He was glorious. There was no other word for it.
And when he laughed, Susannah was tempted to believe that he really was a god, after all.
“You are quite right,” Leonidas said after a long while. Long after she’d been captivated by the way his laughter transformed him, right there where he sat astride her. Long after she’d lost another part of herself she couldn’t quite name. “I don’t care at all. Monster, god, man. It is all the same to me.”
And this time when he came down over her, she was already shaking. A deep, internal trembling, as if a terrible joy was tearing her apart from inside out. Some part of Susannah wanted it no matter how she feared it, and because she couldn’t tell if it was suicide or something sweeter, she threw herself into his hands.
Leonidas shifted. He kicked off his trousers, and then settled himself between her legs. He pulled her thighs up on either side of his hips while Susannah tried to make her whirling head settled down enough to accommodate him.
Then it didn’t matter, because he kissed her. Again and again, he took her mouth until she felt branded. Possessed.
Taken. At last.
It made her wonder how she’d ever survived all this time without him. Without this.
In some distant part of her brain she knew she should tell him.
I’m a virgin, she could say. Word of warning, our wedding really was a white one. Maybe he would even laugh again, at the absurdity of a woman her age still so untouched. Whatever he did, whether he believed her or not, it would be said. He would know.
But Susannah couldn’t seem to force the words out.
And she forgot about it anyway as his hands gripped her hips again, and he shifted her body beneath his in an even more pointed manner, as if he intended to take charge of this and do it his way.
Maybe that would be enough.
It would have to be enough, because she could feel him then. Huge and hard, flush there against the part of her that no other person had ever touched.
A different sort of shiver ran over her then. Foreboding, perhaps. Or a wild need she’d never encountered before, drawing tight all around her as if she was caught in a great fist. Again she opened her mouth to say the thing she didn’t want to say, just to make sure he didn’t—
But he thrust into her then, deep and sure.
Susannah couldn’t control her response. She couldn’t pretend. It was a deep ache, a burning kind of tear, and her body took over and bucked up against him as if her hips were trying to throw him off of their own volition. She couldn’t control the little yelp that she let out, filled with the pain and shock she couldn’t hide.
Though the instant it escaped her, she wished she’d bitten it back.
Above her, Leonidas went still. Forbidding.
His eyes were like flint.
And still, she could feel him there, deep inside her, stretching her and filling her, making her feel things in places she’d never realized were part of her own body. The fact she couldn’t seem to catch her breath didn’t help.
“It has been a while, I grant you,” Leonidas said and he sounded almost…strained. Tight and something like furious at once. “But it’s not supposed to hurt.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Susannah lied.
He studied her for a long moment. Then, not changing the intensity of his gaze at all, he lifted a hand and wiped away a bit of moisture she hadn’t realized had escaped from her eye and pooled beneath it.
Leonidas repeated it on her other eye, still watching her intently.
“Try that again.”
“Really.” Susannah didn’t want to move, possibly ever again, but there was something working in her she didn’t understand. Something spurring her on, pulsing out from the ache between her legs that she knew was him, fusing with that breathlessness she couldn’t control. A kind of dangerous restlessness, reckless and needy. She tested her hips against his, biting down on her lower lip as she rocked yourself against him. “It feels fantastic.”
“I can see that. The tears alone suggest it, of course. And the fact that you’re frowning at me proves it beyond a doubt.”
Susannah was indeed frowning at him, she realized then, though she hadn’t known it. She knew it now, and she let it deepen.
“Here’s a newsflash,” she managed to say. “Just because people worship the ground you walk on—literally—doesn’t mean you can read minds. Particularly not mine.”
“Tell yourself anything you need to, little one,” he murmured, and that should have enraged her. But it didn’t. If anything, it made her feel…warm. Too warm. Leonidas ran his hands down her sides. Once, then again. He brushed her hair back from her face. She could still feel him inside her, so big and so hard, and yet all he did was smooth those caresses all over her. “I don’t have to read your mind. Your body tells me everything I need to know. What I don’t understand is how you’ve managed to remain innocent all this time.”