Awakened (Eternal Guardians Book 8) (20 page)

She turned away, giving him a nice view of her ass, and picked her way over the rocks. Stepping into the hot springs, she sighed as heat surrounded her calves, her thighs, her hips and waist. “Gods, this is amazing.” She turned to face him and lowered herself into the water, groaning at the way her muscles immediately relaxed. “You should really get in.” Her gaze dropped to the bulge—even bigger, now—in his pants. “If you can move, that is.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game,
oraios
.”

Beautiful
. Not
my obsession
as he’d called her before she’d fucked everything up, but it was a start. One she could work with.

She fanned her hands through the water and grinned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know exactly what I mean. Come on. Get out.”

“Nope.” She leaned back against the rocks, resting her head on a smooth stone, and closed her eyes. “I’m staying. You can go back if you want, though I’m sure Athena will pepper you with all kinds of questions about what happened to me when I turn up missing.”

“You’d do that just to get me in trouble, wouldn’t you?”

Doubt whipped through her, and she opened her eyes. Did he really believe that? Gods, she
had
wounded him. Horribly. He’d told her on Pandora that she was the first person he’d ever felt connected to. She was probably the only person he’d ever opened up to about his blank memories.

She sat upright, not even caring that her nipples were on the edge of the water or that she wasn’t posing sexily for him. All she wanted was to take back all the awful things she’d said and thought about him over the last month. All she needed was for him to know she hadn’t meant them. “Damon—”

“Fine.” He reached behind his head with one arm to tug his shirt up. “You can have your fun for now. But I’m not staying all night, so soak your fill. Then you’re getting out and going back.”

A tingle rushed straight through Elysia as carved abs, perfect pecs, cut shoulders, and muscular biceps came into view. Not to mention his gorgeous face and the hint of stubble that made him look that much more dark and dangerous. No male should be this beautiful. It wasn’t fair. And he wasn’t even a god. She was sure if the gods knew he was this hot, they’d punish him. Which, strangely, made his assignment with Aphrodite all the more understandable.

Not wanting to think about Aphrodite, she pursed her lips and relaxed against the rocks again as he bent and tugged off his boots. “Okay, Zeus.”

His fingers paused over the snap at his waistband, and he lifted his gaze to hers. “Do
not
call me that.”

The look was so adorably irritated, she laughed. “You don’t like the king of the gods?”

He pulled the snap free and pushed the dark fabric past his hips. “Can’t stand the pompous asshole.”

Elysia’s mouth went bone dry as she watched his thick, toned thighs, covered in a thin layer of dark hair, come into view. And when he kicked the pants away, straightened, and slid his fingers beneath the elastic waistband of his black boxer briefs, she was pretty sure she drooled.

His fingers pushed the fabric down an inch and stopped just as the carved V of his lower abs caught the moonlight. “You’re gonna turn around, right?”

It took several seconds for Elysia to realize he was speaking to her, and she forced her gaze up to his face. “You saw me naked.”

“You didn’t exactly give me a choice. We both know you’re not interested in seeing this.”

But she was. She wanted to see everything. Her cheeks heated, and her gaze lifted back to where his fingers held his boxers in place. She wanted to tear the garment free with her fingertips. With her teeth. Wanted to lick and taste everything beneath.

Her heart pounded so hard, she was sure he had to hear it. But she swiveled away from him because she knew if she didn’t, he wouldn’t get into the water. And she needed him naked and in the water so she could move on with the rest of her plan to prove she wanted to pick up where they’d left off on Pandora.

Water splashed behind her, and her stomach trembled as she imagined all that warm water caressing his rock-hard muscles and tan skin.

“Well?” she asked, figuring it was safe to turn. “Isn’t it nice?”

He frowned and sank back against the rocks opposite her, the waterline hitting him mid-chest. “It’s okay, I guess.”

“You guess.” She smiled. “It’s awesome. After today’s workout, I needed this.”

Steam rose around them. He laid his head back on the rocks and closed his eyes. “I saw Minos had you running the obstacle course.”

She watched the water lap at his nipples, and her own nipples tightened beneath the surface. “Yeah.” She swallowed hard, working to keep her voice from shaking. “I can handle everything but the hill. After we come out of the mud, I lose it on the hill every time.”

“That’s because you’re trying to take the shortest route. It’s steeper there. If you go around the rock outcropping, the hillside is more gradual. You’ll pick up speed and beat the others to the top.”

Elysia hadn’t thought of that. No one went that way. She hadn’t even known it was an option. “Okay, I’ll try that next time. Thanks.”

He sighed and relaxed farther in the water, and as she studied his profile tipped upward in the moonlight, something about him struck her again as…familiar.

“I wonder what kind of warrior you were,” she said.

He lifted his head, his brows drawn in confusion. “What?”

“Before you came to Olympus. On Pandora, you said the gods told you that you’d once been a warrior. It’s pretty obvious from the way you wield a sword. I wonder if you were a knight or a gladiator or maybe a pirate.”

He huffed a sound that was part laugh, part annoyance, and leaned his head back once more. “Yeah, right. I was a pirate. Aye, matey.”

She smiled because this was what she’d missed the last month. This easy connection they’d shared on Pandora.

“If you were from my realm, you’d have been an Argonaut.”

His eyes slowly opened, but when they focused on hers, all humor was gone. “From your realm?”

She nodded. “Argolea.”

He pushed upright. “You remember where you’re from?”

“Sort of. Certain things have come back. My mother is the queen of Argolea, and my father is an Argonaut. One of the seven descendants of—”

“The seven greatest heroes in all of Ancient Greece. Yeah, I’ve heard of the Argonauts. I’m not stupid. Zeus and Athena don’t think too highly of them.”

Elysia shrugged and fanned her hands through the water once more. “Which explains why they took me as soon as I turned twenty-five. You probably don’t know how old you are, am I right?”

“No.” His gaze followed the sweep of her fingers along the surface, and a sadness she hadn’t expected to see crept into his eyes. “I don’t.”

Inwardly, Elysia cringed. She’d just screwed things up again when they were finally heading in the right direction. Reminding him that he would probably never know where he’d come from or what had happened to his own parents was not the way to get back to where they’d been before.

She pushed away from the rocks and tiptoed across the rocky bottom of the hot springs toward him. “So Sera told me an interesting story.”

He tensed as she drew close. “About Erebus?”

“No.” She stopped mere inches away, but forced herself not to touch him. “About you.”

Unease flickered in his eyes. “What about me?”

“About you and Athena and the pit.”

The muscles in his shoulders tightened.

“Why didn’t you tell me where you’d been for the last month?”

His gaze skipped over her features. Unsure. Hesitant. Confused. “Because it wouldn’t have mattered. You’d already made up your mind about me.”

“I had.” Her heart skipped a beat because he wasn’t moving away. “And I was wrong.”

Long seconds passed. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Just looked at her. Really looked at her, as he’d done on Pandora.

She eased closer, until her thighs skimmed his in the water and her fingers found the strong, solid muscles in his arms. “You chose that pit over Aphrodite and her palace. You chose it for me.”

His pulse pounded beneath his skin, a rapid thump, thump, thump that fueled the fire inside her. “Elysia—”

“Don’t say it doesn’t matter.” She brushed her body against his beneath the water—his ripped, strong, very aroused body. “Because it does. It’s the only thing that matters. And I’m about to show you just how much it matters to me.”

When he didn’t push her away, she slid her hands up his chest and around his nape, drawing them even closer together. The hard, rigid length of his cock pressed against her belly. But it was his whispered “
Emmoní
,” that made her heart lurch and her mouth find his in the moonlight.

D
amon couldn’t move, could barely breathe. But when Elysia’s tongue slid along his lips, coaxing him to open, all rational thought slipped right out of his grasp, and biological instinct took over.

He wrapped his arms around her waist beneath the water and pulled her up against him. Then devoured her the way he’d wanted to devour her since she’d left him on Pandora.

Her mouth turned greedy. Her fingers slid up and into his hair as he kissed her deeper. She stroked her tongue over his in long, languid strokes and rocked her hips against his until he groaned. Closing her arms around his neck, she hoisted herself up in the water and wrapped her legs around his waist so she could press all her slick, sultry heat against the hard length of his cock.

She pulled back from his mouth, her lips swollen and pink in the moonlight, and looked down between them. “You’re still wearing your boxers.”

Damon sucked in a painful breath. Every bit of energy in his body was gathered where the heat of her sex caressed his aching cock. “Yes,” he rasped.

Her gaze lifted to his face. Wispy tendrils had pulled free from her updo and glistened from the steam rising off the pool. Tiny droplets of water caressed her cheek and slid down her jaw and over her neck. And her eyes sparkled with both passion and lust. A lust that only made him harder. “Do I need to teach you the art of seduction, instructor?”

In the midst of probably the most painful moment of his life, Damon laughed. “No.”

“Well, you clearly need a refresher. You’re supposed to be naked right now.
And in me
.”

His pulse stuttered, because that was all he wanted too. But when she smiled and moved in to kiss him again, all the doubts he’d had this whole last week rushed in, preventing him from making that dream a reality.

Gently, he moved his hands to her hips—her slim, naked, gorgeous hips—and unwound her legs from his body. “
Emmoní
, stop.”

Her hands slipped free of his shoulders, and as her feet found the sandy bottom of the pool, she looked up with worried eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“You were right about me. I’m all those things you said the other night. I’m Aphrodite’s property.” His throat felt so thick, he wasn’t sure he could speak, but he forced the words past his lips, because he was done keeping secrets. “I’ve fucked hundreds of females for her, with her. I’ve taught so many Siren recruits the art of seduction, I can’t even rememb—”

Her damp fingertips landed against his lips. “I know, and I don’t care.”

He gently pulled her hand away and frowned. “You should. I’m not a person. I’m a thing. I don’t have a soul. I’m nothing but a pleasure sla—”

“You’re more than that.” She moved close again, brushing her body along his and sliding her fingers across his jaw in a way that made every inch of his skin tingle. “So much more. You stayed with me on Pandora when you didn’t have to. You helped me get through one of the toughest parts of the tests. And then you chose the pit over returning to Aphrodite’s temple. A soulless person doesn’t do that. A soulless person wouldn’t have cared. And then, even after I said all those ugly things, you still didn’t turn away. You stayed and you tutored me in combat and marksmanship and archery, all because you didn’t want to see me fail.”

“You don’t know what Zeus does to the recruits who don’t make the cut.”

“A soulless pleasure slave would not care.”

Her eyes went so soft and dreamy, something inside him cracked. “I didn’t care. Not about any of the others. Just you. I don’t think I could bear it if something happened to you.”