Page 117 of Crown of Olympus
His tongue nudged my lips apart, and I yielded to him. The taste of him was intoxicating — wild and urgent — as if he needed my lips as much as his next breath. He groaned, and my core throbbed in response, tension aching for release. I felt the storm within his skin building, and I tasted the metallic thrum of lightning sparking just beneath the surface.
I pulled back just enough to see the dangerous intensity in his eyes — and couldn’t stop myself from diving back in, stealing every kiss he was willing to give. I pressed my body into his — hard and desperate — and the remaining shred of control he held over himself snapped.
Caelus backed me into the wall, and I gasped as the coldtiles dug into my bare shoulders. He swallowed the sound, deepening the kiss. Slowly, his hands slid down my body, thumbs drifting over my peaked nipples — and I cursed the thick leather cuirass still between us. His fingers drifted lower, lingering at the curve of my ass, fingers digging in hungrily as he hooked them under my thighs.
My breath hitched as he lifted me effortlessly, and he swallowed that sound too. Caelus guided my legs to rest around his hips, locking us together in a tangle of limbs and furious need.
His lips consumed me.
The water ran cold, but it did nothing to quench the heat rising between us. My body burned entirely, greedily, for him. My fingers tangled through his short, wet hair, eliciting another deep groan as his hips rolled into mine.
I felt every inch of his hard length grinding against my core through two sets of damnable leather breeches.
“Nightshade,” he whispered between kisses, lips trailing across my jaw, “you’re going to be the death of me.” His mouth found my neck, kissing tenderly, sending tingles through my body like tiny shockwaves.
And yet it washisbody that trembled. I felt it in the fingers still clutching my thighs, in the shoulders my nails dug into, in his unsteady breaths.
He pulled back to look at me, as though trying to memorise the way our bodies fit together.
“Lucky for you,” I murmured, “death and I go way back.”
“Nyssa,” he rasped, his breath grazing my skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake. I cupped his face gently, running my thumb along the sharp edge of his jaw.
“I’m here.”
A shudder rippled through him. His grip tightened almost imperceptibly as he began to lower me with unbearable care.But I couldn’t help the flinch when his fingers brushed my aching side.
Caelus glared at the three jagged holes piercing my ribcage, just beneath my breast, and swore voraciously.
“If you hadn’t killed him,” he growled, fingers twitching at his sides, “I would have.”
I stood a little straighter, despite the sharp pain in my side protesting every inch of movement.
“I’m okay.”
“You arenotokay!” he exploded, voice raw and shaking — not with anger, but something much deeper. “You are so very far from okay! I have half a mind to go downstairs and demand that Charon ferry that bastard’s ass directly to me so I can find a way to kill him again.”
I should have been unsettled by the unleashed violence in his voice, by the way his hands curled into fists against his thighs, by the air cracking with the promise of a storm.
Instead, all I felt was heat curling low in my stomach, setting every one of my nerve endings alight.
I had almost died today. And Caelus was unravelling because of it.
I reached up, tugging gently on his jaw until he met my gaze.
“Caelus,” I murmured. “I’m here, and I’m very much alive.”
A heavy sigh flew past his lips, and his eyes shuttered for a heartbeat. His hands dug into my hips like he needed the contact — needed the reassurance that came with it. His forehead dropped down to mine, and he spoke so quietly I almost missed it over the roar of the shower.
“You almost didn’t come back to me.”
His voice was heavy with an emotion that sounded a lot like grief — a feeling I knew all too well. But I wasn’t having that.
I rose onto my toes and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. He pulled back, gaze stormy and irises swirling — then surgedforwards, kissing me just as deeply as he had moments before. His fingers drifted lower, hooking the waistband of my soaked leathers.
How does one overcome a lifetime of no intimacy? You dive right in, despite the lingering fear in your veins — despite all the reasons not to — when someone makes you feel this alive. When they look at you as though you hung all the stars in the sky.
His touch was steadying, a quiet force against the war within me. He wasn’t taking or demanding, — just showing me, in the quietest of ways, that he would find a way to shoulder my pain and weather the storms with me.
