Page 46 of Hercules

“Well,” he finally husked, sending warm heavy air across the sensitive surfaces of her lips. “Wow.”

She answered with a puff of similar breath. Though short and light, it was charged…and thick with anticipation. “That’s one very good way of saying it.”

Both corners of his mouth quirked for a second. But only that. All too quickly, he was again somber and rapt, just before lifting his other hand to capture the open side of her face.

“I don’t regret doing it. That’s the truth, Lois. But if I crossed a line—”

She pushed forward, sealing their lips faster and fuller than before. Though Herc’s answering groan was dark and deep, he still didn’t make the slightest attempt to add tongue. Though Lois’s melty insides were now joined by her sinking hopes, she was determined not to give up—even when the maddening man made a thoroughly vexing call to back down again.

“Oh my God, Hercules.” She impaled him with a glare despite the irritation rising in his own. Behind her look was the full force of her ire, daring him to call her out on using the address he hated—and would do so again if she had to. “You want a list of all the other lines waiting here?”

A new shake of his head, more noticeable than the first. But not by much. New to the gesture were the puzzled creases above and beside his eyes. “The…other…”

Lois leaned over, clutching hard at his head this time. And smashing her very needy, very open, mouth atop his.

“Mmmnnnhhh,” Herc grunted at once, until even that grinded into silence as she swiped his tongue with all the passionate avarice in her spirit. But things inside her were muted too. Her frustration and fury were ejected from her emotional queue, decreed to make room for more important VIPs. The fire in every cell of her blood. The clamor in every tissue of her crotch. Desire she’d never experienced before. Need that she’d never allowed.

Exigency that she let him see, in all its heated beggary, as soon as they dragged apart to get more air into their laboring lungs.

Once she had enough air to form understandable syllables, Lois locked the demigod’s gaze with her own. Though she kept her hand at his face, she trailed a new touch down to the middle of his sternum…where she pushed with definable intention.

“Cross my lines, Herc,” she pleaded. “All of them.”

For a long moment—longer than she wanted to permit or understand—the big guy just kept studying her. Boring both his aquas into her as if he were looking for the freaking Titanic between her insecure blinks and hesitant swallows. Why wasn’t he saying anything in return? Or even doing something? If he didn’t want her to that extent, all he had to do was—

Her own yelp was her interruption, as soon as the massive male swept up to his feet—and in the same rush of motion, hauled her all the way off hers.

“Oh,” she finally gasped out, frantically shifting her hold to his neck when he positioned one beefy arm under her back, the other under her knees. “Oh, my.”

In tandem with her stunned little cry, the man made sure to tuck her in close enough to feel his chest-deep rumble. But he bettered the lusty rumble by weaving it with words, as well.

“Not yet, sexy Scribester. But I’ll let you know when.”

“Ah…let me know when…about what?” she stammered, already miles past distracted by the darkness into which he carried her. It wasn’t an exaggeration. They were engulfed in thick black shadows and what she sensed was tighter space. A hallway, perhaps?

A hallway to a bedroom…she hoped.

Sometimes hopes weren’t empty.

After only a few of the man’s floor-eating steps, his movement seemed to stimulate more banks of the cutting-edge lighting system—this time, allowing her to see the gorgeous sprawl of a room in which the man spent his nights. When he wasn’t out corralling supernatural monsters or robbing Amazonians of their war belts, of course.

It was like nothing she expected.

To be fair, her mental forecasts of the subject had only gotten the last twenty seconds to develop—but still.

Still.

“Oh…my.”

The blurt tumbled out before she could think differently—not a great time to make such a slip when the man who’d ordered her restraint was still hoisting her four feet off the Emperador brown tile.

But not for long.

At the split second she expected the peeved rumble in Herc’s chest to become a miffed directive on his lips, he didn’t opt for words to for his next communication. Had she expected something different from the demigod famous for his actions, not his soliloquies?

On the other hand, had she expected him to toss her into the very middle of his broad bed with as much ease as he’d hurl a spear into a charging lion?

Wrong comparison.