His chest cinched tight as she shifted her weight and rolled him over, as she flexed her hips, as she claimed his mouth all over again.
He slid his hands down to her slim hips and helped her ride. Dark hair fell in a curtain around their faces. He brushed it back. Let her take control. And gave himself over to her the way she’d done to him.
It wasn’t a mystery anymore. He knew what that connection he felt to her was. Could read it so easily, now that his mind was clear and the voice was gone. Would have known the first time he’d tasted her if it weren’t for that damn interference.
She was his soul mate. Everything he’d ever wanted. The only person who could calm him, who could make him feel again. The woman he would eventually lose when she finally got her dream and was accepted into Olympus.
“Touch me, Gryphon,” she whispered against his lips. “Anywhere. Everywhere. I just want you.”
He was wrong. He did have a heart. A heart that had reawakened, all because of her. And after everything he’d been through, after all the torture and agony and bitter misery he’d endured, he knew none of it was going to compare with what would happen to that heart when he finally lost her for good.
Emotions closed his throat. All he could do was wrap his arms around her, drag her as close as possible, and take what little she could give him now.
And give the same back to her tenfold.
***
The wind rustling the thin curtains through the open window brought Maelea’s eyes open.
Darkness pressed in, shards of moonlight illuminating the room in ribbons of white. As waves lapped gently at the shore outside, she glanced down at Gryphon, draped over her, his head pillowed on her chest as he slept, his legs tangled with hers beneath the sheet, his arm wrapped around her waist as if he never wanted to let go.
Warmth spread through her chest when she remembered how he’d touched her with those big hands, how he’d pleasured her so completely, how he’d looked at her not with dead eyes, as he had before, but with emotion-filled pools of blue, as if she was the only thing in the world he needed.
She ran her fingers through his blond hair, traced the puckered edge of a scar near his temple that she hadn’t noticed before. In sleep the lines on his face relaxed, the stress and anxiety he carried with him eased. He looked more childlike than warrior, more human than Argonaut. Cocooned here with him in this secluded house, in the quiet of the early summer evening, she wondered how she could ever have been afraid of him.
He was not at all what she’d thought. He wasn’t cold and unfeeling. Wasn’t the monster those females at the half-breed colony had talked about. Wasn’t anything but lost and alone, just like her.
Her chest tightened, and she drew in a breath to ease the ache around her heart. She’d accepted her lot in life long ago. Knew that being alone was part of the hand she’d been dealt. She just hadn’t expected to find someone who shared her feelings, who understood her, now of all times, when she was finally ready to make her move to Olympus.
Carefully, so as not to wake him, she eased out from under his weight. He grunted, shifted to his belly, tucked the pillow under his head, then resumed the steady draw and push of air as he relaxed back into sleep.
He was really gorgeous, asleep in her bed, looking so big and masculine against the feminine furnishings. The sheet lay angled low across his muscular back, the white of the cotton such a stark contrast to his olive skin and thick blond hair. In the moonlight the Argonaut markings on his forearms stood out, reminding her he was more than just a man who’d brought her to four—no, make that five—blistering climaxes in the last few hours. He was a hero, regardless of what had been done to him in the Underworld. One of Zeus’s appointed heroes.
Zeus.
There was a mood buster, if ever she thought of one. Her father. The King of the Gods. The male who’d sired her but had done nothing to help her over the long years of her life. The god who hadn’t once even acknowledged her presence. She knew why—because doing so would break the agreement he’d made with Hades, thereby ensuring Hades wouldn’t retaliate against her mother’s treachery—but it still stung. And now she was trying to get to his realm. Trying to prove herself to someone who obviously didn’t care about her. Was she completely insane or just slightly fucked in the head?
Scowling at her obvious stupidity, she moved into the closet, quietly pulled out her thin robe, belted it around her waist, and headed for the stairs.