Ares

by Heaton, Felicity

  He regarded her with a heated gaze, raking it over her, as though he was considering putting her on his menu, and she tried to stifle the rush of fire that blazed through her blood. She hoped to God he didn’t share his scarred brother’s ability to smell arousal.

  “Not likely.” His lush baritone quickened the spread of the wildfire in her veins. He waved towards the kitchen area. “You’re welcome to look. Just don’t hold your breath while you’re at it.”

  Megan stood and walked over to the kitchen, every inch of her aware of his gaze on her. She burned wherever his eyes lingered and barely resisted her desire to stop and look back at him.

  She reached the black breakfast bar and stopped when the cleanliness of the kitchen hit her. It was immaculate, from the polished granite counter and oak cupboards, to the spotless stainless steel hob and oven. There was no way this man cooked in it. It was far too clean to be a bachelor’s kitchen and the stove honestly looked brand new and untouched.

  Plus, he had a good collection of pizza cartons stacked on one end of the breakfast bar. They had been scattered around his apartment when she had fallen asleep.

  She smiled to herself.

  Had he tidied on seeing her in his apartment?

  Her stomach rumbled again and she tried to drag her eyes away from the stack of pizza boxes. She hoped they were all empty. If they weren’t, she might be tempted to ask how old the contents were and whether they would kill her if she dared to eat them.

  She forced herself to turn away from the potential case of food poisoning and faced him where he stood in the middle of the living area, his gaze still locked intently on her.

  “I take it you do eat... judging by the array of cartons you had strewn around the apartment last night?”

  His eyes narrowed on her and then the boxes and he didn’t seem pleased that she had called him out on his tidying to impress her but he didn’t deny it.

  He huffed and raked long fingers through his tawny overlong hair, causing the muscles of his torso to shift deliciously and distract her. If only she could feast on that bounty. She would never go hungry.

  “Of course I eat.”

  She leaned her back against the breakfast bar and shook her dirty thoughts away. “If you’re going to keep me here, you could at least feed me.”

  No response.

  She had wanted to test a theory and he had just proven it true. He had no intention of letting her leave. Her calm melted away, anger rising to obliterate it. She had healed him just as Daimon had asked. She had no problem with remaining here out of choice, but she was damned if she was going to stay here against her will.

  She pushed away from the kitchen, striding a few steps towards him, and he turned away and headed for the bedroom.

  Avoiding her now?

  Her patience snapped. She stormed into the open space that ran between the front door and his bedroom, stopping directly in line with him.

  “I’m sure there’s a law against holding people captive. Oh... wait... there is. It’s called kidnapping!”

  He turned on her again, a quizzical twist to his expression. “You’re not a captive.”

  Megan perked up. That changed everything. “I can leave?”

  He absently waved a hand towards the door behind her and it opened.

  Faced with the chance to gain her freedom, she bolted for it, not stopping to marvel at the fact he could open a door with a simple gesture. She just wanted to reach the other side of the door and see for herself that she was able to come and go as she pleased, and then she would decide what to do next.

  Go home or stay here?

  She wasn’t sure which side her heart would choose.

  The door slammed before she could reach it.

  She turned on her heel, anger rising to push the fear she knew she should feel to the back of her mind.

  “Tormenting me now?” She glared at him and his eyebrows rose, confusion crossing his handsome face again. “Just where do you get off?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders and she resisted her need to look at them. If she did, she would probably just go along with his plan to keep her trapped here, close to him. That was a bad thing. Her heart reasoned that it didn’t sound so bad. He had vowed to protect her and he was gorgeous, and she was attracted to him, and he could definitely answer the questions multiplying in her head.

  “I changed my mind.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair again and she almost fell for the distraction, tempted to catch another glimpse of his muscles shifting. “Keras is probably right. It’s better to drop you off tonight and make sure you get home without a hitch.”

  That should have sounded perfectly reasonable to her. He intended to take her home and ensure her safety, a very sweet and gentlemanly thing to do.

  What she heard was not only Daimon thought he could boss her around, but he did too, and so did another of his brothers.

  No one in this world was going to dictate what she did or didn’t do.

  She loosed a frustrated growl, turned and pulled on the door handle with all of her strength, rattling and twisting it. The door didn’t budge.

  “Let me go!” She yanked it up and down, pushed and pulled, ground her teeth and growled again, but it still didn’t give. “I swear... you let me go right now or I’ll—”

  “What?” Unfazed. Challenging.

  She turned and found him standing opposite her, near the bedroom, his arms folded across his chest.

  Megan ran straight at him, drew her arm back and swung a slap at him as hard as she could. He casually leaned back and evaded her strike, and she followed through with the force of it, lost balance and fell into him, her shoulder barrelling into his chest.

  He must have been off balance from leaning back to avoid her blow because she took him down with her, landing on top of him.

  The back of his head smacked off the oak floorboards so violently even she flinched from the sound.

  His eyes closed, his body lurched against hers, hot and hard, and he grabbed the sides of his head.

  Dark words rolled off his tongue, sounding like the same language he had spoken last night. The same fierce pain speared her ears and she covered them, trying to block out the words. A peal of thunder rocked the sky. The apartment lights flicked off and then buzzed back into life.

  Eyes wide, Megan stared down into his dark ones as they slowly opened.

  The flecks of gold and red in them glowed like embers wrapped in shadows.

  She lowered her hands away from her ears and pressed them against his broad, solid chest.

  “That’s some curse,” she squeaked, not quite brave enough to speak at normal volume. Her hands shook and she told herself that the thunder in time with the black words that had left his mouth had just been a freaky coincidence. Not that she believed in such things. But it was the only explanation she wanted to entertain. She smiled sheepishly. “Russian?”

  He fixed her with a dark vicious glare, grasped her shoulders and pushed them as though intending to remove her.

  Or toss her across the room.

  She pressed harder against him, not wanting to play rag doll like the image in her mind. She had no doubt that he could easily clear the length of the apartment with her if he threw her.

  “Here,” she whispered, desperate to make amends and soothe the savage edge to his expression. “Let me.”

  She pressed her fingers to his temples.

  They throbbed beneath her touch and she focused on the back of his skull while lightly running her fingertips in circles over his skin. His eyes remained locked with hers, the hard edge to them softening as she carefully eased his pain. When she felt he was healed, she told herself to release him, but the heat steadily building in his striking eyes had her lingering.

  She swirled her fingertips around his temples, falling deeper into his eyes, becoming increasingly aware of his body beneath hers. Their hips were together and her legs had settled on either side of his, her knees against his thighs. His stomac
h pressed against hers each time he inhaled, all delicious hard muscle that had her thinking ridiculous things.

  Like lowering her mouth and kissing him.

  Megan drew her hands away.

  His grip on her shoulders tightened and he hauled her onto her feet with him. Panic lurched through her. He was going to throw her anyway. She struggled and then stopped when she caught a glimpse of his stomach and beyond.

  Sweet lord above. He was nude.

  The white towel lay on the floor, pooled around his feet. A flashback of him in the shower blazed across her mind. Her whole body flushed this time, heart pumping faster, easing into a thunderous run as she continued to stare down at something she could only call impressive.

  Heavens.

  She was the captive of a naked warrior who was built like a god.

  It took all of her willpower, but she dragged her gaze up to meet his.

  The past few minutes drifted away, inconsequential in this moment.

  “What did you say your name was again?” She stared into his eyes, lost and hazy, burning where he touched her.

  She wanted to hear him say it. She wanted to have it in her head in his bass voice whenever she looked at him.

  “Ares,” he husked, luscious and deep.

  Definitely a god.

  He could go to war on her defences any day.

  She would gladly submit to his conquering.

  Her mouth turned horribly dry. She swallowed but it did nothing. Her tongue poked out and swept across her lips to wet them. His gaze dropped to her mouth and the heat in it increased. Not the wisest move to make when you had a nude male stood only inches from you. He was so close that she could feel his heat and she ached to have him skin-on-skin with her, burning her all over. His hands scalded her upper arms where he held her in an unrelenting grip.

  “Ares...” she whispered and the moment his eyes met hers, she forgot everything she had been ready to say.

  The gold in them glittered, the red burning as bright as fire, and their wide dark pupils called to her, speaking of his hunger and desire.

  She had aroused a naked, gorgeous man with nothing more than a lick of her lips.

  What parallel world had she fallen into?

  Her whole body trembled with thoughts of what he might do to her with the strong, no doubt skilled, hands holding her arms and that sinful mouth, and her panted breaths broke the thick silence.

  No. With surprise, she realised that it was his heavy breaths that filled the quiet.

  His chest heaved with them as he drew her closer, easing her up against his hard body. His gaze drifted down to her mouth again and his pupils narrowed. He wet his lips and her temperature soared to that of the sun. She tilted her head back, sense battling desire, telling her that she shouldn’t be doing this. She barely knew him.

  Desire won.

  A phone rang.

  Ares tensed, going still for long seconds, and then he released her.

  A chill swept up her arms.

  She frowned at the cold sensation that burned fiercest where his hands had been. It was as though her body missed them, hungered for his touch as much as her heart and her soul.

  A muscle ticked in his strong jaw, his pupils narrowed, hardening his expression, and he held his hand out.

  “Duck,” he said, emotionless.

  Duck?

  “Wha—” Something smacked her hard on the back of her head and she swore he had done it on purpose to get back at her.

  She grimaced and rubbed the spot, trying to ease the pain, and glared at the cell phone that had appeared in his hand.

  He casually brought it to his ear.

  “What?” he barked into the receiver.

  Fantastic telephone manners. Then again, if someone had called her in that heart-stopping moment of sheer anticipation, she would have been annoyed too. Scratch that. She was annoyed.

  “You call me an arrogant bastard again, and we’ll fall out, little brother.”

  She didn’t doubt that they would, not when his voice dripped venom. Which of his brothers was on the other end of the call?

  Laughter, loud and clear, rang through the phone.

  He switched ears and she caught a glimpse of the picture on the screen. The young blond one. She should have guessed. He looked like trouble.

  “Get me Keras,” Ares snapped.

  Was that the leader’s name?

  She was having trouble putting names to faces. She hoped to God Ares only had six brothers. Any more, and she would never figure out who was who.

  He leaned down and swiped the towel off the floor. For a moment, she thought he would cover himself up, but he didn’t. He dropped the damp towel over the arm of the red couch and walked naked across the room as though she wasn’t even there.

  Or he wanted her to stare.

  She took it as an invite and rubbed the back of her head as her gaze followed him. The point where the phone had hit her still hurt. He seemed so comfortable with his powers, and himself.

  He stretched, side on to her, giving her a three quarters view of statue-worthy perfection. She barely bit back her sigh. He pivoted and stalked towards her, intense dark eyes instantly locking with hers, and her heart jumped for what felt like the millionth time.

  He licked straight white teeth, making her feel as though he was going to put her on his menu after all and eat her up. She wouldn’t resist him if he did, as long as she could get a taste of him too. He stopped close to her and sniffed. Smirked.

  Megan blushed a thousand shades of red all over at the confirmation that he could smell what he was doing to her.

  Someone barked down the phone. Ares grimaced and turned to frown at the outside world.

  She looked there too and then crossed the apartment to the bank of windows, needing to distance herself from Ares in case she lost control and jumped on him. There wasn’t a cloud in the night sky.

  The thunder had been because of that curse.

  “Don’t give me that! You’d swear too if you had one hundred and forty pounds of woman tackle you to the ground.”

  Megan frowned down at herself.

  Was he psychic now?

  She hoped not, not with the dirty thoughts that spun through her head whenever she looked at him. He had hit damn close to the mark though. She huffed. At five eight, she was entitled to be a modest one forty. It was a normal weight. She wasn’t the sort of girl who would kill herself by starving down to underweight status just to conform and she liked her figure.

  And it was rich coming from a man who was probably twice her weight or more.

  She ran her hands over her jeans-clad hips.

  Every hair on her body rose and prickled with awareness as an electric current arced through her.

  She snuck at glance at the window, pretending to stare out of it at the night. He was watching her, his gaze following her hands.

  “Uh huh.” He took a few slow silent steps towards her.

  She swallowed her heart, ran her hands a little further down her thighs and then up over her backside and around to her stomach, trailing them under her dark pink camisole. Heat followed them.

  From her touch, or his gaze?

  She felt as though he could set her on fire just by looking.

  “I’ll deal with it.” He tossed the phone onto the crumpled wine red covers on the bed.

  She waited, her hands against her stomach, watching him in the reflection on the window.

  He stared at her for what felt like an eternity, a pensive expression on his handsome rugged face, and then huffed and stalked around the dark room, pulling drawers out and dressing.

  Megan gave up the pretence of looking at the city and turned and watched him instead. He slipped into a pair of tight black jeans that hugged his thighs and hips, not hiding anything from her gaze. A black long sleeve t-shirt came next, stretching over honed muscles like a second skin. He shoved his feet into his boots and his heavy steps echoed around the silent room as he strode over to his
closet on the other side of the bed to her. He slid the door open and she couldn’t see what he was doing.

  When he turned around, he was wearing long mahogany leather cuffs strapped over the t-shirt, covering him from wrist to elbow. Elaborate gold metalwork decorated the worn leather. He flipped down squares of matching leather and metal over the backs of his hands and slipped his middle finger into a loop on them.

  “I need to go out.” He reached back into the closet and something rattled and then there was a sound like a knife being drawn over a stone. Not a knife, she realised as he slid the door closed and advanced on her. A sword. A real goddamned sword. What the heck was he doing with such a weapon? He ran his fingers along the length of the blade and then sheathed it at his waist. “Stay here.”

  That startled her into reacting.

  “No. No way. You said you would take me home.” She walked over to him and he didn’t even look at her.

  He moved past her and slipped a black leather holster containing two guns and two knives over his broad shoulders. Definitely ignoring her.

  She moved into his path, not letting him get away with it.

  “I don’t have time to argue.” He passed her again.

  His completed ensemble threw him somewhere between centurion and hit-man, and she felt she should be afraid. She wasn’t. She had been more scared of him when he had been naked and the only weapon had been between his legs.

  He could thrust that sword into her any day. She was dying to have it impale her.

  Megan blushed and cursed her thoughts. Perhaps she needed to get a boyfriend, or at least get laid. It had been so long that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a man between her thighs.

  Images of Ares there, thrusting deeply into her, holding her close to him as they strained together, seeking mutual pleasure and bliss had her blush returning.

  He paused and looked her over, his pupils dilating again and making her feel he probably wouldn’t be averse to acting out the fantasies spinning through her mind.

  “Take me home,” she said, needing to be in control and to do something to block out the explicit scenes playing out in her head.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders, lifted her with ease, and set her down on the red couch.