Page 87 of For the Gods' Sake

Adrian’s hand moved around to tip my head back, placing slight pressure on the base of my throat. “We’ve got to do something about that smart mouth.”

The solution seemed to be plundering my mouth with another deep kiss. Adrian had me pressed so thoroughly to the door, I didn’t move an inch when his hands left my skin to travel down to where my dresswas gathered around my hips, where the thin fabric was doing absolutely nothing to hide the thick length of him pressing against my center.

The dress, mynewdress, was pulled over my head and tossed away in a second, baring me to him. Adrian’s eyes opened, his heated gaze raking over my skin.

My chest was heaving, fighting for any breath. But oxygen wasn’t even a possibility when his hands were digging into my ass and his eyes were taking in every part of my skin like he was trying to memorize it.

“I swear you were born to torture me,” he said gruffly. His hand ran over the band of my lace underwear, up and over the sheer lace of my bra. I squirmed under his touch, needing to do more than just let him stare at me in my lingerie.

“You next,” I said, my hands coming up to the collar of his shirt. I could see black ink scattered under the wet fabric and I needed to see what was under therenow.

Adrian stilled my hands next to his collar, backing up ever so slightly. My feet fell down to the floor, but Adrian didn’t move away further.

“Let me see them.Please.” I wasn’t above begging, not when my skin felt like it was on fire. This was so foreign, so intense, I needed something else to focus on lest I wanted to explode into blue flames.

Adrian looked down at me, then to where my hands were fighting to pull the hem of his shirt out of his pants. He steadied my hands and I caught a broken whimper at the last second. I was seconds away from begging for another attempt to know him better than anyone else.

He took my hands off his shirt, placing them onto his upper thighs, not losing our point of contact. But thisclose to the wall, the proximity felt like a physical touch, a hand coasting over my jaw or an arm sliding over my shoulders.

Adrian’s hands moved to the collar of his shirt, to the triangle of skin that had taunted me for weeks. The sun-deepened skin was smooth. His neck and shoulders were strong, yet still came together in a sculpted, almost graceful hollow between his collarbones.

His fingers found the top button, slipping it lewdly from its fastening. Revealing just another inch of skin. But this inch, thisnewinch wasn’t just full of tanned, smooth skin. It was darkened with swaths of black ink. The corners and tips of tattoos I couldn’t quite make out yet.

Adrian hesitated, his fingers stilling over the next button, a soft, shining pearl in the moonlight breaking through the storm clouds.

“Please,” I said softly, more to the base of his throat than his face. “Let me know you.”

“Reyna,” Adrian said in a broken tone. I cut him off with a hard kiss, begging him with my mouth. The kiss seemed to shock him into movement. His hands flew to my jaw, holding tight before carefully removing my lips from his, pressing my head back softly against the wall.

His fingers were more intentional now, attacking the buttons efficiently, exposing skin too fast for me to catalog every new inch, let alone the hard, stacked muscles beneath, lightly dusted with dark hair. When his thumb slid the last button through the fabric and the shirt fell open, revealing just the middle column of his chest, I sucked in a heavy breath.

It did nothing to soothe my dizziness, thrown completely off-kilter by Adrian and his potency andhis proximity. My hands took over, pushing the soaked-through white shirt off his shoulders, down his arms, until it fell to the floor behind him.

“You’re the only person to see this,” Adrian confessed gruffly. I was sure his family, some of his friends knew or had seen. Certainly the person who’d tattooed him. But somewhere solid, somewhere deep inside me knew that he was talking about a romantic sense. No one else got to see him likethis.

And I was helpless to the force of that confession, my knees growing weak under its devastation. My hands moved of their own accord, rising to his wrists first, wrapping around the strong, sinewy muscle.

I looked to his right arm, to that first tattoo I’d seen. The sword with the olive branches wrapped around it. My fingers trailed up his arm, taking in every detail. And he let me, the only movement coming from his hand moving up to grab my other palm, gripping with solid force.

I felt hungry,starving.Scouring every inch of him, to swallow up everything inked into his skin. My fingers coasted over a band of flowers circling his upper forearm, a staff tipped with wings and wrapped in snakes. Grapevines and the bust of a sculpture, surrounded by a wreath.

My hands moved over his hard, boiling chest. I stopped over a classic Roman helmet, flattening my hand to feel the rapid beat of his heart, slamming against his skin with the force of a sonic boom.

I couldn’t stop touching him, couldn’t stop my hands from running over his skin. My eyes found a bow on his sternum, shooting it’s arrow into the sun. Flowers over his hip.

I’d known it the second I saw the staff with wings, the same design as the one on the mural in his entryway.

“It’s all of them,” Adrian confirmed, speaking the words against my forehead, tinged with the brush of his lips over my sensitive skin. “Everyone I’ve lost.”

My heart shattered like pottery falling to the ground.

“Adrian,” I said, as if saying his name would do anything to take away the guilt and the pain he shouldered. He had the symbols and icons ofeverygod whose line had ended after his birth permanently etched into his skin. A permanent reminder.

Sucking in a sharp breath, I looked back down to the sword and olive branches.

Athena.

My eyes trailed back over his skin, searching for—

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