shifts me over him so my thigh slips between his.
His arousal is unmistakable, pressing against my hip. It might be a little awkward if it weren’t so damn intoxicating to know how I affect him. I should move away. Ease the pressure between us. But I’m driven to test his control the way he tests mine, so I deepen our kiss and drag my torso a little higher as I do, adding to the friction.
Maximus reaches to where my shorts have ridden high and takes two firm handfuls of the flesh there. The possessive motion creates a surge of pressure between our bodies. It’s a blinding blaze through my system. Too much too fast.
Oh, but I love it. I moan against his lips and curl my fingers against his pectoral.
“Goddamn, you’re killing me with these shorts.” He exhales in a ragged breath. “We should stop. Kara, tell me to stop.”
“Stop” sounds like the worst word I’ve ever heard, so I kiss him harder, making it quite clear that I’m not on board with that plan. At all.
“Kara.” His voice is a desperate rasp between us, rough with his worry and longing.
“I don’t want to stop. I want you to keep touching me. Kissing me.” The rest of my pleas echo silently through my mind. The ones that involve him doing more than kissing and touching. But I’ll never be able to share that experience with him, no matter how badly I may want to.
It’s a sobering thought.
I should stop this. Revving the attraction a little is one thing, but this is a high-speed chase down a road I have no business traveling. At least with Maximus.
I break the kiss, but before I can come up with a good excuse to stop things, he switches our positions so I’m lying on the floor. He cradles the back of my head, protecting me from the hard tiles as he hovers over me.
He brushes his lips gently across mine. I bow my body toward him, eager for more full contact. He takes the invitation and lowers, taking care not to crush me. Not that I’d mind. I’m already fully obsessed with the feel of him. The weight of him. His heat and the way he smells like the rain when we’re this close.
He brushes his fingers along my jaw and follows the journey with his mouth until his next breath tickles my ear. “I don’t want to stop either. I don’t think I’ll ever want to. Not with you, Kara.”
The confession is enough to kill any refusals forming in my brain. More, it transcends the physical frenzy that’s seized my senses. Heat and awe swirl behind his eyes when our gazes meet again.
When he kisses me, somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind, I think I could fall in love this way. With his tortured whispers, heated looks, and the worshiping way he trails his lips over all the skin he can reach.
I thread my fingers in his hair and blink up at the ceiling. The only witnesses to this intimate moment are the figures painted into the sky. They’re not my gods, but somehow I can still feel them watching. Judging me.
Maximus keeps moving down my body, nipping my breasts through my cropped top. Then dragging hot kisses across my bare stomach. I can barely breathe. I’ve never wanted anyone this way. I don’t think I ever will. But we can’t. I can’t…
Still, our sighs and moans keep echoing off the walls. Then the pop of my top button on my shorts coming loose. His name on my lips like a prayer.
Then the thunder. A quiet rumble that’s easy to ignore until the booming cracks of a fast-approaching storm have us both silent and still. My eyes fly open when Maximus shifts over me.
The question in his blue eyes mirrors the one in my head. Should we get out of here before the sky opens up? Or keep doing sexy things on the observatory floor to the sound of the rain?
A gray-pallored Zeus stares at me over Maximus’s shoulder. The god of thunder himself. I’m not sure whether to thank the man in the mural or hate him right now.
“Should we go?”
I shift my attention an inch to the left to the beautiful man staring down at me who could easily pass for a god himself. I reach for him, already regretting the end of our night. The second my fingertips meet his cheek, the sky erupts with another angry clap