Theron wiped a hand slowly down his cheek and looked toward the one woman who had the stupid sense to remain in the room with him. “Where is Acacia?” he asked as calmly as he could.
Helene regarded him with flat eyes. And he saw then it wasn’t stupidity but strength born of circumstance. “Upstairs. Sleeping.”
He headed for the door and paused only when he realized she wasn’t about to stop him. “Why are you not afraid of me?”
“I’ve seen too much to be afraid of someone like you.”
“I sense your hatred for me and my kind. You could have kept me from her.”
“Could anything keep you from her?”
She knows. He turned and stared at her. Then slowly shook his head.
“Then my helping you is irrelevant,” Helene said. “But you’d be wise to remember one thing, Argonaut. Even the original heroes were part human like us. Misos from the very beginning. She’s not all that different from you. And neither are we.”
The woman brushed past, leaving him standing alone in the doorway to contemplate her words, a strange sense of unease and foreboding mixing in his veins.
Half human. Like me.
He glanced toward the stairs. His human side had been repressed for over two hundred years. Could that be what he was tapping into? And if he was, did that mean Acacia was the cause?
As he climbed the stairs two by two, he rubbed the heel of his hand against his sternum. And felt that pinch all over again.
After mere minutes of searching, Theron found Acacia in a room near the end of the hall. Helene had been right. He’d have found her without the woman’s help. He could have located her simply by breathing deep and focusing.
As soon as he stepped in the room and smelled the familiar scents of lavender and vanilla, his blood heated, and the dream that had become an unfinished reality back in her small house by the lake flared bright.
A warm glow from the dying embers in the fireplace fell over her body. She lay on her side, snuggled into her pillow, the thick blankets twisted in her long legs. Her shirt had ridden up, and the slightest hint of flesh was visible between the low waistband of her jeans and the edge of her blue cotton tee. His eyes ran over her bare skin, lower to her hip and over to the soft sweet mound of her ass. Thanks to their sultry night together, he knew exactly what that ass looked like…bare and beautiful and marked. His blood pulsed low and hot in response.
She is the One.
He frowned at the strange voice in his head. Yeah, well, he knew that already, didn’t he?
Forcing his gaze away from her beautiful backside, he ran his eyes slowly up her body, across her abdomen, over the swell of her breasts to her face, trying to tamp down the arousal turning him into a rocket launcher. Exhaustion lines marred her perfect skin, and blue smudges had formed beneath her lashes, but to him she was just as stunning as she’d been the night she rescued him from the daemons outside that club.
Just as beautiful, but thinner.
For the first time, he noticed Nick had been right. She looked exhausted. Her skin had lost its rosy color and she’d dropped several pounds in just the past few days.
She’s the One.
The voice grew stronger as he stood there staring at her. Would the Fates really be so cruel as to give him a half-breed destined to save his race as a soul mate?
His heart pounded in his chest as he turned for the bathroom and took a cold shower that did nothing to cool him down. Of course the Fates would curse him. Because he was of Heracles’s line. The one hero that was still, to this day, revered by some and reviled by most others. Heracles’s indiscretions were as numerous as his accomplishments, and every Argonaut of his line had been dealt a blow because of his selfishness. Why would Theron think he’d be any different?
Of course, it was still possible he was only attracted to Acacia because of the way they’d met and who he knew she was. And the fact she was a forbidden and tempting treat he’d never sampled. If she was his One, however, there was a sure way to find out.
He grew hard and hot at just the thought. As he toweled off, he debated his options. The one that stood out strongest wasn’t ideal, but he had to know, didn’t he? Once he got this absurd thought out of his mind, he could refocus on the real reason he was here.
Decision made, he pulled on his pants and quietly walked back into the bedroom. Acacia was still out, having shifted only slightly since he’d first stepped into the room. Tired to his bones, he slid into the big bed beside her and gently pulled the covers up around her waist. As he rolled to his side, he fingered a lock of hair falling over her shoulder and brought it to his nose.
He smelled grapefruit and remembered the shampoo in her shower. Her hair was soft and silky between his fingers. As silky as that between her thighs. The roar returned to his head. His erection responded to the visual in his mind, and he hissed in a long breath to tamp down the renewed arousal zinging along his nerve endings.