This felt...remedial and precious, at once.
She found she was afraid to break the silence.
“I’m surprised you’re here,” she made herself say because it was best to rip the bandage off and dive straight in—another one of her father’s favorite sayings. “Your social calendar is always so full.”
“I canceled it.”
“You mean, tonight’s engagement?”
“All of it,” Ares said.
And then did not expand on that statement at all.
The staff swept in, laying out the first course, but Pia hardly noticed it. And the babies must have sensed her agitation—or maybe it was anticipation, or something far more insidious, like longing—and as she rubbed her hand over her belly, she received a volley of kicks.
She must have sighed a little, because when she looked up, Ares was frowning at her. Not from down the length of a banquet table, but from much, much closer. Within reach.
“Is something happening?” he asked.
Aside from the hand he’d offered her tonight, Ares hadn’t touched her since her first night here. And even then, it seemed to her that he had gone out of his way to avoid touching her belly. Yet when she looked at him now, he had the oddest expression on his face.
There was no doubt that he was focusing all his attention on her. On her belly, to be more precise, where her hand rubbed at the tiny little foot inside.
“One of them is kicking,” she told him. “Which means the other one will likely join in any second now and make it a football match.”
Ares looked as astonished as he did uncertain then. “Now? As you sit there?”
“Do you...? Do you want to feel it yourself?” Pia offered, surprised by the vulnerability she heard in her own voice.
And worse, the hope.
Ares rose from his chair, rounding the corner of the table that separated them. Then, without skipping a beat, he slid down before her. And there was a look on his face that she had never seen before. His green eyes were dark.
Pia smiled. “Give me your hands.”
She didn’t wait for him to offer them. She reached over, took his hands in hers, and brought them firmly against her belly.
And, sure enough, the moment his hands slid into place over her bump, two different sets of feet reacted.
Pia watched Ares’s face. The jolt of surprise. The understanding of what he was feeling beneath his palms.
And then, like a dose of pure sunshine, the wonder.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice hushed.
“Sometimes it’s uncomfortable,” she said softly. “Or surprising. Or if one of them stretches out and presses their feet up against my ribs, that aches.”
He shifted, coming down on his knees before her chair, and his hands were suddenly everywhere. Moving all over her bump, as if testing it. Learning its shape.
And the more he ran his hands over her, the more Pia liked it. And in a way that had nothing at all to do with their babies or any kicking. She felt the shift in her like a flame leaping into life, from coals she’d imagined were cold.
It turned out they were only smoldering.
When Ares looked up at her again, there was a gleaming heat in his gaze that she recognized. Oh, how she recognized it. How she felt it.
“Pia,” he said, his voice low. Hot.
And an unmistakable invitation.
Pia couldn’t take this. Not for another moment. Ares was so close, his hands on her, that look of marvel and need on his beautiful face.
How could she do anything but melt? And as she melted and ran hot, that liquid greed bloomed inside her, low in her belly and deep between her legs.
Where only Ares had ever touched her.
His gaze searched hers.
Did she whisper his name? Or did it live in her already? Always?
Whichever it was, it made Pia lose her head completely. She leaned forward, slid her hands to hold his face, and then settled her mouth to his as if she might die then and there if she couldn’t taste him again.
She felt him groan, low and deep, as if it came from the depths of him. She felt his big, athletic body shake slightly, as if from the force of the same wild sensation that swept through her, too.
And then his mouth opened beneath hers and he took control.
And when he kissed her, Pia forgot that she wasn’t beautiful.
When Ares kissed her, Pia felt as if she was made entirely of glory. Light and lovely, sweet and right, strung out on the heaven in his every touch. All that hot perfection.
Ares moved closer, one hand curling around her neck as if to guide her where he wanted her. The other stayed put on her belly.
She felt untethered by her own need, and anchored at the same time.
He made her feel like she could fly. Like this was flying.
Ares kissed her and he kissed her, and Pia didn’t know which one of them was trying harder to move closer. To take the kiss deeper. She was frustrated that he wasn’t closer. She wanted his skin on hers, his hands on her bare flesh.