He stared down at her.
His heart drumming faster and faster.
Blood burning hotter.
It was now or never.
He needed to get the words out, because he felt he might explode if he didn’t.
The moon peeked out from behind a cloud, bathing her face in pale light, stealing his breath as her beauty hit him hard.
“Are you unwell?” she whispered as she gazed up at him.
He thought about how she had asked Nikos that same question, with the same tender concern in her voice. Showing affection to her former betrothed. His own damned cousin.
The anger rose a little more, flared a bit hotter in his veins, rousing his darker side. He fought it, wrestling for control, but it refused to obey him, and fear joined the rage that poured through him.
Fear he might hurt her.
He struggled to breathe through it.
“Keras?” Enyo’s gentle palms framed his face, the lilac scent of her growing stronger as she pressed closer. Her eyes darted between his as her brow furrowed. “I am sorry I took you there. Nikos was never more than a friend to me.”
“A friend like I am to you?” he bit out, his words sharp as a blade, nerves getting the better of him as they swamped him, as they roused a blur of feelings he couldn’t decipher, ones that tore him in several directions. He felt like a youth again as he waited, standing on trembling legs, afraid of the answer to that question.
She lowered one hand to his chest and glided it down his arm, cupped his hand and lifted it. He stared at her fingers as she stroked them over the ring he wore on his thumb.
“Not like that. Not like us,” she whispered.
He felt the nerves in her too, an echo of the fear that filled him.
He tried to tamp it down and master it.
Failed spectacularly.
“I’ve spent the last two hundred years thinking I still loved you.” Those words came out harder than he had meant, and he cursed as she snatched her hand away from his and stepped back, severing the connection between them.
Tears glistened in her jade eyes and she lifted her hand to her chest, covering the spot over her heart with it.
Godsdammit.
The hurt inside her beat inside him too, travelling through the fragile bond that had always connected them. Every instinct inside him screamed at him to take that hurt away.
He stepped into her, framed her face with his palms and gazed deep into her eyes.
“Now I am certain that I still love you.”
She just stared at him, her eyes wide.
This wasn’t going well.
“I love you,” he repeated, some foolish part of him saying that she hadn’t heard him and that was the only reason she hadn’t responded. He pressed onwards, nerves be damned, somehow finding the courage to keep marching forwards, to tear down the walls that had always been around his heart and expose it to her. “I liked you the moment we met, and I fell in love with you the first time you kicked my arse six centuries ago.”
Her black eyebrows shot up. “Damn you for not telling me!”
“I’m telling you now,” he countered, a frown marrying his eyebrows as urges erupted inside him, goading him into giving in to them.
Urges that had his blood thundering.
Heating.
She opened her mouth, no doubt to complain about the manner of his confession again.
Keras covered it with his own, captured her lips and silenced her with a kiss. His hand dropped to her nape and he gripped it as he pulled her against him, bending her to his will as he angled his head and kissed her deeper, willing her to respond.
She surrendered on a sweet moan, her lips moving against his, tongue sending a thousand thrills arcing down his spine as she opened for him and it brushed his.
He groaned and tugged her closer, so not even a molecule of air could exist between them, palmed her nape and kissed her harder as centuries of need spiralled out of control inside him. He tried to be gentle with her, afraid he would harm her as those needs got the better of him, as heat rolled through him and had him burning for her.
She seized hold of his shoulders and gripped them so hard pain shot down his arms, lancing his bones.
Took command of the kiss and addled his mind as her tongue caressed his, as she pressed closer still. The hard plates of her breastplate dug into his chest through his black shirt, and he cursed it as he lowered one hand to her back, burning with a need to feel her bare skin beneath his questing fingers.
Aware that out here in the garden anyone could see them.
He stepped with her, appearing in his room this time, couldn’t hold back the moment he realised that Ares wasn’t in the next room. His senses placed most of his brothers in the main room of the house, but Cal and Ares weren’t there. Cal must have taken Ares to see Megan.
Meaning Keras would probably have privacy for the rest of the night.
He groaned at the thought.
A night with Enyo wasn’t enough, but it was a start.
The first of thousands if he had his way.
He found the buckles on the side of her breastplate, fumbled with them and cursed when his hands shook so badly he couldn’t get the strap loose. He broke the kiss, his breath sawing from his lips as he attacked the buckle, as the strap finally gave. Enyo’s hands knocked against his as she worked on the second one, her breaths coming faster, her chest straining and drawing his gaze to it as the strap slipped free.
She peeled the breastplate from her and cast it aside, her hands flying to the buttons of his shirt as he drank his fill of her. He focused on his hands, steadying them as he inched them closer to her hips.
Shuddered as he made contact with the strip of warm, soft skin between the bottom of her cream bandeau and the belt of her skirt.
Her fingers stilled halfway down his chest, pausing at their work on one of the buttons of his shirt. Her frantic breaths bathed the exposed V of his skin as he smoothed his hands over her stomach, edging them upwards. She tensed, her breath hitching as he skimmed his thumbs along the undersides of her breasts. His heart hammered, a crazy beat against his chest that had him breathless. Anticipation curled through him, cranking him tighter, sending all his blood rushing south.
He struggled for air as he moulded his hands over her breasts, as he stroked the top of the bandeau and edged it downwards. He stared at her breasts, slowly exposing the creamy swell of them, that anticipation coiling tighter as he edged the material lower to reveal dusky pink nipples that beaded on contact with the cool air.
His mouth watered, the urge that flooded him too strong to deny.
On a low groan, he swooped on her left breast, relishing her soft cry as he tugged her nipple between his lips and sucked.
Her hands flew to his hair, fingers tunnelling into it, gentle one moment and fierce the next. She gripped him tightly, clutched him to her as she arched towards him, as his name fell from her lips on a whispered plea.
Keras closed his eyes and sucked, gripped her waist and tugged her to him, bending her over backwards as he gathered her against him. She groaned and clawed at his shoulders, his back, ripped the shirt right off it and sent a thousand volts of hot pleasure rolling through him as her hands met his bare skin.
She palmed his shoulders and then his nape, gripping it hard as she held him to her, as she arched to meet his mouth.
He moaned and lowered his hands, growled when he met the hard plates of her skirt. He had forgotten she wasn’t naked. He needed her naked.