But with her breath ghosting against my lips, the thought of maintaining the distance between us is abhorrent to me. Unnatural. “I’d like to kiss you.”
“Not so chaste.” She smiles a little, but it’s a real smile. It makes her eyes light up. They crinkle at the edges. I never noticed that before. Even in the low light, she takes my breath away.
I lift my hand slowly, giving her plenty of time to react, and cup her soft jaw. Gods, everything about her is soft. I want to drag my mouth over every inch of her skin and see if she tastes as sweet as she smells. “I’m Aphrodite. Chaste is for others. It’s not for me.” I run my thumbnail lightly over the dip below her bottom lip.
She shivers again, but she leans into my touch. “This is a bad idea.”
“Undoubtedly.” I grin. “But you knew that when you agreed to come here with me. Are you really going to turn away before you satisfy your…curiosity?”
She looks down, and it takes everything I have to hold perfectly still and let her come to the proper conclusion on her own. We both know tonight will end with my mouth on hers. I don’t need to rush her about it. She exhales slowly, and when she raises her gaze, her jaw is set. “Show me.”
I kiss her. I’ve seduced more than my fair share of people—it’s practically a hobby at this point—but this feels different. Pandora is no innocent, but kissing her almost feels like it’s my first kiss ever. I don’t know how to explain it. I just want more.
She reaches a shaking hand up to sink into my hair and tug me closer. I use the shift to tilt her head back and deepen the kiss. I don’t even have to tease her mouth open. She parts her lips for me eagerly, her tongue sliding against mine in an almost teasing way that goes straight to my head.
A loud moan from the dais makes Pandora jerk back a little. We’re both breathing hard, our exhales shared in the minuscule distance between us. “We shouldn’t,” she whispers.
“I know.” I force myself not to kiss her again. She has to be the one to resume this. I had every intention of steamrolling her a bit…later on…but tonight I want her to choose this. To choose me. I lean forward and flick the shell of her ear with my tongue. “But that’s what makes it so hot, don’t you think? Knowing we shouldn’t…and doing it anyway.”
Her breath shudders out. A pause, barely more than a heartbeat, and then her hands are in my hair, sending it cascading down my back. Pandora kisses me like all the answers of the universe are on the tip of my tongue.
I don’t make a deliberate decision to move. One moment I’m awkwardly angling my body at her side, and the next I have one knee between her thighs and I’m pressing her back against the booth. She tugs my hair harder, kissing me deeper, even as my knee slides higher. Offering her what she obviously needs.
I brace one hand on the booth behind her and drop my other to the soft curve of her hip. The fabric of her dress infuriates me. I want it gone, want nothing between us, but this isn’t the time or place for that. I urge her to roll her hips and close the last bit of distance between us so she can grind on my thigh. I go still at what I feel. “Pandora.”
“Yes?” The word is barely more than an exhale.
I kiss her jaw, her throat, the spot behind her ear. “You’re so wet. Is that just for me?”
She shivers as if struck by a live wire. “Aphrodite—”
“Eris,” I say sharply. Adonis has been my only lover since taking the title, and he’s only ever called me by my actual name…but I can’t think about him. Not right now. Not ever again. The thought sinks into my chest, as heavy as an anchor. I have plenty of experience compartmentalizing, though. Dear old Dad taught me.
Not thinking about him right now, either.
“Eris.” Pandora’s little moan scatters all the thoughts in my head. She kisses me again, and then she’s moving against me, following my urging. Chasing her pleasure.
I want to give her more. So much more. Desire beats through me with a strength that makes me dizzy. I want to touch this woman with nothing between us, to taste her, to lose myself in making her orgasm so many times the world ceases to spin outside of us.
Hades’s club is not the place to do so.
Still…
I catch the back of her knee and lift her leg up and out the tiniest bit, opening her for me. I taste her moan and then she’s sliding against my thigh faster. She’s so wet, I can feel it through her panties on my bare thigh. Close. My pretty little Pandora is close.
In the end, I just can’t help myself. I tug the zipper of her dress open a few precious inches and delve my hand between her thighs. She gasps, but I don’t stop palming her pussy. I slide a hand under the silky fabric and… “Fuck, Pandora.” She’s slippery and wet against my fingers. My nails are too long, so I focus on her clit instead of pressing into her the way I want. “Come for me, beautiful.”
It takes less than thirty seconds for her to spasm against me, her cry loud enough that I kiss her again to muffle it. I can’t quite stop myself from sliding my fingers over her folds, exploring her carefully. I plan to do it with my tongue at the first opportunity.
Not yet.
Her head lolls against the back of the booth, and she blinks up at me as if she’s never seen me before. “Wow.”
“Yeah.” My voice is nearly as shaky as hers. “That about covers it.” I can’t stop myself from kissing her again, more lightly this time. “You are a gift.”
“Eris.” The lovely, glazed look in her eyes clears between one blink and the next. She licks her lips. “Don’t use this against him. Please.”
The plea is like icy water dumped over my head. Him. Hephaestus. My husband. The person I’m supposed to be seducing Pandora to work against. Except I wasn’t thinking about him at all once her mouth met mine.
“I won’t,” I lie. I like Pandora quite a bit more than I expected to, but in the end my only allegiance is to Olympus. I love Adonis and I still cut out his heart to sacrifice to this city. I’ll do the same to this woman, even if it pains me to think of dimming the soft happiness in her dark eyes.
It takes more restraint than I would have guessed to ease back and fix her dress. It takes even more to urge her out of the booth and walk through the dark room to the exit.
And putting her in a car to send home alone?
That takes the most restraint of all.
11
HEPHAESTUS
I hear my wife walk through the door a few seconds before I see her. It’s dark in her apartment, so she doesn’t notice me standing in the living room at first. Obviously she forgot she gave me access in the first place—and then forgot to revoke it.
She looks like she’s been out fucking. Her hair is a tangled mess, as if someone dragged their fingers through it, and her come-fuck-me dress is sliding dangerously low on her breasts.
Then I see the lipstick smeared at the base of her jaw. Even in the shadows, I know that shade. It’s the only one Pandora wears. “What did you do?”
To Aphrodite’s credit, she doesn’t jump or scream. No, the damned witch goes right for the gun she had fastened to the underside of the coffee table. She curses when she finds the spot empty. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?”
“I’m your husband.” Following Adonis’s instructions, I made sure I was seen coming here. Waiting for my wayward wife while she was off doing gods-alone-know-what. The poor sap of a husband. The skin of that role feels too tight, but Adonis was right before… In a game of perception, Aphrodite is a heavy hitter, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
Seeing her infuriates me. She was born with everything at her fingertips, and that privilege is there even now in the way she rises gracefully to her feet. This woman has wanted for nothing, and every second in her presence is an itch I can’t scratch, one designed to drive me mad. She’s the one who took over my life and trapped me in this marriage I don’t want.
She is my enemy.