"You're full of shit."
"I'm in love with you. That's not the same thing."
His mouth landed on mine, and the last three days burned off like fog. Mineral water and salt hit my tongue when he opened for me, and I pulled him closer. He wrapped his legs around me under the water and settled into my lap like he'd been waiting three days to get there. His fingers curled into my hair, and I groaned against his mouth before I could swallow it, the sound bouncing off the stone. His lips were chapped from the wind. I traced the rough edge with my tongue until he gasped, and I wanted to hear it again.
His grip tightened in my hair and he rolled his hips, and the friction lit up every nerve I had left, water slick between us. Then he did it a second time, slower. I gripped his hips hard.
"Again," I said against his mouth.
The third time pulled a groan out of him, low and raw, vibrating against my lips while I dug my thumbs into the grooves above his hipbones. He sucked in a sharp breath and pressed his forehead against mine.
"Jasper." He grabbed my jaw and tipped my face up to his, breathing ragged against my mouth. I was breathing just as hard.
My teeth found the tendon in his neck, and he shuddered, bracing his good hand on the stone behind my head while I ran my mouth along his collarbone. The edge of his bandage caught against my lip. He flinched.
My lips hovered against the bandage. He went rigid under my mouth.
"Don't you dare apologize," he said.
"I wasn't going to."
"You were. Your jaw's doing the thing."
I pressed my lips against his shoulder, right next to the bandage. My hands were still on his hips. His fingers were still in my hair. Neither of us moved, and neither of us let go.
"When we're healed," he said against my ear, "I'm going to take you apart."
"Promises."
"That one you can hold me to."
He kissed me once more, slow enough to mean something. Then he turned in my arms and settled back against my chest. I wrapped myself around him. The steam drifted. The lamp flickered.
"I keep thinking about what she said on the plane," he murmured. "You're my family."
"She meant it."
"I know. That's what gets me."
I pulled him closer.
"Jasper?"
"Mm."
"I want to build something. After this. When Zeus is done." He laced his fingers through mine under the water. "Somewhere real. You, me, Mila. A kitchen big enough for Mamá. A garden. A nice blue front door."
"That sounds dangerously optimistic for a man in our line of work."
"I'm a dangerously optimistic man." He pressed his thumb against my pulse point under the water. "Say yes."
"Yes."
"That was fast."
"You told me to say it."
"I wanted you to mean it."
