swaying with each measured step.
Thanatos pressed his lips closed and shook his head, glared at her as she approached him, warning her to keep her distance. He wouldn’t allow her to give him more of the drug. The fire was finally abating, his strength returning. He couldn’t let her take that from him again.
When he sucked in a breath through his nose, the scent of ambrosia hit him hard, addling his mind a little, enough that he didn’t notice her closing the distance between them until it was too late. The moment he realised she was right in front of him, he snarled and lashed out, backhanded the goblet from her hand and ripped a satisfying pained grunt from her.
She clutched her hand and glared at him.
Strode back to the table and seized the dagger resting there. “I wanted to do this the nice way, Thanatos. Remember that.”
She stormed back to him and stabbed him in the side before he could strike her. Heat rolled through him from the point where the blade pierced his flesh, had his thoughts blurring as every inch of him instantly relaxed, his fight leaving him.
She tossed the blade aside and stroked his cheek as he struggled to breathe, as the fire consumed him and burned his will to ashes. He leaned into her touch, savouring the coolness of it, aching to draw her against him so her flesh would touch his elsewhere and quench the fire.
He weakly growled at that, shook his head and tried to shut down the urges running rampant through him.
He didn’t want this female. She couldn’t sate this need inside him. Only Calindria could.
But he couldn’t stop her from caressing his chest, could only stand there and stare blankly at her as he waged an internal war, fighting to overcome the drug as it ravaged his defences.
“Last time we did this, I was under orders,” she cooed and sidled closer to him, angling her head back to keep her eyes locked with his. “This time, I’ll be doing it for pleasure.”
“Under orders?” His tongue felt too thick for his mouth, his words distant and wobbling in his ears.
She smiled slowly and walked her fingers down his chest. “You didn’t know? I was chosen, told that if I spawned the breed needed for their plans that I would receive this realm, and I did.”
He tried to growl, thought he managed it, but no sound left his lips.
She was with the enemy, just as he had suspected. She had held Calindria caged here for six centuries, had been responsible for not only her torment but her death too. A necromancer had been the one to kill his little goddess, and now he suspected a necromancer had brought her back too. That was why she felt different to him. Alive, but not alive.
But what had happened to Calindria hadn’t only been this demigoddess’s fault. It had been his too. He had been weak and had given her what she wanted, was just as responsible for spawning the wretched necromancer breed. It was his fault Calindria had died and had been brought back, and had been caged for centuries, forced to endure a terrible life of torture.
“I have been well rewarded for my service.” She smiled a little wider and raked her violet eyes over him. “Well, now, I shall be well rewarded.”
She wouldn’t be. He would see to that.
“You killed her,” he croaked, fighting the effects of the drug, desperate to make the most of how talkative the female was. “But she is not dead… family saw a body…”
Each word was an effort that drained him, but it seemed enough to convey what he wanted to ask.
She stroked patterns on his chest and he let her. He would endure almost anything to keep her compliant and liable to tell him things he wanted to know, things that might benefit Calindria. Not only Calindria. If he could convince this female to talk more, she might tell him something that would prove valuable to Hades too.
“Oh, they saw a body. They saw what we wanted them to see. And you are right. The goddess is no longer dead. She was resurrected the moment Calistos blacked out and teleported elsewhere.” Harleena kissed his chest, stroked her tongue over his flesh, and he reined in the urge to slap her away, forced himself to endure her touch.
Hated that it wasn’t really a feat, that he withstood it too easily as the drug stoked the fire inside him,