“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—” He swallowed. “Let’s get you there quickly.”
Theo stepped toward me, grabbed my wrists from where they were tucked under my breasts, and pulled them away from my body. Without the protective covering of my arms, my biggest insecurities were exposed. But Theo just smiled, took one appreciative glance from the top of my head to my toes, and held my hand in his as he set toward the tree line.
I vaguely remembered this narrow section of the river from when I’d initially gone exploring. I could see the pebbles lining the bottom, barely distorted under the shimmering surface. The low water levels created a steep drop-off at the bank.
Theo let go of my hands and reached for his buckle. The sound of leather sliding through belt loops made my stomach flip, and the feeling only intensified when he began unfastening his jeans.
Was this really happening? How had we both seen each other orgasm, but not naked? I should look away, but I wasn’t able to.
A black mark stretched up from his groin through the opening of his unzipped pants. Although similar in color, it didn’t look like his tattoos or feral markings. It seemed to be slightly…raised?
He tugged his shirt over his head, revealing the power of his build. I licked my teeth. His tattoos and scars made for acomplex canvas, and I wanted to paint each with my tongue—tell him that he could redefine their meaning.
I fought the urge to object when he turned around to drop his pants, concealing a part of himself that I was salivating to meet. I wanted to see what had been too dark to understand that night I watched him “take care of himself”.
The view of his bare buttocks—round, strong, and “tattooed”—sated me for now. I could wait a bit longer to see where that textured black marking led.
Stepping around me carefully, Theo hopped down from the bank into the river. His inky arms stretched up to me, hands open. “Come on in, Little Goddess. Before you turn to stone.”
I took his hands. As I hopped down, his two lower arms reached for my waist and steadied me in the warm water. I settled in, pressed against him, and craned my neck to stare into his black eyes. Something hard pressed into my stomach, but I couldn’t see it past my breasts and the flowing water that came up to my armpits.
“Is this okay?” he asked, his voice gravelly.
I nodded.
“Good. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Four hands got to work rubbing across my skin. I felt the rough texture of his touch everywhere. Soothing scratches at the space between my shoulder blades. Fingers swiping along my sensitive lower back. He swallowed my arms in his hands, stroking them up and down in a way that had lewd memories flashing to the forefront of my mind. Palms pressed into my breasts and squeezed, fingers massaging the mud from my curves. He streamed handfuls of water down my head.
Relaxing, I leaned my cheek into the soft cushioning of his ribs. I’d never felt anything so pleasant. I’d never done anything so intimate. I looked up through my lashes, seeking his face but coming up short, instead staring at his pectoral—that pit of scar tissue above me. Without thinking, I raised my free hand and gently traced a finger around the rough, discolored skin.
“Where did you get this one?” I braved asking.
Silence stretched between us. Still not ready to talk about it?
“I was shot when I was sent to kill an executive of the E.A.R.T.H. organization.” His hands gripped me a little tighter.
“The bad guys?” The people who kidnapped demigoddesses, named after our planet.
“The organization is bad.” He said it solemnly, hinting at more complex thoughts behind such a simple, black and white statement.
“The people you killed… were they always evil?” I didn’t think I cared what the answer was. I just wanted him to feel like he could talk to me. Get it off his chest, even if the scars remained.
“I don’t know.” He dribbled more palmfuls of water over my head, his upper hands getting to work removing muck while his lower ones kneaded my hips. “Being a hitman for the other side—G.P.O.—I carried out orders. It wasn’t my job to ask questions, think for myself, or have feelings about what we were doing. I just…did. I was the knife they wielded.”
“You don’t know who you killed?” I tried to read between the lines of what he was saying. Figure out which part of it felt so heavy for him. In my eyes, killing bad people was inherently agoodthing.
“Some of them I do. Some of them I don’t. I never questioned if what I was doing was right or wrong, until it was too late.”
I stood on my toes to press my lips against the gunshot scar. “What did you decide once youdidquestion things?”
“I’ll never know how much of what I did was wrong.” His voice was rough in a way I hadn’t heard before. The confession had to fight its way out of his throat.
I couldn’t imagine what was immoral about killing corrupt people, but I didn’t want to press. There was more he wasn’t ready to say, but this was progress. I wrapped my arms around his waist and squeezed, unable to touch my hands behind his back.
This was why Theo wanted to help me. He was chasing the moral clarity that’d been denied. Helping me was therightthing to do. Getting Ida a home was therightthing to do. Watching me shower even after we’d already been intimate was thewrongthing to do… for some reason.
I wondered if the night he’d crawled under my dress was the only time he didn’t question the ethics of his actions. He wanted something, and he acted on it. I wanted Theo to feel that freedom more often, instead of holding himself to some strict moral code to make up for what he thought tainted him as a person.
