Page 184 of The Games Gods Play
Or he knows today is the next Labor and I need to focus.
Except my head is entirely with Hades. And I can’t make that stop while I shower and dress, which I do with more haste than care, at least until I’m checking my vest. That, I take my time to go over carefully. Thankfully, Hades got my axe back from Hephaestus for me. I’d left it pinning that automaton’s tentacle in the window.
But Hades isn’t at breakfast, either. Charon and Cerberus are.
I give Ber’s head a scratch before I get myself toast and tea. Pretty sure my stomach wouldn’t appreciate more for a lot of very good reasons.
Charon eyes my plate when I sit. “Hades would understand if you decided not to do this after all,” he says, almost casually, popping a slice of apple in his mouth and chewing.
“I know.”
“Boone would understand as well.”
“I know that, too.”
Charon breathes in and out audibly, sandy hair falling into his eyes. He’s hated this plan for me to win the next two Labors since the moment we told him about it. A growled “the fuck you are” was a pretty clear indicator, which made Hades stare him down coldly. He only eased up about it when I explained it was my idea, but Charon has remained against it.
I grin. “You’re a bit of a mother hen, you know?”
Rus lets out a woofy wheeze of a laugh that fills the room with the strong odor of smoke. Cer and even Ber join in when Charon pushes the eggs around on his plate with a grumble.
Then Ber swings up to look past me before nudging the other two heads. I don’t need to look. I knew Hades was there before the dog did, as if my body is so attuned to him now that I could be a Hades location app.
Charon looks past me as well. “Tell Lyra not to do this.”
I also turn slowly…to encounter a wall of absolute indifference.
He looks through me. I might as well be one of the dead souls down here, I’m so invisible in this moment. And if anyone knows what invisible feels like, it’s me.
Only this is so much worse.
Like razors over my skin, leaving a thousand little cuts.
“Lyra knows what she’s doing and what she wants,” Hades tells Charon.
“Do you, Phi?” Charon demands. Then he levers to his feet, chair scraping against the stone floor with a protesting screech. “Don’t screw this up just because—”
He cuts himself off when Hades’ expression goes utterly blank, his voice bored when he speaks. “She is my concern, not yours. Feel free to fuck right off.”
I lean back at that. I may not have spent a lot of time around them, but that is not how these two talk to each other.
With a lethal scowl, Charon shoves his plate across the table and then disappears. Cerberus snorts at Hades before he follows, leaving me alone with him.
His jaw might as well be hewn from granite. After a second, he looks at me like he has to force himself to. “Ready?”
That’s it?
That’s…it?
Screw that. Why is he being so weird? As far as he’s concerned, we had phenomenal, consensual, no-strings-attached sex and that’s all. Being a dick to me now is not required. I already understood the assignment.
“Absolutely.” I abandon my breakfast on the table and cross the terrace…and I deliberately don’t stop until I’m right in front of him, close enough that a deep breath would brush my breasts against his chest. Then I hold up a hand in the air, like I’m pressing it to the invisible, glass wall of distance he’s erected between us, higher and thicker than before.
I wait.
I wait for him to look me in the eyes, and when he does, I smile. Just treat me like you have before, I’m saying with that smile.
For the briefest of seconds, his own expression gentles, and there’s a lightning flash of tender need curling through me.
