This bed was a bit hard, but so warm that she didn’t mind it at all.
She felt a blanket brush through her hair. But her hair was long, and every stroke through her locks lingered, far too long for a blanket to be responsible.
Blankets didn’t brush hair. Certainly not hers.
So she did what any clever, uncertain girl would do: she pretended to still be asleep.
Slowly, very carefully, she stretched her arms, letting her palms glide over the surface beneath her. It wasn’t soft. It waswarm but hard. Her hands moved gently, feeling along the shape, gliding up and down until she realized it wasn’t a bed at all.
It was a body.
Far too big and far too solid to belong to any human she had ever known. And then Lyssena understood where she was. Or rather,whoshe was on.
She then remembered how hard she had cried, how certain she had been that she would die. And yet she hadn’t; and that, perhaps, was the mercy of her god. Would an angry god spare the life of a lowly human? Would he cradle her so gently, stroke her hair with such care, and keep her wrapped in warmth if fury had been his intent?
“You are awake.”
Lyssena’s eyes flew open, and she nodded quickly. “I’m sorry, I??—”
“You apologize a lot,” Erevos said, his voice quiet, and Lyssena wasn’t sure what to make of that.
She felt truly lost. She wanted so desperately to understand how she was meant to behave. In her village, everything had been simple, defined by rules and rituals, by expectations passed down like well-worn robes. She had known what to do, what to say, how to exist. Here, nothing was clear.
And yet, she was here, nestled in the lap of her god, held securely between his massive torso and muscled arms, and gods, it felt . . . good.
Her brothers had been strong too, built by years of labor in the fields, and she’d seen them often without tunics, wearing only trousers and boots as they worked. But this was entirely different.
It was only when she stirred slightly, when awareness trickled in like sunlight through leaves, that she realized she was sitting on the bare lap of a god, and the flush that spread acrossher face burned like fire. At twenty-three, she had never seen . . .thatpart of a body. And now she was practically on top of it.
And oh, how curious she was.
For a moment, she forgot the fear that had swallowed her whole, forgot that she was in the presence of a divine being she devoted herself to.
“Should I . . . ” she began, the thought half-formed as her gaze drifted slowly down the sculpted lines of his abdomen, trailing even lower, unfocused and wide-eyed, “not apologize?” she mumbled, the words tumbling out more to herself than to him.
Just as her eyes neared the place her curiosity most longed to see, Erevos lifted his arm, and Lyssena’s gaze shot upward.
Their eyes met.
And though her instincts urged her to look away, to retreat into herself like she always had before, Erevos did not let her.
He caught her jaw between his fingers, tilting her face up with a firmness that brooked no argument, forcing her gaze to remain on his.
“Am I not pleasing to your gaze?”
Lyssena absolutely did not expect so many teeth.
She hadn’t seen his mouth before, or at least she hadn’t known he had one at all, but now that she did, she was thoroughly, irrevocably stunned. Erevos’s teeth were long and sharp and far too numerous, and Lyssena found herself speechless at the sight. If a creature like that—not Erevos, of course; not her god, never him, because she would never judge a divine being—but if a creature likethathad come to her in the middle of the night, grinning down with that terrifying, toothy mouth, she would have preferred to drop dead on the spot and never—ever—wake up again.
His mouth stretched wider, unnervingly so, in something that seemed suspiciously like a . . . smile?
Goosebumps rippled across her entire body.
How could he ask her a question like that and then show herthat many teeth? And worse, she couldn’t lie, not even to save herself, because lying was a sin, and sheneverlied.
“What a . . . presentable mouth you have,” Lyssena said slowly. So slowly, in fact, that she wondered if she had somehow forgotten how to speak at all. Her gaze flicked between his purple eyes and his franklyverywhite teeth. How did someone even brush two whole rows of those? The thought alone was overwhelming . . . and, in its own strange way, deeply impressive.
“Thank you,” Erevos replied with a tone of amusement, and Lyssena felt, with some small sense of pride, that she had done well.
