Chapter Sixty-Six
Feralyn
Heat covering me everywhere, sticky sweat made me stir.
Slowly blinking, I woke in Helios’s arms to bright sunlight and languid humidity drifting in through the still-open slider door.
Already staring down at me, his pensive gaze searching mine, Helios’s deep, gruff voice, husky from sleep, murmured my name. “Feralyn.”
I used to think I understood the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between the three names Helios called me.
And not just why he used them at different times, but the distinctions in how he said them.
Then last night happened. Now I was beginning to grasp that Helios was a well that ran unfathomably deep, and this Feralyn was so laden with nuance that the shades of it were more abundant than the bright hues spattered across the living room by the midday sun.
This Feralyn was a reminder of his apology.
Those three syllables were both asking and telling me that we were okay, that I was okay.
That rough murmur was the gentlest caress a warfighter could make.
My heart settled, and my smile was shy. “Hi.”
Then, just like his brother earlier, he went right into it without preamble. “What did Ares say to you?”
In that moment, with sunlight falling in casted rays on his face, I wanted my camera. I wanted to capture this very instant of him looking down at me, because all of a sudden, I was seeing a different Helios.
Or maybe I was seeing him for who he truly was, with zero filters.
Helios was the man who had given me that emotion-laden, nuanced Feralyn. But he was also a warrior.
His jawline a hard angle, his eyes a crystal-clear grayed blue, his expression immovable, his question was a demand.
Covered in a thick coat of war-hardened dominance, this was the version of himself that Helios wore with more surety than the ever-present Glock shoved into his back waistband.
The gun, when carried without a holster, was the part of him that was fast and loose.
That was the only part of what Ares had said about the Citation crash that I truly believed.
Yes, Helios could be impulsive. But he was never careless. He was deliberate. Always. He had too much training and far too much experience to ever be cavalier with an op or a weapon or the power it yielded. But his lethality? That was where Helios was most comfortable. Where he was at his prime.
Helios was a warfighter who ruthlessly killed.
But underneath that warrior was a blue-eyed boy who’d grown up the same way I did—without choices.
No one had raised either of us.
But I couldn’t let go of all the years when Helios had cooked, cleaned, done laundry, driven me and Ares before he had his license, and made sure we went to bed at a reasonable hour. Helios had kept us together. But most of all, he’d kept us safe.
When I looked at the Tier One operator he’d become, at his broad shoulders, at the hard-earned tiny lines in the corners of his almost-colorless gaze, I didn’t see that boy at a wedding who’d told me to stop crying.
I didn’t see the set jaw of a proud child who stood taller because he was already carrying his world on his shoulders.
I didn’t even see that brief glimpse of hopefulness in the form of a raised eyebrow when he’d set that plate of wedding cake in front of me.
Because even back then, as young as we were, he knew.
Helios had already grasped how completely and thoroughly screwed we were.
Every adult in his life had failed him, and he knew immediately I was no better off.
So he’d gotten me cake. That younger version of Helios was gone now, and a force of lethality was in its place, but I still remembered who he’d been.
And that memory was oh so bittersweet and metaphoric.
From cake procurer to 4Runner giver to plane crasher.
“Don’t fuck with me, Feralyn,” Helios warned, pulling me back to the here and now. “Tell me what the hell Ares said to you.”
The guilt flooded back in. “Have I ever come between you and Ares? I did earlier, obviously. But I mean before, and I mean me, personally.” Not Helios and me together.
He scoffed. “Is that a trick question?”
“No.” I didn’t joke with him. I didn’t joke with anyone.
I was fundamentally incapable. But Helios wasn’t.
He both hazed and joked with me. I didn’t reciprocate, which was now another layer of guilt that had surfaced since Ares’s visit.
“You deserve better.” Said with a bravery I didn’t feel, the sentiment made a knot in my stomach grow to an impossible tightness.
“Nice non sequitur, and we’re not having another bullshit conversation about what you think I need or that damn guilt you’re still harboring over other people’s shit perceptions or those texts or whatever other fucking bullshit you’re hanging on to.
” Eyeing me with such perfected resoluteness, I couldn’t tell if he was truly angry, chastising, or being suggestive. “I know what I need, woman.”
Woman.
One word, and I was back in that shower, back in my—our—bed last night, my traitorous mind reliving every way his mouth, tongue, and hands had played my body so beautifully.
Fighting a shiver, relishing the soreness between my legs, I drew the tips of my fingers across the rough stubble on his jaw and whispered his name how he’d said mine.
“Helios.” I said it because I could. Because Ares wasn’t here.
Because Helios had called me woman. Because his body had been inside mine, and I could feel his desire under me now.
He was so close, I could smell the heat of skin, the crispness of his soap, and the masculine musk of his deodorant. Other than the fresh scent of his jeans, courtesy of the laundry he still did every week, Helios didn’t wear a scent.
I loved that about him.
I loved how he naturally smelled.
Man, musk… home.
I inhaled.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Muttering, he shook his head.
Then he lowered his voice and made a mockery of the shiver I’d just fought.
“Don’t give me that look, woman. Not unless you’re gonna follow it through.
” He raised that same eyebrow, giving me the adult version of the same look from all those years ago.
Illicit desire rippled through me, radiating from the base of my spine, and I trembled.
Watching me closely, always watching me, he missed nothing of my body’s traitorous reaction, but he didn’t act on it.
His silence, a feat for the Viking-style warrior in him, remained as impenetrable as his lethally executed willpower where my agency was concerned because that was the other thing Helios did.
He protected me.
Every single part.
In his own very dominant, very obtrusive, and oh so very maddening way. Except right now, that way was counterintuitively nonaggressive, and it was only for this one, very specific subject matter.
Sex right now, while I was sore.
He hadn’t specifically said he would wait for me to tell him when I wasn’t too sore, but his stillness spoke volumes. Which only made this relentless, heated probing of desire between my legs more needy, but I wanted something more.
I wanted us.
Right here, right now, in this humidity-bathed moment with my sun god, I didn’t want to disturb this perfect picture of us, lounging like ancient deities on a sun-soaked cloud of tangled-limb intimacy.
I wanted to feel this newness.
And maybe I wanted to test it.
Lying my head back on his shoulder, not yet brave enough to initiate that follow it through, I changed the subject. “Where does Ares go?”
His scowl formed before his retort. “Not fucking here.” Cool gray-blue eyes held mine in challenge. “Which is exactly how it fucking should be.”
“Helios.”
“Don’t lay in my arms and test me, woman. You know damn well he needs to stay in his own place.”
Maybe. Okay, yes. But that didn’t mean I wanted to alienate him.
Most of all, I didn’t want to destroy his relationship with Helios.
“Ares is always going to be welcome here.” I wouldn’t, couldn’t, budge on that.
God knew this house was big enough for all of us, plus a half dozen other guests. Not that anyone ever came here.
“That right there is the fucking problem. Stop enabling his bullshit, Haven. Ares has his own damn place.”
All of a sudden, insecurity surged at his choice of words. “Like you have yours?” I asked quietly.
“You know I have a fucking house.”
That he never slept at.
Digging myself deeper into this self-created argument that wasn’t really an argument but a one-way ticket to anxiety and possibly a Helios-dominance showdown, I forced the question that made my heart race. “Are you going to stay there?”
“You worried?” Smirking, he brushed me off and sat up.
Then he lifted me off his lap and set me in the corner of the couch next to my two favorite pillows.
“What do you want to eat?” Standing up, his full height unfurled, and his muscles flexed in spectacular harmony as he started toward the kitchen.
Which was another thing about Helios. He always made sure I ate.
“You want one of your crazy-ass salads for breakfast?” He glanced at the clock on the stove. “Make that lunch.”
“I don’t need you to cook for me.” I started to get up.
“Didn’t ask what you needed right now. Sit your ass back down.
” Already opening the fridge, he pulled out produce, but then he looked over his shoulder and threw me a glance with that raised eyebrow.
As if he knew I was an addict and this was my fix, that hint of the old Helios mixed with the new.
Except after everything he’d done to my body last night, the single minute gesture was no longer colored with the past. Now it was carnal, sensual.
Basic human need. Like a man taking care of his lover. “Salmon okay for the protein?”
My stomach fluttered, my core tingled, and my heart melted.
A sexual beast. A ferocious warrior. An unwavering dominant. A protective alpha. And a selfless lover with a heart of gold he kept locked down so tight that I never saw it except for in moments like this.
Yes. This was soul deep.
“Thank you, that would be perfect.” I got up from the couch. “I’ll come help.”
The moment of tenderness passed as quickly as it’d shown up. “Plant your ass back on that couch. I know how to fucking chop shit.” The fridge door closed, but I didn’t obey his order.
I was suddenly noticing what was on the kitchen island.
My camera.
Quickly walking over, I picked up my Sony, powered it on, and perched on a stool.
“Christ, woman. Put the fucking camera down.”
“Why?” I wanted to shamelessly watch him fucking chop shit, and I wanted to do it through my lens.
I didn’t care that my camera was sitting here because Ares had retrieved it from wherever Helios had stashed it before we’d left.
I would think about that later. Right now, I just wanted the comfort and familiarity of the weight of the Alpha 7 RV in my hands as I looked through the viewfinder.
“Because I fucking said so.” In a routine that had been going on for years, Helios didn’t even pause in his movements.
He took a glass from the cupboard, filled it with water from the fridge, and slid it across the counter to me.
“Drink.” But then he strayed from his usual habit of going back to cooking.
Bracing his hands on the counter, he gave me a heated, dominant stare.
I took his picture.
He dialed up his dominance as his voice lowered. “You heard me.”
Pinpricks of awareness surged up my back and spread across my shoulders as need blazed in my core. I slowly set the camera down.
“Drink,” he ordered again, this time with more force.
I wrapped my hands around the surface of the glass where his fingers had just been because even that was a connection to him that I craved. “Thank you.”
He held his charged storm-eyed stare.
Then he pushed off the counter, and the intensity of the heated moment broke as he turned back toward the fridge. “Don’t thank me yet.” The gruffness in his tone quieted. “Save it until after I’ve fed you, woman.”
Taking a sip to hide the flush on my face, I let the cool water fill my mouth, then slide down my throat.
The doorbell rang.