Blood of Zeus (Blood of Zeus #1) - Meredith Wild Page 0,83

of you.” I feather tiny circles down her slender calves. “Tell me. What are you feeling right now?”

She rests her palm over her stomach and inches lower. “I feel…empty. Without you.”

I swallow over my suddenly dry throat. If she had any idea how much I’d like to rectify that… All night long. Every night. I never want her to leave my bed.

“I also feel like I could stay here forever as long as you were touching me.” She closes her eyes sleepily before opening them again to half-mast.

“I think you just read my mind.”

She smiles. “When we were together, I felt you…so strongly.” She reaches out and links our fingers lazily. “Like everything you were feeling flowed right into me, mixing with all these new sensations my brain could hardly keep up with. Usually when I feel you…you’re you. And I’m still me. I can separate the two. This was different…like everything between us wove together and became something new. Something that was just…us.”

I take in a half breath. If the act of making love to her tonight wasn’t already imprinting itself on my brain as the best night of my life, I’m certain her words just now would solidify it.

I manage a response, my voice rough with new emotion. “Kara, you know I meant it, right? I’ve never experienced anything like this.” I end the confession with a soft press of lips to her hand. I move higher, nuzzling up her arm until reaching her sweet mouth once more.

She weaves her delicate arms around me as I settle alongside her. All I can do is gaze into her eyes, letting myself get lost there. Because she’s everything to me right now. Everything.

“Is it crazy that I want you again?” she whispers.

I shake my head. “We just had a hit of something really good. So intensely good, it’s normal to never want it to end. Trust me, I’m there too.”

She widens her eyes with the possibility.

I smile and kiss her gently. “Not yet. You need to rest. I’m serious this time. We have tomorrow and the next day—”

She presses her fingers to my lips, stopping my vow for forever with her. Fresh worry pinches her beautiful features. “Will you stay here with me? Just for now?”

The rough edges of her whisper make my heart squeeze tighter. “Of course I will.” I press a kiss into her forehead. “I promise.”

“You won’t leave?”

“No.” I cage her against me a little tighter, enjoying the perfect press of our bodies once more. “I’ll always be here.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Kara

I fell asleep in Maximus’s bed last night, cocooned by his strength and his heat, my limbs tangled with his, like extra anchors, keeping the inevitable storm from tearing us apart. For a few wonderful, peaceful hours, I could believe that.

I know now the storm was only stalled. And fire is in the forecast today.

I was awakened by my heart-stopping fear of it, launched into consciousness again in the early morning hours of this deceivingly peaceful Sunday.

Maximus is still asleep as I rise and creep quietly toward the picture window. The city is gray-blue before the dawn, city lights still blinking across the horizon. A few delivery trucks rumble up and down the shadowed streets, their headlights swinging around corners and into alleyways.

For once—maybe the first time in my life—I dread the sun. With it comes a day full of terrifying unknowns.

What happens now?

Does anyone even know what I’ve done?

Have I set off some cosmic alarm system that’s got the powers that be meeting even now to decide my fate? If so, what will that fate be?

Or…is there an easier fix here? Do I just tell everyone I needed time to think, and return home like I’ve simply been driving around all night? When Arden comes to take me, can I fake my way out of all this? Pretend he’s the first who’s ever been inside me?

I shudder from head to toe. My stomach lurches, begging to eject its contents along with the concept repelled by my mind.

Pretending away Maximus would be like banishing the best parts of myself. But soon—too damn soon now—I’ll have to do exactly that.

I wrap my arms around my middle and bring my cheek to my shoulder, covered now with the soft T-shirt Maximus shed in the living room last night. After everything that’s happened between us, the fear of having to say goodbye to him once and for all has grown new thorns. Every second, the dread tightens its coil around my