Page 32 of Where Darkness Bloomed
When she stopped, the warmth of her skin grazedhis, her breasts nearly grazing his chest. Still holding her gaze, he reached for the gold clasp at his shoulder.
The himation slid from his shoulder. He drew it away, baring the carved planes of his naked chest and shoulders.
Her breath hitched. Then her teeth sank into her bottom lip—too hard. A bead of golden blood welled there, glittering like a jewel against the softness of her mouth.
Arousal struck deep, sudden and sharp.
Lifting his hand, Hades swept his thumb softly against her mouth, wiping the drop away. Her lips parted under his touch, and his willpower groaned. His own breath became ragged in his throat, his thumb lingering long enough to betray the storm rising within him.
“Enough,” he murmured to himself, and let his hand fall.
Stepping forward, he drew his himation around her. The heavy fabric settled over her bare skin, cloaking her in him—his warmth, his scent, the memory of his body still clinging to the cloth.
Her eyes lifted to his, startled and searching.
His hands remained at her shoulders. Then Hades leaned in, close enough that her breath brushed his lips.
“Forgive me, lady,” he said. “I do not accept your terms.”
He turned, leaving before he could surrender to the need to turn back.
Chapter 15
On a rocky outcropping near Troy, Achilles stood beneath the morning sun, its glare searing the bronzed skin of his arms. His sea-green eyes climbed Troy’s walls, roving for weaknesses he knew did not exist.
Behind him, footsteps crunched over loose stone.
“What do you think, my lord?” Eudorus, his lieutenant, appeared at his side. Grim-faced, he followed Achilles’s gaze.
Achilles didn’t answer right away. Instead, he watched with stony skepticism as Agamemnon’s folly unfolded. Before them, soldiers heaved massive ladders against the towering walls, poised to climb to their deaths.
“I think we will stand here a thousand years before a single soldier takes Troy that way,” Achilles replied dryly, as the soldiers began to climb.
The screams came quickly.
Boiling pitch tipped over Troy’s parapets, raining down in thick, black waves over the ladders. Flesh sizzled, searing off the bone. Soldiers flailed, shrieking on the way down, their bodies smashing into the earth with wet, bone-crunching thuds.
“A fucking waste.” Achilles turned away in disgust. “After how many months?”
He spat into the dirt, eyes flicking toward the Greek encampment where the king lounged beneath a linen canopy, sipping wine like a bloated tick, oblivious to the carnage.
“Agamemnon can feed the pyres with his own men,” he said darkly. “Mine won’t burn for his vanity.”
“Priam watches.” Eudorus nodded up to the high battlements.
Achilles cocked an eye upward, spotting the old king standing like asolemn statue on the royal balcony. The morning sun crowned his white hair, a halo of light around his head. Slowly, Priam raised his hand.
A signal.
On command, fire streaked the sky.
Arrows rained down from Troy’s upper walls. The flaming shafts punched through flesh and wood, setting men and ladders ablaze. Oil-slicked wood erupted in a rush of flame and agony, bodies writhing as they burned. Charred flesh and melting fat filled the air, thick and choking, as Agamemnon’s plan turned to ash.
Achilles watched, his mouth twisting with disdain. “Priam knows he has nothing to fear today.” Then he scoffed. “Difficult to say who the greater fool is, the Trojan king or the Greek.”
Eudorus’s brow creased. “Priam has done nothing.”
“Precisely,” Achilles replied coldly, his gaze shifting back to the elderly king watching from the high terrace. “His whelp stole another’s wife, inviting ruin to his gates. Any other would have sent her back with a chest of gold. And the son’s head in a sack.”
