“What the…?” Talisa pushed her hands against his chest. She glanced around the verandah with its potted trees and patio furniture then looked back to him when she realized where they were. “If you wanted to get me off alone, all you had to do was ask.”
“I’m not staying. But you are.” He let go of her and jerked both balcony doors to his suite open. “Where I know you can’t get into any trouble. Tomorrow, when it’s light, I’ll take you beyond the border so you can open a portal back to your realm. Where you belong.”
“Where I belong,” she muttered at his back. Then louder, “Thanks, but no. If you’re leaving, I’ll just go back to the party.”
He rounded on her. “You are not going back to that party.”
“Why not?” She lifted her chin, challenge reflecting clearly in her violet eyes. “Just because you don’t like to have fun—”
“Fun? You think what those satyrs are doing down there is fun?”
“Satyrs?” Her cute little brows drew together. “What satyrs? I didn’t see any—”
Moans echoed from the courtyard below. Low moans that definitely weren’t the kind nymphs made when they were in pain.
“Oooh.” Talisa’s eyes widened, and she glanced over her shoulder toward the balustrade. “Those are maenad nymphs, and that festival is really a...”
“Yeah, now you get it.” He clenched his jaw, thankful she didn’t move toward that balustrade for a better view. The only thing he was thankful for tonight.
She turned back to face him and crossed her arms under her ample chest, accentuating her cleavage, dammit. The one part of her he didn’t need to be looking at. “I’d think most people would expect that to be right up your alley.”
He huffed and moved farther away from her. “I have no interest in their silly orgies. And making offerings to a stupid god is as useless as praying for the Fates to stop meddling in shit that doesn’t concern them.”
When she didn’t answer, only continued to stare at him, a tingle rushed down his spine, one that made him uneasy.
He’d said too much. Done too damn much these past few days. Bringing her here had been a giant fucking mistake, just as that irritating voice in the back of his head had warned it would be. If he hadn’t been so obsessed with the idea of her, he would have known that sooner.
But now that he was thinking clearly, he could see the truth staring him in the face.
She wasn’t the same. Too much time had passed. And he was done being a patsy for the gods.
“Don’t go down there.” He moved into his bedchamber, intent only on getting away from her before he did something he’d regret later. “The silens might not look like satyrs, but they are. And though they’re docile most days, they’re unpredictable in a frenzy. Even with your super-hero strength, you’re no match for a pack of horny beasts.”
He crossed the hardwood floor and made it all the way to the heavy oak door before her voice stopped him.
“No, I’m definitely no match for a pack of horny beasts. Just a grouchy prince. But I guess you’re no match for me, are you? Since you’re running.”
He stilled with one hand on the door, that simmering heat he’d been fighting threatening to flare inside.
“What was it you said to me in the tower?” she asked somewhere behind him. Somewhere close. “Oh, I remember. ‘Running won’t save you. Not from your destiny, and not from me.’ Seems a little appropriate right now, don’t you think?”
Slowly, he turned her way, his eyes narrowing on her skimpy outfit and his gem hanging from the long chain between her tempting breasts. “Careful, female.” She’d moved into the room and stood only a few feet away. Close enough for him to touch. Close enough for him to take. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think I do.” One side of her sexy lips curled in a smirk. “You know, last night was fun and all, but I expected more. Something… a little more wild, a bit more savage.” She swayed toward him, until her heady scent surrounded him. “Something a lot more… wicked… from the infamous Prince of Darkness.”
Memories of last night fired in his mind all over again. Her small hand stroking his cock. Her sweet tongue plundering his mouth. And her body—her sexy, luscious, perfect body sliding along his, straddling his hips, lowering to take him deep into her tight, wet pussy until he lost all sense of time and space and exploded in blistering pleasure.
He’d thought that would be it. The very end. He’d thought it would be enough. It suddenly didn’t even come close.
Those flames flared hot and wild, an inferno seconds from consuming everything in its path. One he wouldn’t be able to hold back much longer. Not with the ravenous hunger gathering inside. Not with her standing there, wearing next to nothing, staring into his eyes with those sinful-hot gems, taunting him to reach out and take.
To conquer once and for all.
“Be sure about this, female. I’m everything you can’t control.”
“Oh, I’m sure, dios.” She pressed her palms against his chest and leaned so close her warm breath slid down his neck, sending waves of heat straight into his cock. “I don’t want you restrained in any way. I want to experience every single thing you’ve been holding back. Every naughty, wicked, wild thing. And in case you get out of hand, don’t worry. I know how to scratch and bite.”
“You’ll crawl and beg before I’m finished with you.”
“Mm, yes…” Her hypnotic eyes sparked. “That’s exactly what I want.”
Her palms moved up his chest and around his neck, and her sensuous body pressed against his from chest to hips. Then, in a velvety voice that completely ignited that inferno inside him, she whispered, “But you’ll be the one doing the begging, dios. I’m sure of it.”
Zagreus’s mouth closed over Talisa’s so forcefully, she gasped.
His lips were demanding, bruising, absolutely possessive in a way that both surprised and thrilled her. She opened on instinct, wanting to taste him as she had last night, but the second he dipped inside and his wicked tongue brushed hers, every cell in her body went haywire.
She melted into his touch, to his kiss, to his every want and need. And when he growled and his tongue moved forcefully against hers—invading, directing, mastering—every part of her surrendered.
Sparks raced along her nerve endings. A raging lightning storm she’d never experienced. She was always the one in control when it came to her sexual encounters, but this… The way he dominated her passion with nothing more than his lips and tongue and sultry mouth… It decimated her strength in a way his powers never could.
His hand dropped to her hip. The other grazed her hair, sifted through the locks, then fisted at the back of her head. He plundered her mouth, shifted their bodies around so her spine pressed against the cool wood of the door, then closed in at her front.
Yanking her head back, he lifted his mouth a breath from hers.
A flash of pain echoed through her scalp, but it quickly faded when her eyes focused on his sinfully dark and predatory gaze. She saw lust. She saw hunger. And a thousand different emotions she couldn’t name. But the strongest, the most overpowering, the most volatile was the same wanton, wild, explosive need staring back at her.