Page 34 of The Games Gods Play
Long enough that it hits me. The god of death is…hesitating.
His gaze drops lower. “I offer you a kiss.”
By now I should stop being shocked, especially by Hades, but the impact of that word reverberates like a tuning fork striking metal. It shivers through me all the way to my core, where a new sensation stirs. An uneasy sensation.
A haunting sensation.
I’ve never been kissed. I shouldn’t want it. Should I? Or is this just curiosity?
He steps into me, forcing me to tip my head up. “This kiss will mark you as mine.”
In the less than twenty-four hours I’ve known him, I’ve felt a thousand different emotions when it comes to this god—fear, hate, irritation, envy, frustration, grudging gratefulness. Most of those feelings run along the lines of anger, the burn of it rising and falling with each passing event.
I didn’t deserve this. Any of it.
So no one is more surprised than me when the word “mine,” uttered in that silky voice with his mercurial gaze intent on my face, stirs in my belly a quivering, like his precious butterflies are all trapped inside me.
No. Definitely no. Horrifyingly no. A very hard no. I am not getting fluttery over any god or goddess, but especially not this one.
With a tiny step backward, I frown at him. “What kind of gift is that?”
He looks right back at me. “This mark will give you safe passage through the Underworld so that you may return to the Overworld and not get trapped down there.”
“Oh.”
I don’t move back when he takes another step closer. That’s a gift worth receiving, even if it involves a kiss.
Hades takes one more step, and his unique bitter-chocolate scent wraps around me. He uses a gentle finger under my chin to tilt my face up to his, then leans down slowly. Only instead of a brotherly kiss somewhere neutral, his lips hover over mine, almost touching.
His breath is warm against my flesh before I realize what he’s doing, and I make a tiny sound in my throat.
Immediately, he freezes, gaze lifting to meet mine, though he doesn’t move away. “Problem?”
“Can’t you just kiss my forehead or cheek?” Gods, I sound like a petrified virgin. Which I am, but no need to sound like it.
After a second, he slowly shakes his head. “It doesn’t work that way. Do you want a different gift?”
No. This is a gift no one should knock back. Worse, I shouldn’t want to kiss him, but that curiosity thing has me firmly in its clawed grip. It’s not like I’m risking my heart.
It’s just a kiss, Lyra.
Decision made, I close my eyes and tilt my face toward his like a sunflower following Apollo. “Go ahead.”
He doesn’t move for so long that I almost open my eyes again, but then his lips touch mine.
Softly at first, but that’s not the surprising part. It’s that he doesn’t simply kiss me and then be done with it. Instead he brushes, then brushes again before pressing his lips to mine more firmly. He only lightly touches my chin with his fingers and my lips with his, but his warmth seeps into me…everywhere.
His lips gently part mine, shaping, teasing, becoming more demanding, and I don’t pull away. I’m too caught up in the everything of it. My head spins, and I don’t know which way is up, down, or sideways. I open under his touch and lean into him, and he doesn’t hesitate, the kiss taking on a heat and a life of its own as he plunders and owns and takes even as he gives.
And I don’t want to stop.
Because the god of death’s kisses are…delicious.
A craving stirs for more as his chocolate scent swirls around me, blending with the taste of him.
He makes a sound deep in his throat, then his kisses change again, turning hungry, hot, and menacing, like the predator I know he is, but it’s too late for me. Too late in so many ways. I’m lost in my response to him. Matching him kiss for kiss in heat and heady, intoxicating peril. Exposed and undeniably vulnerable and yet powerful in my own right because he groans.
Hades groans.
