She pushed the door to the salon open, pulled him inside, closed it at his back, and led him to one of the many swivel chairs lining both sides of the room. Letting go of his hand, she turned, pressed her palms against his bare chest, and pushed him down. “Sit.”
“Cynna.” His voice was tight, his head still tipped down so she couldn’t see his face. “You need to leave. Get the hell away from here. Hades and Zagreus know where this place is.”
A shiver of panic snaked through her ribs, but she shook it away. Even if Zagreus knew where the colony was located, he didn’t know she and Nick were here. And by the time he figured it out, they’d be long gone.
Grabbing a comb and scissors from the table, she moved around behind him and tugged the comb through his hair. “We’ll leave later.”
His head lifted, and he shot her a what the fuck are you doing? look in the mirror.
She ignored it and continued combing. “Trust me. This will make you feel better.” She pointed toward her own head, then leaned forward and used the scissors to gently cut the hair at his nape. “Just getting rid of that blonde mess did wonders for me.”
His gaze bored into her through the mirror. She knew she’d just confused the hell out of him, but she didn’t care. She combed, snipped, ran her fingers through the back of his hair, cutting it short. For a moment, she considered using the clippers and shaving his head like he’d had it styled the first time she’d seen him, but then thought better of it. He had great hair. Thick. Soft. She didn’t want to cut it all off. Warmth slid through her belly and slinked between her legs when she remembered wrapping her fingers in all this silky goodness while he’d had her pinned to that wall and was thrusting inside her.
Oh man. That had been so very wrong. But it had felt incredibly right. And at the moment, all she could possibly think about was doing it all over again.
Sexual energy hummed through her body, amping her awareness of him as she worked her way around to his front, shaping the sides of his hair, running her fingers through the top and dropping cut strands on the floor. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. But his eyes watched her every movement. And though she couldn’t quite be sure because she’d yet to look directly at him, from the corner of her vision he didn’t seem as bewildered anymore. Yes, there was still confusion there, but she also saw heat in his amber gaze. And…whoa. Seriously?…awe.
She faltered. No one was awed by her. Horrified. Disgusted. Afraid, sure. But awed? Never.
She cleared her throat. Tried to think of something—anything—to say. “What happened to Ari?”
“He left.”
She waited for more, but he didn’t go on. And one glance at the mirror told her he was still staring at her with those intense eyes, following her every movement.
She swallowed back the sudden nerves, set the comb and scissors on the work counter behind her, then ran her fingers all through his hair, testing the length. Satisfied with the result, she stepped to the side so he could see his reflection. “What do you think?”
He stared at the image in the mirror, and she looked at what he was seeing. A bare-chested, sexy-as-all-get-out man who’d been through hell and survived, sitting on the small swivel seat, making it look tiny in comparison. But after several heartbeats, she discovered he wasn’t looking at himself. He was staring at her. And as her eyes met his in the mirror, and she caught the look of awe again in his, her pulse jumped, and heat spread all through her limbs, knocking that sexual energy up a blistering notch.
“I like it.” His voice was still gravelly, but this time it was laced with just enough arousal to make her inner thighs ache.
She dragged her gaze from his and cleared her throat. Running her fingers through his hair once more, she worked for nonchalant when she said, “It should feel lighter. No more wisps falling in your eyes. It’s—”
“Not mine. Yours. I like the brown. It’s real. It brightens your face. It’s stunning.”
Her fingers froze in his hair. No one had ever called her stunning. Not Zagreus. Not even her parents.
She stood still next to him, his warmth radiating around her until her skin prickled, his gaze watching her carefully in the mirror until her pulse was a roar in her ears. And in a rush, she realized what she was doing for him here wasn’t about making up for any wrong she’d committed. It wasn’t even about pulling him back from his father’s hold like she’d told herself in the tunnels. It was done purely to give him a piece of normalcy in a sea of unending misery. To show him that all wasn’t lost. To comfort him in a way no one had before.
She could count only two people in her life she’d ever wanted to comfort like that. Her mother and father. The only two people she’d ever truly cared for.