Page 56 of Hercules

Petitions that all but invited his lascivious challenge. His gorgeous little lover was swimming in so much arousal she couldn’t summon even a second’s worth of retaliation.

“I—I need it…”

He growled with endorsing warmth. So much better than a retaliation. He held back another taunt, sensing her trail-off was actual preparation for more.

“Herc. Please! Finish me before I lose my…please.”

It was worth waiting for, though now it all but demanded a new comeback—or so he decided before the stress of her last word fizzled instead. Dissolved because of salt: the tearful surge that spilled from her whispering lips.

And all he could think about was easing her struggle. Supplying what she needed.

Finishing her…

As she did the same for him.

But not just massaging an orgasm out of his dick. The throbs from her sex were like drums from her heart, filling his senses with the same passionate power. The surrendering sag of her body brought better satisfaction than anything he’d ever killed or subdued.

And the connection of his body to hers…

It was far more than their linked flesh.

A bigger flood than all the seed he flowed into her.

It was the explosion she rocketed into him too. The consummation of more than her climax. The pounding of more than her pulse. The size of something more than just this searing sex.

It was threaded into the new sounds she shared with him. Every sigh and mewl and breath.

But then it was also heavy in the tears that began to fall from her. Just a few at first, which he wrote off as additional parts of her orgasm in the ways that some females couldn’t help—except that they didn’t stop there.

The salty shower got heavier. Harder.

He almost jolted back, ready to ask if he’d seriously pushed too hard this time. Instead he was pulled down, gravitated closer to her by a force he couldn’t fight let alone recognize…

Until he was folded all the way over her.

And the contact of their every pore told him what this really was.

All her unguarded soul. All her fears twined with her hopes. All her frailty, so often guarded by her bravado. All the corners she usually concealed because of her strident survival mode. The labors she was having to face, her service to a pop star even including impersonations of the woman.

“Ah.” His quiet word in her ear was an affirmation that he understood now. That the heartbeat he felt, even through her back, thrummed a message he’d already interpreted—because he understood it with vivid empathy. “Here they are, then. My sweet Erastís. Here are all your beautiful things…”

Before he finished extending that syllable, she cried even harder. And he let her. And he held her, so close and constant, telling her how grateful he was for her precious trust. The exposure that, even now, probably felt like getting naked in the middle of Times Square instead of the center of his bed.

But even if she did it there, he’d protect her.

He almost spoke exactly that, but the poor woman had been hit with enough outrageous scenarios for one night. Woman. He rammed the repetition through his senses again, forcing his brain to take thorough note of it. She was a human female, not a half-Olympian who could go for four rounds from his cock and not need a significant respite. That was even without the chaos of everything that’d led them here.

As soon as she sagged against his forearms, his guilt doubled. Still, she was the one to rasp first, “I’m so sorry. That’s not…um…typical for me.”

“Then I thank you all the more for it,” Herc quickly murmured. “And as far as apologies go—”

“Don’t you dare take back anything if it has to do with your penis,” she snapped. “Nothing’s going to ruin the best night of my entire life, even your crazy contrition complex.”

A huff left him before he knew it. “I don’t have—”

“Twelve insane Labors? And probably signing up for more? And this ink up your arm to make sure you keep a tidy track on all of them?”

He didn’t fight her tug on his left wrist, because the nod she added to it was too much fun to watch. He was glad she was more fascinated with his tatts instead of the rest of him, because he couldn’t contain the grin teasing his lips or the new arousal twitching his cock.