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For the span of one single breath, Lia was afraid of him. His eyes had gone cloud wild. She’d never seen such a blue as that. And she knew in an instant, and no one had to tell her, that she had been wrong when she’d thought that August’s eyes were the color of storm clouds. No, no, no.
August’s eyes weren’t the color of storm clouds...
Storm clouds were the color of his eyes.
He smiled, and in a second breath he was August again.
“You should always be here,” he said.
“I’ll stay if you stay,” she said, touching his cheek.
He kissed her again, gently, and as he kissed her, he found her clitoris with his fingertips and stroked her with such precision she clenched hard around him, hard enough his breath caught in his throat. She lay back again and let herself enjoy the terrible sweetness of being the cause of a man’s undoing. He was older, a mystery to her and vastly more experienced, and she could conquer him utterly while lying flat on her back. This was power even a god would envy.
August rested his forehead against the center of her chest as he moved in her. No thrusting—that might tip the boat. They made love an inch at a time, barely moving and yet pushing so hard against each other Lia could hardly bear the tension.
When she came, her climax wasn’t like last night’s. It was gentler, quieter, and far more tender and dear. August’s back bowed once before he came inside her. He stayed in her afterward, holding her in his arms.
“August?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
A slow smile spread across his face. His eyes softened. He laid his hand on her forehead and tenderly stroked her hair. Gently he began to move inside her again.
“‘“There is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing,”’” he said into her ear between sweet kisses, “‘“as messing around in boats.”’”
PART SIX
Aethra & Poseidon
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Lia spent the next day in a hazy-headed daze. She sat at her loom from midmorning to evening, embroidering a white-winged horse onto her tapestry’s dark evening sky. The work was absorbing, a perfect distraction from her thoughts, thoughts that troubled her nearly as much as her feelings and more than her memories.
Every stitch required her complete concentration. She was painting a Pegasus with needle and thread, no easy task. Between each stitch, however, she had time to think, to feel, to remember.
August. She couldn’t even hear his name echoing in her mind without needing to stop and catch her breath. Something had happened last night that she hadn’t expected, hadn’t asked for, hadn’t realized she wanted so much until August had given it to her.
When she’d come to in August’s bed, she hadn’t felt the usual high she’d come to expect as a standard side effect from drinking from the Rose Kylix. She’d glanced around and seen his bedroom and begun to cry.
August had pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest.
“Why are you crying?” he’d asked. She had liked the way he’d asked her, as if he simply wanted to know why she cried, not because he wanted her to stop.
“I want to go back,” she’d said. And then said, “With you.”
She fell asleep only after he’d promised her he’d take her back as often as she wanted.
Perhaps that was why Lia had spent her waking hours at her loom, weaving herself again into a myth by day, the way August wove her into myths by night.
A good thing she’d left the Rose Kylix at August’s flat by his bed. If she’d had it with her, the temptation to drink from it would be nearly overwhelming. She would drink and dream her way back to Pan’s Island. She would sit at the feet of Pan and listen to his piping, perhaps dance in the woods among the trees and the flowers. But it wouldn’t be the same, of course, without August there.
Since coming home last night—this morning, really—she’d felt like a veil had gone up between her and the real world. She and August on one side of the veil, everyone else on the other. Including her parents. Her brothers. Her friends. David, too. It scared her how much she wanted to stay behind that veil with August. Or...if she was honest with herself...it scared her how much she wanted to staywith Augustbehind that veil.
Lia had just put the final stitch into the left wing of the Pegasus when she heard a soft knock on her sitting room door.
“Come in.” She lifted her head from her embroidery and realized it was evening already. Where had the day gone?
