“Sad eyes?” He snorted. “That hardly sounds attractive.”
She lifted onto her tiptoes and kissed him on first his left eye, then the right. “I used the wrong word. I’m trying to say that your eyes are lovely, but also wise . . . and a bit wistful. You’ve seen so much in your years, so of course that shows. There’s a reason for the cliché, about the eyes being the window to the soul. You know, maybe that’s the word I wanted. Your gaze
is
soulful.”
Taking her face within his palms, he tilted it upward until their eyes locked. “What do you see in my soul right now, fair Daphne?”
She grinned up at him. “Ah, so you’re asking me to speak
your
mind? Saving your words again, are you?”
He brushed a kiss across her lips, clasping her upper arms and dragging her much closer. “I’m asking an Oracle for a reading.”
She studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then glanced away. “Your eyes are filled with heat, Leonidas. Heat and . . . something else.”
He knew he should stop the teasing, but for some reason he wanted to hear her say it. “And that is . . . ?”
“There is love in your glances, my lord.” She still wouldn’t look at him.
“Love for you, Daphne. You. As long as I’ve lived, as much as I’ve endured in my centuries of roaming this earth . . . I have never cared for another as I do you. I fear it a sin, sometimes, the way I love you beyond reason.” He slid fingertips beneath her chin, tilting it upward until their gazes locked again, wanting her to remember the words, always. “No matter my fate, even if I am walking the fields of Elysium soon, my love, I will take those feelings with me. I will not forget you if I am forced into the next life, beyond the one we share here now. No matter the distance, I will hold you in my heart.”
Daphne buried her face against his chest with a sharp cry. “Leo, please don’t talk like this.”
He stroked a hand over her twining braids, tenderly toying with one of her ribbons. “I don’t want to upset you, only for you to know my feelings. I may not be with you much longer, that’s a fact. There are things I must say . . . you must know the depth of my love, before I go.”
“No!” She stepped out of his embrace, shaking her head adamantly. “No. I refuse to believe that we won’t solve this problem.”
“The possibility of defeat is a consideration in any military campaign.” He gave her a rueful smile. “Why do you think I took my three hundred bravest and strongest to Thermopylae? Defeat was inevitable, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t turn that fact to our advantage.”
“This isn’t a battle—this is your life, Leonidas.” She placed an earnest palm over her heart. “And my life with you. We can fight together.”
Leo smiled. “Fight? So then it is a battle.”
“Oooh, don’t be so
frustrating
.” She stomped on the sandy path. “I am saying that we are not powerless here. I’m a demigoddess; you are one of the greatest warriors who has ever lived. We have tools and comrades and even Olympian gods we can beseech.” She lifted both hands toward the night sky. “And the Highest God himself! He of all, Lord of all, might take mercy.”
“I’ve prayed that He would bring us together for a year now.” Leo grasped her hand, slowly beginning to lead the way to the gazebo again. “And for most of that time, I’ve been without you.”
“But we are together, a couple, so He did answer your prayers.”
Leo wanted to confess it to be the cruelest fate of all that God had given him Daphne, only to reveal that he would lose her for eternity. But a part of him still held faith that perhaps there was a grander design, one in which he would indeed have Daphne for good. And that maybe, if they were blessed enough, Ari’s handiwork could stanch the flow of mortality’s tide.
But he told her none of that. For once they were happy and together. He planned to capitalize on that boon.
“I’ve upset you and that wasn’t my intention. I have something beautiful to show you.” He led her farther along the path. “Come with me now.”
Daphne stared at the moonlit structure, blinking in surprise. Never in all her time visiting the Angel Plantation had she seen the gazebo. It was bathed in pale light from the nearly full moon overhead, gleaming and twinkling like a crystal chandelier. It had turrets at the top and seemed to be made entirely of glass, like something out of a fairy tale.
“Leo, it’s magical. Breathtaking.” It was like a small diamond temple, here in the deepest part of the American South, a mysterious place where it seemed anything might happen. “Maybe wood nymphs dwell inside it.”
“Ah, this would explain my urge to show it to you, my lovely nymph.” He slid a hand about her waist from behind, splaying his big palm along her belly. “Do you want to go inside?”
She turned in his arms. “Can we? Or should we ask the Angels first?”
“Jamie is the one who showed it to me.” Leo smiled faintly. “Told me of its romantic appeal, and of its useful location . . . so far removed from the house.”
She laughed. “In other words, he brings Sunny down here.”
“Apparently our young newlyweds visit rather frequently,” he answered, stepping around her. “But not tonight, as our host is away. So we will be all alone, out here in the darkened woods.” He gave her a significant look, then opened the door and held it for her.
Inside was just as breathtaking, with shards of light dancing off the river and onto the glass panes, then reflecting that moonlight in every direction. She stared up at the high, pointed ceiling. “It’s like an ice castle. That’s what it reminds me of.”
Leo’s arms came around her from behind. “I have you where I wanted you all night . . . alone and in my embrace. That’s the best part of all.”
“You’ve been randy as a bull ever since Ari healed you.” And she liked that fact. Very much. His arousal pressed into her backside, and the strong hands he held about her waist moved easily upward. He cupped her breasts in both hands, just holding them for a moment. She heard him draw in a tight, excited breath; he slowly released it against the top of her head.
He said nothing aloud, in his usual hushed Leonidas kind of way, but spoke volumes with his touch and his body. With shaky hands, he slid the sleeves of her gown off her shoulders. The garment, loose to begin with, cascaded to the floor. She stood naked in the moonlight, Leo breathless and poised behind her. Closing her eyes, she waited for what he would do next, and was answered with the scratchy, tickling bristles of his beard along her nape. He kissed her at that tender spot, which was fully exposed because of how she’d worn her hair atop her head.
He trailed hot kisses from her neck and down across her right shoulder, bending low from behind her. “Your skin tastes like the morning dew . . . or what I’d imagine it would be like. Fresh, sweet . . . exhilarating.” He rested his cheek against her bare shoulder, sighing lustily. “And you still smell like peaches.”
He was clearly eager to touch and arouse her, but she wanted to give him something, make his body sing as he’d done hers earlier in his study. A glass gazebo in the woods wasn’t precisely the best place to make love for the first time, but it was a grand spot for pleasuring a man. And given how he was already trembling with intense arousal, she could only imagine how he’d respond in her arms.
Without worrying about her nakedness, she spun in his grasp, facing him. His eyes were like dark pools, gleaming in the moonlight, filled with a kind of raw lust she’d never seen in his gaze before. Desire she’d glimpsed there, yes. Longing, too—sometimes even painful longing. But right now there was an almost primal hunger blazing in Leo’s dark eyes, perhaps because the two of them were finally so close to making love. Or perhaps because his body still hummed with supernatural power. Either way, she loved how overheated he’d become.
But he still wrestled to keep himself under command, she could see it in the way he struggled to regulate his ragged breathing. But the thing was, she didn’t want him to calm down, or rein himself in.
For once, she wanted Leonidas of Sparta to do something he so rarely did. To lose control of his senses, his reactions, his words. She wanted to take him beyond the place where he kept himself disciplined. She wanted to love and pleasure him until he became
loud
. Loud in his moans, loud in his need . . . and loud as he cried out her name.
Leo, of course, wasn’t yet privy to her plan. In fact, he cupped her cheek, and bent downward as if to kiss and pleasure her some more. She pressed lightly against his chest. “No, Leo,” she told him huskily, “this time it’s your turn.”
His dark brown eyes flew open, filled with shocked excitement. He swallowed, hand still touching her cheek. “My turn?”
“Turnabout is fair play, my king,” she said with a flirtatious smile, already reaching for his belt.
Daphne was in command of him. A new experience, a highly charged one: Leo was allowing a female to rule him in an act of intimacy. He, a king, ruled by a woman. Not just any woman, of course, but the one he’d desired for more than a year now. She’d made quick work of his pants and shirt, and then indicated a wicker settee with cushions. It was a lounging chair, unusually large, and now he lay sprawled across it, as she’d requested.
His legs were slightly parted, his thick cock pointing upward like a compass to the stars in the sky above.
“There. You’re just where I wanted you,” she whispered, settling beside him. He tensed immediately, his body barely held on the tightest leash of desire. Any moment and he knew he’d lose it, perhaps before she touched him.
That was her plan, was it not? To match the earlier pleasure he’d given her.
He panted at the thought, his throat dry and tight. “Daphne,” he groaned, crying out her name like a plea. With both hands, he reached for her, pulling her closer. He wanted her atop him, below him, near him. He didn’t care, so long as he could just touch her with his own body.
She hiked a leg upward, and suddenly she was astride him, her hips above his own. Because of how he lay on the lounging chair, her position gave him a spectacular, almost head-on view of her breasts. How could she ever claim they weren’t large enough? They certainly weren’t overly abundant, but they were ripe and delicately rounded in a way that suited his tastes perfectly. He reached a hand to caress the right one, feeling oafishly large in comparison to her. His dark hand against her breast was more like a paw—he such a bear of a man beneath her much more petite frame.
She covered his hand with her own, encouraging his caress, and they worked her flesh almost in unity, she guiding the pleasure, he reaching a frenzied point of need for her. He would come soon. He was already teetering on the edge, but he wasn’t ready, and wasn’t inside her.
“Is this truly the place for our first time?” he asked on a moan, hoping to slow his body’s spiraling reaction. “Daphne?”
Daphne moved his hand from her breast and bent low, kissing his chest. She pressed her mouth to first one of his nipples, then the other, suckling each lightly. Her hands splayed in his curling chest hair, stroking.
“Daphne,” he groaned in reaction. “Love . . .
Daphne
.”
After a moment, she sat straight up atop him. “In answer to your question, Leo, no, this isn’t the place for our first time making love. I wish to lay abed with you for hours after that.”
Leo nodded in silent agreement.
“However, this is the perfect place to do one thing for the first time.” She gave him a slow, wicked smile, and then slid down his body until her mouth was level with his stiff erection. With the sweetest of kisses, she brushed her mouth across the tip, then darted her tongue out for one quick touch.
A shockwave rode straight to his groin, tightening his balls, making him release a bit of seed. He felt it, and she obviously saw, because she lapped it up with her tongue—and then she slid that sweet mouth over the blunt head of his cock.
Deep into her mouth, she drew him, sucking and putting delicious pressure on his arousal. He rode upward into it, his hips lifting off the cushions.
He pressed his eyes closed, moaning with unapologetic loudness, murmuring her name as she sucked and teased him. Over and over, he cried out, nearly senseless with lust.
She moved her mouth to his tip and then released him. “My quiet and contemplative Leonidas! Hear how noisy you’ve become.” She laughed, sliding a hand to caress his twin sacs.
“My shy and virginal Daphne,” he countered hoarsely, “see how bold you’ve become.”
“We bring out the best in each other,” she said, then as he’d done to her earlier, whispered a breath across the damp end of his cock. She blew on it, light as a feather stroke, drawing him into her mouth again.
Pressure built in his groin, sweet release so imminent he could taste it—and yet he half prayed that he could prolong his erection because he never wanted this moment to end.
His mistake was in daring to open his eyes. That image of nude Daphne, bent over him and making love to him with her mouth, was a full-on assault to his restraint. The look of exquisite pleasure on her face, how flushed it was, and her eyes half-closed, was his undoing. It was the most singularly gorgeous sight he’d ever glimpsed.