him to look at them. As if her curves could inflame him.
He could think only of Calindria as he stood in the middle of the room, long thick chains tethering him to a point ten feet behind him, anchoring him to the strong metal posts of the bed there.
Had she managed to escape or had the demigoddess betrayed him as expected and her men had already placed his little goddess back into a cage?
He wanted to rage at the thought she might be captive again, that all this might be for nothing, but he didn’t have the strength. All he could do was stare at the female before him. His fingers twitched and flexed, and his right eye burned. He rubbed it, didn’t care as the manacle beat against his face, he just wanted the damn burning to stop. He wanted to quench the flames that consumed him. Sweat rolled down his spine and his own rough breaths filled the silence as the demigoddess paused to rake her eyes down him, the heat in them sickening him.
Scaring him.
His head turned again and the trembling worsened, racked his body and made his knees weak beneath him. He scrubbed at his chest, scratched and clawed at it as his heart thundered. Gods, he just needed to quench this fire.
He knew what would stop it.
The fever would break if he just surrendered to the drug.
No.
He swallowed and shook his head, frowned and gritted his teeth. He couldn’t. He had to be strong. He had to keep fighting. He couldn’t let this bitch get her way, not again, and not only because the shame he’d had to live with for centuries would be made all the worse, and he would never want to see another living soul again.
No, he couldn’t surrender to it because it would be a betrayal this time.
He would betray Calindria and his feelings for her if he gave in.
So he had to keep fighting.
Keep resisting.
No matter how many times the demigoddess fed him the toxin, no matter how fiercely the fire burned. He couldn’t surrender.
The silver-haired female stood, water rolling down her curves, and he growled as heat scorched him, as a hunger to reach out and seize her soft flesh and grip it hard while he took her surged through him. He flashed his teeth at her, tried to lift his hand to lash out at her but he was too weak.
She waggled a finger at him, her wretched lips curling in a wide smile. “Be good now.”
She reached the edge of the pool and he shuddered as her violet eyes appraised him, as they drifted down his bare chest to the low waist of his leathers. She bit her lower lip and moaned, and he bit back the growl this time, focused on his body to shut down the reaction to the drug.
She pouted as he softened again, lifted her hands and cupped her breasts, thumbing her nipples. “We need to get you clean too. Come to me.”
He stood his ground, fighting the compulsion to obey that order. Sweat slicked his skin and he swallowed to wet his parched throat. Didn’t he want to break this heat engulfing him? The water would be cooler, surely? Just the thought of washing away the sticky sweat had his head going hazy, had him taking a step towards her and then another, his eyes not on her but on the water in which she stood.
“Good… good,” she murmured, her voice like honey, a sweet caress in his ears that only made his thoughts blur even more.
She leaned forwards and dipped a sponge into the water, reached for him when he was close enough and hooked her fingers into the waist of his leathers. She tugged him closer and he was powerless to resist her, even as something inside him growled viciously.
The first touch of the wet sponge against his overheating flesh was bliss, had his eyes slipping shut.
He snapped them open and growled at her, purging the haze. When he tried to move away from her, her grip on the waist of his leathers tightened. She yanked him forwards and glared up into his eyes.
“I’ll kill the goddess if you keep disobeying me,” she snapped.
Thanatos stilled, his blood chilling in his veins, the coldness giving him no relief as he stared at her and saw in her eyes that she meant that. She would kill Calindria if he didn’t do as she wanted. The hope he’d had that Calindria had managed