Needless to say, I was loving my life at Zeus’s side, in his house and in his bed.
I’d never smiled so much in my life as I had in the last month of living with him.
I was still smiling when I dragged myself out of his unmade bed to clean up a little in the bathroom. My body felt loose and limber as it only ever did rarely now and always with him. Even my face, gaunt from the chemo, glowed with post-coital satisfaction as I braced my hands on the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. My blond hair was tousled all around my face in such aggressive bedhead it made me laugh. I lifted my hands to rake them through my locks and my heart stopped.
Carefully, I continued to pull my fingers to the ends of my hair and brought them down to the sink basin. Thick ribbons of gold silk lay across my palms like an offering to a lover.
No.
No.
I knew this. I remembered it from the first time it had happened ten years ago when my nanny was brushing my hair and it had all started raining down around us like spilled thread.
It was happening again.
I was losing my hair.
A sob bubbled up my throat and burst open in the air.
No.
It was such a stupid, vain thing but I couldn’t stand to lose my hair, not again. Not when I was dating the most gorgeous man I’d ever set eyes on and he looked at me like I was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever dreamt of.
“No,” I choked out on another loud sob that echoed through the big bathroom.
I bent over the sink with my discarded hair in my hands and cried into the porcelain.
Thirty seconds later, Zeus’s rough hands were wrapping around my hips and he was folding his big body over mine.
“Little Lou, babe, what’s wrong with my girl?”
I cried harder.
I hated that he had to go through this with me. He’d already held my hair back while I puked into the toilet until all that was left was bile, putrid and green. He’d taken time out of his busy days to sit with me while the poison therapy churned through my veins, playing poker with me even though he always won and entertaining me with stories about his brothers and his youth. He drove me to every checkup and sat with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed as if he could intimidate the doctors into giving us better news.
And now this.
Now, I was subjecting him to a potentially bald girlfriend.
When I didn’t answer him, he gently pulled my body upright and into his then even more tenderly unfurled my fists. A low sound of sadness rumbled through his chest as he traced a finger over the lost hair in my hands.
“My girl loves her hair,” he muttered.
I nodded, too overcome to trust my voice.
He pressed his nose into the hair above my ear, ducking down slightly so he could do so. Then he started talking in a low voice I felt in my blood, his eyes burnished steel on mine as he traced over my face with two calloused fingertips. “You know what I love, Lou? Love the shape of your face like a heart in my hands, the way your lips look swollen and so fuckin’ lush even ’fore I kiss ’em. Love the way your ribs narrow and your hips curve so there’s this space for my big hand right at your waist. Love the skin behind your knees and ears, at the base of your throat and between your plump tits ’cause it’s so fuckin’ sensitive and it flushes such a pretty pink.”
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.