It was hard to believe this was the same female who’d glared and scowled and plotted her escape every moment he wasn’t yelling at her. But things were different now. Ever since they arrived here a week ago, ever since that morning when he awoke and realized she cared for him, there’d been no more fear, no more animosity, no more anger. In its place there was nothing but heat and desire and need. A whole lot of need neither of them seemed to be able to sate.
“Yes, it is,” she said with a sexy little pout. “It’s Latin. A delator is an informant. All the Roman emperors used them.” She reached for letters from the table, flipped them over, and set them on her stand. “I met a few. Commodus had a special fondness for them. Used them to spy on his senators. Not a nice man, that Commodus. But he didn’t even totally trust his delators, and with good reason. They were a slimy, blood-sucking, greedy group of scum. That’s forty-three points for me.”
He stared at her in bewilderment from the couch, where he sat with his elbows braced on his knees.
When he didn’t write down her score, she looked up. “What?”
“Latin? Uh-uh. No way. I’m officially protesting this game. We pick one language and one era. Period. And we stick to it. I’m getting my ass kicked here because I’m nowhere near as worldly as you. And what the hell were you doing, hanging out with delators and emperors in the first place?”
She smiled. Really smiled. And was so damn beautiful, staring at him with that stupid grin, his chest constricted until it was tight as a drum. “Why are you grinning at me like that?”
“Because you’re gorgeous when you look at me like I’m nuts.”
“You’ve handed me my ass on a Scrabble board, sotiria. I don’t think you’re nuts. I think you’re smart as shit.”
She laughed but kept right on smiling up at him. A warm, wide grin that made one corner of his lips curl all on its own. “What now?”
“Nothing. It’s just…your face has totally changed in the last week.”
He brushed a hand against his jaw. “It’s too scruffy for you, isn’t it? I’ll shave—”
“Not that, silly,” she said. “I like the scruff. It’s sexy. No, I mean your face. It’s different. A week ago your eyes were still haunted. When I’d look at you, I could see the weight of the Underworld on your soul and everything you’d been through. Now, it’s barely there.”
His smile faded, and he looked away. Memories of his torture in Hades’s realm rushed back through his mind, sent sickness brewing in his stomach. And shame. A truckload of shame over what he’d done. What had been done to him. What Maelea would think if she even had an inkling of what had gone down in Tartarus when he was there.
“Hey. Don’t.” Her soft voice somewhere close brought him around. That and her hand, pressing gently against his shoulder. Soft. Warm. Alive. He eased back while she climbed onto his lap and took his face in her hands, stroking her thumbs over his cheeks, reminding him he was alive too. “Don’t go back there. I didn’t mean to bring it up for you again. I was just pointing out how different you are. How relaxed. That’s a good thing, Gryphon, not a bad one.”
He closed his eyes, forced back the bile threatening its way up. “Maelea—”
She leaned in and brushed her lips against his. Lips that shot sparks of heat and desire straight to his belly, warming him from the outside in. Lips he could lose himself in. Lips that were keeping him here, tucked into this isolated house in this tiny corner of the world where no one could find them. Where daemons and hellhounds and gods and the Underworld didn’t exist. Where he was losing his desire for vengeance with every passing day.
He wrapped his arms around her back, opened when she slid her tongue along his bottom lip, and let her dip inside his mouth to tempt and tease in that way he’d learned she liked to do. She tasted like the wine she’d been sipping as they played Scrabble, like the sin he knew he could coax out of her with just a little push. She was more than his soul mate, he’d realized over the last few days. She was funny and smart and so damn sexy, she took his breath away. Everything he’d been looking for his whole life. Everything he hadn’t realized he was missing. And when he was with her, he barely heard that buzz anymore. Barely heard Atalanta’s voice. Never heard either when he was inside her, which was his very favorite place to be.
She drew back from his mouth, stared into his eyes. And in her dark, onyx irises, he saw all the same emotions he felt reflected back at him. Who would ever have thought it? She, the daughter of the King of the Gods, and he a broken, tortured soul.
He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Remembered how she’d told him she’d been in love before. How she’d said love wasn’t worth it because it didn’t last. He knew regardless of who he was and what he’d been through, she cared for him. Even if he couldn’t see it, he could feel it. Would she be willing to take another chance if she knew she could be happy for more than fifty or sixty years? Would she put off her dream of Olympus to stay here with him?
His stomach churned, this time with nerves, not sickness, and as she slid down on his lap to rest her head against his chest, he stared into the fire and stroked her hair. She was warm against him. So soft. And they fit together as if they were made for each other. But then that was the point of the whole soul-mate thing, wasn’t it? He didn’t have a lot to offer her, but he knew he could keep her safe. And he had at least another five hundred years in him, assuming he lived through his face-off with Atalanta. If Maelea knew there was a chance they could be together that long, that he could protect her from Hades, would she be willing to try again?
“Why do you want to go to Olympus?” he asked while they sat staring into the fire, the Scrabble game they’d been playing all but forgotten.
“You know why,” she said against his chest.
He ran his hand down her hair, loved how silky soft it was against his fingers. “So you can be safe from Hades.”
“It’s more than that. Olympus is home for me.”
“How do you know it’s home if you’ve never been there before?”
“Because it’s where my father is. Where my mother is half the year. Where the other immortals live and where there’s no death. I’m so tired of death and dying.”
His hope faded. He couldn’t give her eternity. Not like the gods. He couldn’t even give her half that. And with him there would eventually be death. “You said you had to prove your allegiance to get there. How are you planning to do that?”
She pushed against his chest, eased off his lap, and sat on the couch at his side. He tried not to be disappointed she wasn’t touching him anymore. Couldn’t help it. “Well, that’s where the training I asked you to teach me comes in. Which, by the way,” she added with a frown as she glanced over her shoulder, “you haven’t done a very good job with.”
No, he hadn’t. Fighting and defensive techniques were the last things on his mind. Every time Maelea had suggested they go outside to the beach and he show her some moves, he’d distracted her with his hands and mouth and body until they’d both been too worn out to do anything but drop into each other’s arms and sleep.
“I thought you needed to know how to protect yourself from Hades,” he said with narrowed eyes. “How will that help you get to Olympus?”
She wrung her hands together in her lap. Wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Remember I told you Orpheus came looking for me? The truth is, I was looking for him. Or, well, someone like him. See, the only way to prove myself to the gods is to turn my back on my Underworld heritage. By killing someone powerful and important to Hades.”