He spun me away from the mirror and lifted me onto the sink then stepped between my thighs. I tipped my head back to look up into his solemn face because he had such a fierce grip on my heart, I was worried it would rip in two if I disengaged before he let me.
“You lose your moonbeam hair, your bombshell shape and your sexual appetite, I don’t give a fuck. ’Cause I love your soul better than I love anythin’ else and that includes the fan-fuckin-tastic package it comes in. You got me, Lou?”
I couldn’t breathe because he held my breath, couldn’t think because he’d rewritten my thoughts into ones of his own making. He controlled me but only to love me, to make me understand how I could love myself better than I already did.
Suddenly, I understood that I’d insulted him by being heartbroken about my hair. Of course, Z would never care if I were bald or pink-haired or blonde.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
He cupped his hands around my face and pressed a kiss to the tip of my nose. “Love you even when you don’t.”
Another sob catapulted out of my mouth.
He caught it in his as he kissed me, our tongues salty from my tears.
“My girl loves her hair,” he muttered again, scouring my face when he pulled back from me. “Listen, want you to do somethin’ for me.”
“Anything,” I said immediately.
He looked hard into my eyes then nodded and opened the drawer to the left of my hip, pulling out his electric shaver and plugging it into the wall behind me. He never used it unless it was to give his beard a quick trim. My man had a lot of hair, thick gorgeous waves of it that fell to his shoulders like gold-dipped mahogany. It was one of my favourite things to run my hands through the windswept tangles, to tug it while he feasted between my thighs and hold it tight while he kissed me.
I looked up with confusion in my eyes.
“Want you to cut it for me, Lou,” he explained.
“No!” I said immediately.
“Yeah, little warrior. See, it’s important to me you get that I’m in this with you. Can’t suffer what you suffer, can’t take that pain from ya like I want to more than fuckin’ anythin’. But I can stand with you. Don’t know if you’ll lose all that hair but if you do, I wanna do it with you.”
Tears burned in my throat as I tangled my fingers in the ends of his shoulder-length hair. “But I love your hair.”
“You love yours. Mine’ll grow back just like yours.”
My body felt saturated with love, water-logged with gratitude so great that I felt I would drown in it. “What could I have ever done in a past life to deserve a man like you?”
His eyes flashed as he leaned close. “This isn’t about that shit. We deserve each other ’cause we get each other. I know the heart of ya and you know the heart of me. Deservin’ or not deservin’ has nothin’ to do with it and it fuckin’ can’t ’cause if I get to thinkin’ ’bout that question, I lose every time.”
“Z,” I breathed, wrapping my legs around his hips and diving my hands deep into his hair. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t what you are.”
He grinned at me, amused and feeling indulgent. “And what’s that?”
“A true fallen angel, too bad for heaven, too good for hell, stuck on earth like a living divinity.”
“I think I’ll stick to bein’ a monster,” he teased.
But I was serious, and I let him know it by sticking my tongue out at him.
He chuckled. “You’re the fallen angel here, Lou, and I’m never fuckin’ givin’ ya back to Heaven.”
“I’m good with that.”
“Good, now come on. Take this fuckin’ mess off my head,” he ordered.
I watched him from my perch as he stepped back and turned on the bath. His glutes were round, powerful half moons at the base of his strong back and his thick thighs were dusted with dark hair that condensed at his groin and tapered off just above his wide, brown feet.
He was a god, something from ancient times when gods roamed the earth beside mortals and acted wicked and strong just because they fucking well could.
Just like my man.
He turned to me when the bath was set to running and declared, “You can wash my hair first. Like it when you do that for me.”
I liked it too. It was one of the little rituals we’d developed when I’d moved in and we had the opportunity to develop routines. We showered together whenever we could because Zeus liked my curves and he loved them slippery. He also liked my cunt and his fingers slipping among my folds, ostensibly cleaning but really getting me ready to fuck pressed up against the wall or bent over with my hands pressed against.