Page 71 of The Games Gods Play
Then his hands are all over my body. Not in a sexual way, but clinical as he checks every single part of me for injury. Even so, warmth seeps through each point of touch.
Then he brackets my face with his hands. “Are you harmed, Lyra?”
Warmth coalesces inside my belly, which is turning squishier by the second. I should not be squishy for the god of death, no matter how much it sounds like he cares. That’s a terrible idea. “I’m fine.”
He eases fractionally. Just for a moment, his heated gaze holds mine, and…there it is. That sensation again. He’s standing before me, only touching my face, but his mouth might as well be on mine, tasting his fill.
Until his gaze drops to my neck and the sensation disappears in an instant as he goes stone still. I know he’s seen the cut Poseidon’s knife made. His eyes narrow, and that cold, leashed fury drops another ten degrees in temperature so that even my shivers have shivers.
Oh gods. This is what really mad looks like.
“She’s bleeding,” he says, the words clipped and short.
He’s not talking to me. He’s talking to Poseidon, who is still on the ground and swaying a little. The ocean god goes ashen with fear.
Hades walks over and squats down beside the other god.
He grabs the handle of the knife from Poseidon’s limp hand and lifts the blade up, the sharp edge catching the light from the moon and glinting as he uses it to gesture toward me without breaking eye contact with his brother. “She is mine. And I protect what’s mine.”
He expertly flips the knife, blade angled down on Poseidon’s thigh, and raises his hand in the air.
“Don’t!” My voice is soft, but Hades stops immediately, his gaze cutting to mine. “Not for me,” I add.
The god of death narrows his eyes in a way that makes a now-sweating Poseidon lean away, even though Hades is looking at me.
“Not for you?” he asks me silkily, his voice like sandpaper on fire by now. “Fine. For me, then. Because you are mine, and he dared to threaten you, let alone make you bleed.”
That word again.
That possessive fucking word. I should protest. I should push back, lash out against it. Because I don’t belong to anyone. Not even the Order. What I shouldn’t do is react with something darkly sensuous that slides through my body, waking me up from the inside in glorious, gut-clenching, heat-pooling folly. And I definitely shouldn’t like it.
I do. I like it. A lot.
No. No way. Wanting Hades will only ever end in sorrow.
“Exactly,” I say. “I’m yours. You chose me, and I was about to take care of it my own damn way.” Where the hells did those words come from? Calling myself his is the last thing I should be doing.
Something flares in Hades’ eyes. Something dangerous. Something so seductively triumphant, my body quivers instinctively.
I have no idea what reaction I expected. Definitely not for him to slam the knife into the ground beside Poseidon’s leg, making the god yelp.
“Go sleep it off, brother,” he says in a voice gone all fire and brimstone, the skin tightening over his cheekbones. “You lost. Deal with it.”
Hades disappears only to appear directly in front of me, wrap his arms around me, and disappear us both.
I know we’re back in Hades’ house in Olympus because of the red and black surrounding me, but I don’t know which room because immediately his body pins me against a wall and his lips are on mine.
And…oh gods. I’m in trouble. Because I’m kissing him back.
This is different from the last time.
That kiss started out with a non-lust-related reason and turned into something else. This? This is already something else.
It takes the heat and quivering already running rampant through me and shifts them into a thousand sensations that turn my mind hazy and set the rest of me on fire. I’ve never been kissed, not before him, but I’ve dreamed of it. I never imagined anything like this, though. Like Hades wants to devour me. Like I want him to.
The god with razor-sharp control is chipping at the edges.
Because of me.
