The tightness of his jaw and the chill in his gaze told me he was pissed. Really pissed. Join the fucking club, buddy.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed.
“I tracked your phone.” He didn’t let go of my elbow.
I kept trying to pull it from his grip, but I barely moved. “You tracked my phone?” I repeated, my voice sharp. “That is an invasion of privacy.”
“You’ve got about a million fuckin’ apps on there already that are already invading your privacy,” he fired back. “What I’m doin’ is try to keep you safe.”
“I’m at brunch!” I screeched. “The only thing you’re keeping me safe from is from ordering a second serving of French toast that I’m ninety-nine percent sure has crack in it because there is no other way they can make it taste that good.”
I thought my voice held the right amount of outrage and strength in it, but it didn’t have its intended effect since some of the chill left Hades’s eyes and the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Don’t you smile at me when I’m planning on being pissed off at you for a great deal longer,” I demanded.
I saw the twitch again.
“Fuck you’re cute,” he muttered, yanking me forward so our bodies pressed together.
I let out an embarrassing little sigh as they did which caused his eyes to darken and his head to dip lower so our lips were almost touching.
Almost.
“I’m not trying to be cute,” I whispered. “I’m trying to be otherworldly and threatening.”
His mouth twitched again, and it was even more attractive up this close. “You are definitely not from any world I know,” he murmured as his eyes raked over my face. “And you most definitely are a huge fucking threat.”
Something in his words told me that was a compliment. A big one. A scary one.
“Get in your car, Freya, and get your ass home,” he ordered softly.
In about two seconds, my ass was in my car and on my way home.
He did not fuck me when I got home, like I’d expected he would. Like his eyes had promised he would. As if he’d timed it, his phone rang the second we both walked in the door. To be fair, he did look like he was ready to kill whatever guy or gal dared call him. To be fair, I was also ready to kill whoever had dared to call Hades when it seemed like this was going to finally fucking happen between us.
Then I’d been ready to kill him for glancing down at the phone, seeing who was calling and then fucking answering it. I knew it was ridiculously unreasonable for me to get as pissed off as I did, but I was a woman frustrated. Severely sexually frustrated. So I did get pissed off.
Pissed off enough to stomp off to my room, shutting my door very loudly after I entered it. Not quite a slam—only teenagers slammed doors. Adult women shut them with passion. I ripped off all my clothes with the same passion. Not the kind of passion that I’d been expecting them to be ripped off with, but what could you do?
A small, romantic, foolish, sexually frustrated part of me expected Hades to storm into the bathroom as I showered, get in fully clothed, free himself from his jeans and fuck me senseless.
Although I’d showered at the gym, I took another one. I needed another one. A cold one. One to wash off the thin layer of perspiration covering my entire body. I even treated myself to a top-level shower. One including the exfoliating, the shaving, the hair mask, the pumice stone, all of it. The kind of shower that was usually reserved for Sunday nights so I could follow it up by slathering myself in expensive body cream, putting on my hundred-dollar face mask, then covering my hands in Vaseline while indulging in a Real Housewives marathon.
Once the shower finished without any kind of orgasm or intrusion by Hades, I did put on expensive body cream, but I didn’t follow that with any of the other steps. Because I’d glanced at my phone, read the text from Macy and made a decision. A decision that had me blow drying my hair, something I preferred to pay someone to do because I had a lot of hair, and I could never get it looking as good as the hairstylist did.
But I was pissed off, determined and turned on. Apparently, that was the recipe—at least my recipe—for the perfect blow-dry. Then I spent thirty minutes applying the ‘no makeup’ makeup look. The kind that made my skin look dewy and flawless, my lips look impossibly pink and full, and my lashes look long and lush.
Next, I put on a sundress. It was technically getting too cold for a sundress, but I had a plan. It was white, simple and not exactly my style. I’d bought it because I knew I’d need it sometime, whether I had some kind of picnic to go to or if I had to torture an alpha male. A short skirt, visible midriff and ample cleavage were all well and good for making a man want you, but it was the impossibly fitted, perfectly tailored sundress that made men go wild.