AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He wasn’t performing now. She was sure of it.
“Here?” His voice was gruff and low, his hand hovering over her belly.
Nina told herself she was being efficient, that was all, as she took his hand in hers and guided it to the spot where the baby he’d helped make was using her ribs as a drum.
She’d felt the baby kick for some time now, and still, it felt miraculous. Every time. She could still remember the very first time, the sudden quickening that had changed everything. Because the baby had kicked and she’d known, beyond any of the doubts that might have chased her through those first few months when she’d worried about how her life would change, that they were in it together. Her child and her. Forever. She’d started preparing to come to Theosia the very next day.
But Nina had done all that alone.
This was something else again. Taking the hand of the man who’d fathered her baby and placing it on her body, and then watching as that hard, starkly sensual face of his lit up with wonder.
Something inside of her seemed to shatter, though it wasn’t a breaking. It was a kind of shattering that went on and on, too thick and too hot.
And it seemed to take a very long while for Zeus to pull his hand away again.
Nina felt...changed. There was that shattering inside her, and now there was the imprint where his hand had been. She could feel the heat of it, charging through her. It kicked up feelings she thought had only ever been fleeting, only that one night, and never to be repeated.
It made her feel...fragile, somehow, that she’d been wrong.
Zeus sat back in his chair, and his gaze was inscrutable. “Why don’t you want to marry me? It’s very disconcerting, given women usually fling wedding rings at my feet and beg for the privilege. Are you only saying it to distinguish yourself from the masses?”
That didn’t entirely break the spell, but it went a long way toward it. Nina laughed. “I have absolutely no wish to distinguish myself in your eyes.”
She thought he might take offense to that—really, she’dmeanthim to take offense to it—but instead, he only smiled lazily.
“One of the things I like most about you,” he told her, gaze and voice as dark as the night around them, “is what a liar you are.”
“Strange. That sounds like a compliment. And yet.”
“Oh, it is.”
He moved forward and took her hand in his, and every single instinct she had screamed at her to snatch it back.Now.Or he’d know. Or he’d see it, that shattering in place of who she’d been only moments ago. Or the way that all that glimmering within her turned quickly into a molten fire when he touched her.
But then, when his gaze found hers and glinted with wickedness again, she suspected he already knew.
Nina didn’t snatch her hand away the way she wanted to, and badly. She left it in his, painstakingly aware of the way his fingers moved over hers, kicking up storms of sensation everywhere he touched. And she had never considered a palm particularly sensitive before. It was functional. Useful. She’d scrubbed too many floors for her to believe anything else.
But with her hand in his, she found she could feel...everything. As if her palm was the center of all possible pleasure, and only he knew how to make it all ignite. And more—every place he touched seemed connected to the strings of fire already lighting her up inside.
And the more he moved his fingers this way and that, almost as if he didn’t know what he was doing when she knew he did, the more she burned.
Oh, how she burned, and she couldn’t seem to make herself stop.
“What I’d like to know,” Zeus said, after a very long while—or possibly only a very few moments, she couldn’t tell past the need and longing clashing about inside her—“is what exactly you are hiding.”
She made herself sit up straighter.
“I have nothing to hide,” she replied. As placidly as she used to respond to the vile insults and occasional shoes Isabeau had lobbed at her head. “I never had much of a personal life to begin with, and what little I did have was sold out to the paparazzi so you could avoid your existing commitments. There’s nothing to find except this baby. And nothing to hide—the world is already well aware of how it was made.”
She didn’t say,You saw to that, Zeus.Why bother? He knew what he’d done.
“And yet you go to such lengths to hide yourself,” he murmured, still playing with her hand. “Why would anyone do such a thing? Unless there was something hidden away in there they didn’t want the rest of the world to see.”
“Maybe I resented forever being on display,” Nina retorted before she thought better of it.
And if he’d smirked at her the way he did so often, she would have collected herself. It would have served as a dose of much-needed cold water over the head and restored her to herself. She would have gone off on a different tangent, hopefully chastened. Or she would simply have pulled her hand from his and returned to the exquisitely prepared food waiting for her. As serenely as possible.
But he didn’t smirk at her. He only waited, the force of his bronze tension moving in her like the beat of her own heart.
