Page 58 of Hercules

Was that what Lois struggled with? Back in those incredible moments, now framed in his mind in shades of red and amber from all the rockets they’d set off in each other… Had she been simply overwhelmed by all of this before he could catch up? Had she been ducking and dazzled by the same incredible star storm—and, beyond that, wondering what was going to happen after the light show faded?

When they had to think about something even more blinding.

Reality.

And, most especially, what her version of it was now going to be.

What could he say to her? How was he going to help her? Could he, at all? He had no idea how to slip into her high heels, symbolically speaking. Despite the thousands of ways they already seemed to feel and think alike, he’d never known a life without a clear perception of the pantheon as reality, and Zeus being his ultimate superior. What did he tell her about going back to a world where they were mostly overlooked as blockbuster movie machinations? Most concerningly, would she want to?

But most terrifyingly…

Is that what she wanted most of all?

Even after all their magic and connection and passion?

Maybe that’s what had turned her tears into nectar-heavy drops. She’d already accepted the impossibility of dealing with all this on a regular basis, though back in the confines of normal humanity. Of interacting with the intensity of him.

Which, he realized only now, was going to suck all the major balls in the universe.

More than he ever expected it would.

Well, shit.

Terrifying had been his correct modifier, after all.

His instincts, wanting to choose flight over fight, ordered him to reach for the handheld gaming console on his nightstand and disappear into blasting aliens for a few hours. But there was a bigger part of him now—a section of his soul that’d been buried under so much sorrow for ten years—that even acknowledging a word like terrifying was a better choice than killing pretend Martians.

He had no idea how long he sat there with all his thoughts, mulling them from every angle he might not have considered yet, when a sleepy murmur popped his reverie like the painfully tenuous bubble it felt like.

“Penny for your thoughts, Mister Hercules, sir. I’ll even offer a nickel or a dime.”

CHAPTER 16

“Not a whole dollar?” Hercules drawled, the smirk working its way over his lips as he slid under the covers with Lo. She was tempted to reply with a question of her own, intending to challenge why he hadn’t gotten in here before, but the prominent press of his arousal was her de facto answer. She really had needed some sleep and wouldn’t have been able to refuse him a few hours ago.

A few hours?

It felt like she’d been out for that long at least, but she had no idea. She could’ve been out for shorter or longer. The Underworld was odd, feeling like a Vegas vacation. Time was only a number, and there wasn’t much point fighting it. Still…

“How long was I out?” she queried, only a little concerned about the answer. Since Apollo was handling the grisly scene at the mansion, she didn’t have to worry about anything huge until Natasha’s flight landed in Tokyo. Intuition dictated she hadn’t been snoozing that long, even in this outrageously comfortable bed.

“Long enough” came his easy answer, along with his hand over her disheveled hair. She didn’t have the willpower to fight the tender move, despite how his hand pulled away with her knotted-up hair tie as a souvenir. “Do you feel better?”

Instead of a serious answer, she laugh-groaned, “Ugggh.” And then retrieved the matted elastic from his long fingers. “And there’s a sight worse than a used condom. I thought it came out when I shucked the wig cap.”

With a mild frown, Herc wrested it from her again. “Well it’s mine now.” And now had her scowling, as he playfully sniffed it. “Even smells good.”

A few inches below her weirded-out pffft, her heart did a dorky little flip. “I’m out of comebacks for something like that but keep your little spoil of war if you must.”

“War?” The roguish tilt of his smirk faded—before the entire thing went into way-too-somber mode. “And there’s the word I wasn’t expecting.”

“Oh, please.” She spewed it like another pffft, but there was no flipping heart to back her up this time. Still she tried one-lining her way out of the discomfort. “You know your way around human slang, big guy.”

“True. But was it? Just some slang?” His persistence, still so earnest, was beyond baffling. She was getting ready to issue exactly that charge until, “Or is that why you cried after we climaxed together, Lois?”

Okay, screw the sarcastic masking attempts. She shucked it all in favor of honesty, going for some seriously stunned blink-blinks. “Excuse the heck out of me?”

His hair tie-free hand, still formed against her head, worked deeper into her hair. The tips of his fingers felt like searing rods, as if attempting to match the blue laser intensity at the centers of his eyes.