Daimon (Guardians of Hades #6) - Felicity Heaton Page 0,31

and stepped again when she went to move. He snagged her arm but she disappeared in blue-black smoke, and he realised it had been a decoy, a false impression of her.

His senses sparked.

He turned on a pinhead to face her, raising his hand at the same time.

Her fingers locked around his wrist, stopping him from grabbing her.

Her gaze ran over him, heat rolling in the wake of it as she stared at his bare chest and stomach, and then ventured lower, to his black swimming trunks.

“Such a chilly reception.” She smiled dazedly, her eyes glittering with sparks of silver and blue. “Here I thought you would have warmed to me by now.”

He glared at her and then realised something.

His eyes leaped to her hand where it gripped his wrist. It was warm. Soft.

And his touch wasn’t harming her.

He couldn’t believe it.

Cass released his wrist and trailed her fingers along it, sending a thousand lightning strikes chasing up his arm. She stroked her nails over his hand and all he could do was watch her, lost in sensation, swept up in the feel of being intimately touched by a female for the first time in centuries.

“I only wanted to apologise,” she murmured, that pout back in her voice.

He kept staring at her hand, shivering and on the verge of groaning as she teased his palm.

“What for?” he muttered, struggling to convince himself to stop her.

This was wrong of him.

Wasn’t it?

Was it so wrong that he wanted this?

Penelope flashed across his mind.

It was.

He pulled his hand away from Cass.

Her eyes lifted to collide with his. “For everything.”

Those words were sincere, as if she actually meant them. He tried to convince himself that she didn’t, that this was all some cruel game to her, a way of amusing herself.

But he got stuck on the fact she had touched him without being hurt.

That he could touch her.

Was this rush of sensation, this overload of need, how Ares had felt when he had met Megan? If it was, then he couldn’t blame his brother for succumbing to it.

But it wasn’t real.

Or at least what was happening between him and Cass wasn’t real.

Wasn’t what he needed deep in his heart.

She proved that by sidling closer to him, a seductive sway to her hips, and letting her dress droop a little lower, flashing the curves of her breasts at him as she smiled and gazed up into his eyes.

“I told you I could worship you if you let me,” she husked, her voice a throaty whisper. “Now all you have to do is let me, Daimon. Just drop that guard and take what you want. Whatever you need… it’s yours.”

Tempting, but a lie.

What he wanted, what he needed, would never be his.

She lifted her hand and brought it towards his chest.

Daimon seized her wrist and stopped her.

“Spare yourself the trouble and disappointment, Cassandra, and give up now. Nothing can melt my heart.” He tightened his grip on her wrist, driving his point home, and pain flared in her eyes as his power finally managed to make contact with her, breaking past whatever spell she was using to protect herself from him. “Nothing.”

He cast her hand away from him and didn’t look at her as he moved past her, heading for his house. His feet dragged, his steps slowing as the distance between them grew, filling him with a need to stop and look back at her, to forget everything and take her up on her offer.

No strings attached.

That’s what she wanted.

It had been right there in her eyes.

For some reason, that irritated the hell out of him. Why had she targeted him? Because he was single? Because she believed he would be easy to sway because of his problem?

It definitely wasn’t because she viewed him as anything more than a brief fling, a nice conquest to add to what was probably a long line of them. Was this how she operated? Seeking men out to satisfy her needs? How many had she been with? How many more would she be with once she was done with him?

He curled his fingers into fists and clenched them, his arms shaking as the darkness rose within him again, fuelled by the thought she wanted to use him.

That she was determined to break him.

He looked back at her, and not a single ounce of regret or guilt shone in her eyes. Maybe her heart was as cold as his was and she didn’t know how to be warm, only knew how