Page 48 of Hercules

Nothing in those aqua fires was disclaiming a damn thing. His line had been, baldly and boldly, a challenge.

Which almost forced her smile to climb into a full laugh. She was an aspiring screenwriter, for the love of bad coffee. She ate every syllable of challenge for breakfast on the daily. But they hadn’t gotten to that part of the conversation yet, giving her all the freedom in the world to just cock the smirk higher while throwing her hands over her head, plopping them into his obscenely plush pillow pile.

“You offering to be my new Willy Wonka, demigod?”

He tilted his head, stealing yet a few more molecules of her breath. “Depends. Did you bring your golden ticket, erastís?”

Thank God for the pillows. Because grabbing them meant her all-over shiver wasn’t as noticeable. Or so she thought, before catching the arrogant quirk at one side of his impossibly full lips.

“Ermmm…” she still managed to utter. “I’m not quite sure. Maybe we should look for it?”

His mild mirth faded. His whole mien was back to something between the hard soldier who’d protected her in the patio and the taciturn giant who’d glared at his brother before chugging Olympian nectar.

And holy acropolis stones, she was here for every hard, glorious edge of it.

“Or maybe I should just search all your…cavities.”

And every hard, glorious thing that went with how he growled that.

CHAPTER 13

“Is that what you want, Lois?”

The question was necessary. Still Herc took the better part of the next minute to let it really sink into her. Not that any fucking second of it was easy, with his pants about to burst at the crotch and his pulse climbing toward a thousand beats per minute.

She saw all that now…didn’t she? Surely she felt it, at least—but he needed more. He needed her to know it.

The resolution blasted him with new boldness, powering into the fingers he curled under her chin. He caressed her there, cherishing the glide along her throat and then back up, before pressing her jaw with more intention.

Needing her to know.

To look up and see him.

And to listen…

“I’ve got to hear you say it, Erastís.”

She blinked, looking genuinely perplexed. “You don’t know already?”

“And do you know how long it’s been for me to even think about doing this with a woman, let alone acting on the craving? To trust myself with all of it? To give myself permission…even knowing that once I’m set free, I have no idea what’s going to happen?”

Under any other set of circumstances, her light music of a laugh would tempt him to reply with a dorky grin. Not now. Nothing fucking close. Not in this moment, with his damn heart on his sleeve, his guts on the floor, and his mind still searching for more obtuse metaphors.

He had to just keep focusing on the strands of compassion beneath her lips, as she tenderly murmured, “You playing Guess The Secret Message here with me, Lion Man? You need me to name what beastie you’ll morph into? Or time period we’re going to zap to?”

“Inventive, but no.” He swooped his thumb up in a slow arc across her cheek. “I want to take you to heaven, sweetheart…but if my ways take you to hell instead…”

His rough swallow stood in for the words that couldn’t be said. The depth of shit he was already feeling for this incredible ignition of a female. Feelings that shouldn’t already be so sewn into his spirit…

“A worse hell than even your actual ’hood?”

And now, after that adorable line, embossed on his heart.

Things he jammed back down as soon as the recognitions blazed in. In their stead, he resigned himself to silence in the moment. What expressions, if any, could properly take their place?

Maybe he had to make her see it all, instead. But how, when all he could do was that?

Staring his fill. Ordering himself to see, in every possible way he could.