me with such desperate want, my chest locked, every breath snagging in my throat.
My dress tore beneath his hands, the sound like a seal binding, like a door closing on everything that had come before. Air rushed over my bare skin, but there was no chill. Not with him looking at me like that.
Menelaus had looked and treated me tonight the way a butcher looks at a carcass. There was no recognition there, no mercy. I was meat, something to consume, to use, to flaunt before others. A trophy polished to prove his power.
But Achilles—Achilles was looking at me as though I were something impossible. A miracle he didn’t believe he’d earned. His gaze stripped me bare, not with shame, but with reverence. He reached for me slowly, his fingers still shaking as though the act of touching me might unmake the world. As though laying his hand on me was nothing less than sacred.
Desperation clawed beneath the reverence. He didn’t just touch; he claimed. His hands roamed my skin, red paint continuing to smear in thick, frantic strokes that still hid what lay beneath. I was glad he couldn’t see the bruises, glad that nothing would interrupt his hunger, this wild, unrestrained need pouring out of him.
This was the unraveling my soul needed, the moment every stolen glance, every breathless pause, every night filled with unspoken longing ignited into something unguarded and real.
He leaned over me, his eyes ardent as his fingers brushed the curve of my collarbone, then down, slow, dragging, like he was learning what it meant to touch something he could never deserve. When his hands cupped my breasts, I gasped. Not from shock, but from the way it felt like worship and destruction bound together.
He kissed the swell of flesh where my heart thundered, the valley between, the ridges of my ribs, the arch of my hips. Each kiss more fevered, more urgent, as though he might lose me if he stopped.
“You’ve undone me,” he rasped. “You haunt every silence. I dream of you, painted in red, burning only for me.”
He hovered above me, his breath unsteady, gaze searing. “You don’t even know, do you? What it does to me. To look at you. To know they call you the mostbeautiful woman in the world, but none of them have seen the truth beneath it. They see a prize. I see a miracle. You are the most courageous, exceptional, perfect woman I have ever met.”
His lips grazed my throat. “Aphrodite herself would burn with envy.”
The words snagged, stirring the same unease I’d felt when Menelaus compared me to the goddess, something for men to worship, not a woman to be known.
But his mouth was moving lower, and I clung to the way the words felt different on his tongue. I forced the doubt away, let it dissolve beneath his touch as he kissed a path across my skin.
I trembled. Not from shame. Not from fear. But from the way he looked at me like I was already his religion.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” I whispered, broken and breathless. “And told myself it was madness.”
His hands framed my face, anchoring me. “Then let us be mad together.”
Chapter39
Achilles’s kiss drowned me, consuming all reason, carrying me with him into a fire I no longer wanted to escape.
When he laid me back against the bed, it wasn’t a taking.
It was worship. And I was his altar.
His mouth met mine again, harder this time, like he couldn’t get close enough. Like he wanted to crawl beneath my skin and live there. He kissed me with his whole body, hands fisting in my hair, his chest pressed to mine, our breath mingling in fractured bursts.
When he dragged his mouth down my throat, I arched, forcing myself to stay still when he brushed the tender places I didn’t want him to know about yet. His tongue traced the line of my pulse, his lips scraping over the delicate skin like he was debating whether to devour me whole.
“Tell me what you need,” he rasped in a shaking voice. “I’ll give you anything. Everything.”
“You,” I breathed. “I just want you. Make me forget he ever touches me. Make me forget he calls me his.”
Something shattered in him. His restraint. His silence. He groaned like it was pulled from the marrow of his bones, and rolled over me, pressing me into the bed, his body a crucible of heat and need.
His mouth returned to my breasts, sucking, tasting, his hands sliding down my sides, palms mapping me like he could learn eternity that way. His teeth grazed my nipple, and his tongue followed, soothing the sting. My back arched, and my thighs fell open in invitation.
Achilles groaned again and slipped lower, dragging his tongue down my stomach, dipping into the hollow beneath my navel. He sat back just enough to strip the last of the cloth from his body, the tunic falling forgotten to the floor. I hadseen him shirtless before, in training, and even in the battle tonight. But this—this was different.
This was not the body of a warrior shown to the world.
This was Achilles, stripped bare for me.
