Chapter Fifty-Eight
Feralyn
I didn’t know what time it was when we walked into the house.
Nor did I bother asking how one of the Paragon Operations’ Yukons had magically been waiting at the marina with the keys inside, but it felt like a lifetime ago that me, Helios, and Ares had left here in a rush.
I didn’t even know where my house keys were.
But like everything else when I was with Helios, even the smallest details, they didn’t matter because he handled them.
Not using the exterior lock keypad—one I’d forgotten the code to because Helios changed it every couple weeks—Helios produced his key and opened the front door. Then he stepped inside and quickly scanned before moving back to let me enter.
I walked into the open-plan living area that I used to love and saw my water glass from… one night ago? Was that all?
Then I saw the corner of the couch where Helios always sat. Where the two softest throw pillows had been left stacked on top of each other. The two pillows Helios always tucked under my head whenever we watched TV and he laid me on his lap.
I sucked in a breath, but all I smelled was deep ocean, wet clothes, and dried salt on my skin.
I needed to tell him about the texts. But after hours on a speedboat, cutting across the Gulf Stream, and too much time to think, I wasn’t sure how much it mattered.
The Vulture was dead. Helios had kissed me. We couldn’t go back to yesterday.
I needed a shower. Then sleep.
“We’re showering,” Helios announced, pilfering my thoughts as he stepped out of his boots and tossed his key onto the kitchen island before fishing what must have been a water-logged cell out of his pocket.
Swiping once as he glanced at the screen, then tossing the cell next to his key, he was completely oblivious to the riot suddenly happening in my mind from his dominant, cavalier words.
We. We’re. “I need a moment.”
“Not giving you one.” His Glock, from a holster on his hip, followed the path of his key and cell.
I toed off my pink trainers that he’d laced so tight, they hadn’t even come off when we’d slammed into the ocean. “Helios, please.” I was out of fight.
“Woman, you had a whole fucking boat ride to have a moment. Now you’re getting a goddamn shower.”
I remembered the last time we’d showered together. Eight years ago. “And what if I said no?”
He looked at me for the first time since that loaded stare on the boat when Nix asked where we wanted to go.
In fact, he bent his knees, lowered his impossibly tall frame, and got in my face.
Then he infused every ounce of authority he had into his tone.
“You’re not getting any more space to disappear into your head.
We’re taking a fucking shower. We’re doing it together.
I’m gonna check you for injuries. Then we’re going to bed.
Together. You got a fucking problem with that, then save it for when I have more goddamn patience. ” He picked me up.
Shoulder to my gut, fireman-style, Helios threw me over his body like a rag doll and strode into my bathroom. Aiming right for the walk-in shower, he turned on the water.
In the next minute, we were under the spray with our clothes on as my stepbrother, my warfighter, my airplane crasher, lowered me to my feet. Then he squatted to pull down my leggings.
All of a sudden, it hit me.
Helios Titan Grayson.
The god of sun.
With his golden hair, driving his golden quadriga, streaking his golden fire from east to west, painting the sky in brilliant rays of golden sunlight, then spending his nights sailing back to the east in his golden boat, only to rise again from Oceanus the very next dawn, and make his journey all over again.
Helios. A chariot-driving solar deity who’d plunged us from the radiant brilliance of a sunrise sky into the depths of the ocean.
Helios. Who’d carried my broken body from a dungeon of a bunker.
Helios. Who’d risen every day with me for eight years in person or by phone.
Helios. God of sun and light.
My god of sun and light.
And he was taking off my clothes.