The sight of his head and broad shoulders between my thighs tuned me from solid to liquid. He watched my cum splash out against my fingers, watched me jerk against the counter and whimper. Then, when I was finally done, he used a single finger to follow a trail of wet up my inner thigh and then licked it off his skin.
“Good girl,” he praised with dark eyes.
I narrowed my droopy eyes at him and closed my legs over his hand. “You sound surprised.
“Can’t surprise a man like me, little girl. I’ve seen it all.”
“Yeah?” I taunted, too vulnerable and hating his coldness. “Because you’re an old man?”
“No, ’cause I’ve seen more in one year of my life than most people ever see in the entirety of theirs. I’ve seen grown men weep, loved ones kill loved ones over money and greed, little girls get shot because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and other kids hungry in the fuckin’ dirt ’cause their parents are too weak ass to provide for ’em.”
“Seems like all you’ve seen is bad,” I ventured softly, my anger cooled by the travesty of his words.
His gaze collided with me like a hand at my neck, squeezing and lifting until I felt unbalanced, unable to breathe.
“Saw you in the parking lot of First Light with velvet fuckin’ bows in your hair lookin’ at me like I was your saviour. Saw you drunk as fuck outside Nova’s girl Lila’s house lookin’ like somethin’ I dreamed up even stinkin’ like you did. Saw you again in this club in hardly anythin’ at all charmin’ near everyone around you with that halo of good you wear in your golden hair… Little girl, I told you, I’ve seen it all. But until you, didn’t know if any of it was worth it.”
He closed the sliver of space between us then spread his whole hand across my chest, over the spot where the scar we shared rested beneath my shirt. “Need to make sure you were cool with it, the monster in real life. Now I do, you need to know. I was serious about not lettin’ ya go. And by that, I mean fuckin’ ever.”
I snaked my arms around his back and pressed him to me, relief and love so bright a thing in my chest, it burned.
“The first seventeen years of my life, I fasted. I kept my body clean and my spirit pure. Now, I want to feast like a glutton, spread lust on my breakfast toast, shoot violence and sip greed. And I want you to teach me, sinner man, because you’re the only man for the job,” I told him.
His workingman’s hands abraded the sensitive skin of my neck as he worked them up my throat to cup my face in his wide palms. My breath caught in my throat as I wondered if this would finally be the time he’d kiss me. If this would be the kiss I’d been waiting for in one way or another since I was seven years old.
His thumb ran the length of my jaw then up to pull down my full lower lip. My tongue came out to taste the salt of my sex on his thumb and his eyes flashed like neon lights. I gasped as he dipped down to glide his tongue over the inside of my pouting lip then groaned low in his chest like a beast after his first taste of blood, and sealed his mouth to mine.
He tasted like whiskey and smoke, hot and sinful on my tongue and I knew if wickedness had a taste, it would be him. I moaned as he tilted my head and plunged deeper, his tongue like hot silk in my mouth and his beard rough against my cheeks. I sank my fingers in his soft, tangled mane and clung to him mindlessly because no amount of little girl dreaming or hoping could have prepared me for the earth-tilting reality of Zeus’s mouth on mine.
When he pulled back, he smoothed that thumb over my kiss-bruised lips, his eyes reverent and dark with the kind of desires a virgin couldn’t understand. I shivered as he bent his knees so we were on eye level and said, “Welcome to the dark side, then, little Lou.”
The Waterford China was out.
I walked into my four-story mansion on the corner of Mulberry Rd. and Pinewood St. and noticed the set-up immediately through the open door across the marble-floored foyer. The room was littered with fractured gold shards of light from the low hanging, six-tiered chandelier over the formal dining room table and the soft swell of Beethoven played over the surround sound system.
Fuck.
I was tired to my bones after a sleepless night dreaming about the ways Zeus had touched me and the impossibilities that faced us now that we were going to be together. This was followed by a rough morning with Sammy, who had thrown a fit because his exhausted mother had forgotten to buy enough of his favourite sticky toffee pudding, so he’d had ice cream for breakfast instead. It seems like a small difference, but to a child with Autism, routine could mean everything and even though I’d tried to right his morning, poor Sammy was completely thrown off by the change and even Mute’s presence hadn’t brought him peace of mind. When I’d left, I was surprised but touched that Mute had offered to stay with Sammy and his single mum, Margie, who’d practically cried at the offer of help even though it was from a biker.