8
She tasted of the salt and sea and everything he’d never dreamed he wanted. Her breath was a freshwater breeze on the wind. The tip of her tongue was the tide lapping at the shore under the full moon. Psi was drowning in the shallow pool on the other side of Vivi’s lower lip.
He sipped at her and found his pleasure in the divot at her top lip. He discovered rapture in the crevice of her bottom lip. When their tongues met from across two lonely shores, he built a bridge of forever to her that had its foundation in his heart.
This sea witch had cast a spell on him and he was caught in her net. He kissed her again and again. Even if his kisses matched the number of the individual sands of all the oceans, it would not be enough.
He had to temper himself. He was foaming with the need for her. He knew that where he wanted to take her was uncharted territory for her.
Psi had had virgins before. He knew that that’s what she was by the tentative way she touched him, by the small gasps of surprise that escaped her perfect lips every time he changed the angle of his kisses.
Something about her innocence clutched at him, awakened something dark and possessive in him.
He swore she never would know any other man besides him.
He’d be her first, her last, her everything.
He needed to be gentle with this precious coral reef of a creature. He needed to woo her slowly. She was so easily frightened and he needed to let her know that he would be there always, to provide for her, to protect her.
So, of course, he gripped her hard. Psi pulled her from her seat across the table and deposited her on his lap. He ran his teeth along Vivi’s upper lip. She yelped when he clamped down, breaking his promise not to bite her. But he couldn’t help himself. She tasted like a sea of tranquility.
She didn’t pull away from him. Vivi leaned into him. Curious thing that she was, she offered him more of herself. Greedy bastard that he was, he took it.
Warning bells sounded in his mind. He was alarmed at how quickly and how completely he offered his whole being up to this woman he barely knew. But in the heart he didn’t need to beat in order to live, Psi knew that Vivi was a necessity to his very existence.
She didn’t wrap her arms around him and try to sink her hooks into him like other women. She didn’t pull away and ask for a favor now that his head was muddled with want of her. She didn’t reach for his balls and twist them into a vice until he did her bidding.
She leaned into him, hesitant and unsure, at the same time eager and curious. Psi’s grip tightened even more as he pondered how to lay claim to her heart. He decided to start with her shoes.
Reaching down as he kept his mouth slanted over hers, Psi slipped the magical shoes off Vivi’s feet.
They fell to the marble floors with a thump of the toes and then a clatter of the heels.
He wrapped his fingers around the tips of her cold, bare toes.
The need to put them in his mouth and warm them overwhelmed him.
He pulled back from Vivi, wondering what her reaction would be if he laid her out on the table and proceeded to place her feet in his mouth.
He didn’t have a chance to find out. As if the gods heard his need to warm his beloveds’ feet, the dormant kindling in the fireplace roared to life and blazed bright.
Vivi squealed like a sea otter and hopped off his lap. Her feet contacted the ground. But without her shoes, she fell down onto the cold, hard surface before Psi could catch her. From her place on the floor, she looked up at the fireplace and screamed as a man stepped out of the flames.
“Beg your pardon,” said Desi, his brows as high as the fire he’d climbed through. “Didn’t know you had company.”
Desi shook the flames from his business suit. With a wave of one hand, he doused the fire and it instantly cooled. With a flick of his other hand, he removed his sunshades and surveyed the scene before him.
Psi reached down to set Vivi on her feet again. Remembering only after her feet sickled inward that she couldn’t stand without her magical shoes. And so he held onto her instead, bringing her into his chest and keeping her close where she belonged.
“This is my other brother,” Psi said to her. “His name is Hades. He’s the god of the underworld.”
“Pleased to meet you. You can call me Desi.”
Vivi shrank away from Desi’s outstretched hand, turning her face into Psi’s chest. “He’s hot enough to cook my flesh.”
Desi half frowned and half grinned at the accusation, as though trying to ascertain if the remark were a compliment.
“He won’t hurt you,” said Psi. “I told you, I’d never let anything hurt you.”
But Vivi looked at him skeptically. Psi felt the urge to wipe the look from her brow. And then he realized that out of the flames, he’d been presented with another solution to her problem.
“In fact,” said Psi, “he can help us. Desi can travel by fire. There are fireplaces everywhere in the world. He can get us to Rome in no time.”
Vivi shook her head. And then she squirmed in his arms. “Put me down.”
“But, darling, you can’t stand on your own,” Psi reasoned.
Psi knew there were certain things you never said to a woman. When she asked if an outfit made her look fat, it was best to pretend you didn’t hear her. Or even if a man meant it as a compliment, he should never, ever, say she reminds him of his mother.
Looking down at Vivi as she dangled in his arms, Psi knew he’d said the wrong thing just now.