Thanatos led her to the pool, and she didn’t stop him when he unbuttoned her tunic and set it aside. He glared down at the wound on her hip and she looked there too.
The injury hadn’t healed as much as she had imagined, was a gaping circle on her side that was inky dark against her skin. He gently brushed his fingers over her hip just below it.
“Does it hurt?” His gaze darted to hers, his black eyebrows furrowing again.
She shook her head.
Thanatos took hold of her hand and she resisted him when he tried to tug her towards the pool. He looked back at her.
“I will bathe with you, to clean our wounds, but nothing else is going to happen.” She hated the hurt that welled in his eyes as she said that, felt a pressing need to take it away. “I… what you did still hurts… and I think it is best if we don’t do anything until I know… until I know why you find it so hard to trust me when we are together like that.”
His throat worked on a hard swallow and the hurt in his eyes that had been turning to relief turned to panic instead.
Calindria brushed her hand over his chest, into the deep valley between the hard slabs of his pectorals, and settled it right above his heart. “I will not rush you, Thanatos. I will not judge you, either. When you are ready, you can tell me everything.”
The fear in his eyes lingered and she had the feeling he hadn’t believed her when she had sworn she wouldn’t judge him. Was what happened to him so terrible that he thought she would look at him differently if she knew about it? Her heart ached as it slowly dawned on her. He thought she would turn her back on him. He thought that whatever he had been through would make him appear weak to her eyes, a male not worthy of her attention.
Her love.
Oh, how wrong he was.
Nothing could change how she felt about him.
How deeply she loved him.
Instead of letting him lead her into the water, she stooped and removed his boots, and then stood and undid his leathers, tried not to stare as she stripped him of them and placed them with her tunic. She removed her sky-blue top and shorts, and stepped into the water, deeply aware of Thanatos’s eyes on her bare curves.
She steeled herself. As tempting as it was to let need get the better of her, she had to stick to what she had said would happen—bathing and nothing else. She glanced back at Thanatos as he stepped into the pool behind her, the thought of not touching all that glorious, hard flesh a torment she wasn’t sure she could withstand.
He had mercy on her and eased down to sit on the bottom of the shallow pool as soon as it reached his knees. She sank to her backside near him and winced as the water touched her wound.
Thanatos glanced at her, and stared. Hard. Not at the wound, but at her breasts. Her first instinct was to cover them, but she resisted, mostly because the stronger part of her wanted his eyes on her, was enjoying it. No male had ever gazed at her bare breasts before, and the feel of his eyes on them wreaked havoc on her.
She clung to her resolve, letting him drink his fill of her nakedness but swearing it would go no further.
“Calindria,” he murmured, voice thick and low with desire, the evidence of which jutted towards the surface of the clear water. She tried to keep her eyes off it, failed a few times as she looked at him. He cleared his throat, scrubbed his neck and glanced at his wings. “I want to tell you… It is hard.”
She could see that, but she didn’t mention it. This wasn’t the time for making jokes.
“Do not push yourself to tell me, Thanatos. I am sure when the time is right, when you feel ready, that you will find it easier to speak to me about this… to let me in.” She reached across and placed her hand on his bent knee.
Water rolled down her arm and dripped from her elbow, the steady plip of it hitting the surface of the pool filling the tense silence.
“Let you in.” Thanatos stared at her hand, a distant edge to his silver gaze. “I want that… and yet I foolishly fear it.”
“There is nothing foolish about fearing lowering your guard around others. Those who do it too easily, who are too trusting, are the fools.” She truly felt that.
“You sound like your father.” A wry smile tugged at his lips.
She snorted a little at that. “Even before my captivity, I had never been one to blindly trust others. Part of me had always remained on guard around those outside my family, even if I had known them a long time. You are right, and I do believe my father is to blame for part of my personality.”
Hades was like Thanatos. Trust had to be earned, and often paid for in blood. She remembered that much about her father. Those who spilled blood and had their blood spilled on the battlefield while serving him earned his trust. Thanatos must have spilled a lot of blood for her father, because she had the feeling the fact he was the god of death wasn’t the only reason Hades had chosen him as the one who would find her.
She had the feeling it had been because her father knew his strength and his devotion, and trusted him.
“You never trusted me.” Thanatos’s deep voice rolled over her, had her trying to recall how she had acted around him six centuries ago. “You always hid behind your father whenever I visited.”
“I cannot imagine why.” She smiled at him when he scowled at her. “You are quite imposing.”
“Imposing.” He huffed. “Normally when people call me that, they mean to say frightening.”
She shook her head. “I do not think I feared you. Why would I fear anyone when I was with my father? No. I think in a way… I was awed by you… drawn to you. Whenever you visited, I wanted to see you. Perhaps it was the wings. No one else who visited my father had wings like yours.”
He had been slowly looking enamoured by her words, but his face blackened as she mentioned his wings and he huffed again, scrubbed at his arms to rid them of blood. Maybe too many people in this world had been bewitched by his wings rather than by him, admired them rather than the male they belonged to.
Calindria eased closer to him, water cascading over the curves of her breasts, and lightly stroked the fingers of her right hand down the edge of his wing.
He tensed. His silver gaze slid towards her.
“Do not,” he grumbled.
She ghosted her hand back up to the arch of his feathered wing and stroked it again. “Why not? You pet my hair… I cannot pet your wings?”
He stiffly shook his head, his features pinching as he angled his head towards her. “It is not the same.”
She shrugged and went to take her hand away, wanted to shake her head when he looked pained, as if she had just stolen something wonderful from him. When she brushed her hand over his wings this time, his eyes slipped shut and his face relaxed, his lips parting on a soft exhale.
“Why deny yourself something that clearly feels good?” She teased one feather in particular, a broad one that formed part of the first row of longer ones.
“Because.” His eyes flicked open and locked on hers, heat blazing in them. “I am trying to be good.”
She realised that he meant he was trying to resist her because she had told him nothing carnal would happen between them and that her stroking his wings gave him pleasure, and she was in danger of pushing him over the edge. He wanted to abide by her rules, and she was close to making him break them.
“I’m sorry.” She withdrew her hand, let him see in her eyes that she meant that and what came next. “You can kiss me if you want.”