Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [61]
“Son of a bitch.” Ares swept up his broken sword and hurled it against the wall. When he swung back around to her, every part of his body reflected his anger, from the way his brows punched down over flashing eyes to his clenched hands to the way his feet were spread wide in an aggressive fighting stance.
And yet, there was a sensual electricity in the air, and the longer they faced off, the more intense it became, until the air grew thick and hot, and her body flushed with sudden fever.
His gaze darkened dangerously… and then it dropped, traveling down her body as if mapping every curve. “You’re wearing my shirt. Take it off.” His voice was low, husky, little more than a rumble of thunder.
She stiffened. “Maybe I should have asked, but you were gone, and I didn’t have anything else to wear.”
“Take. It. Off.” Ares’s nostrils flared, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “I need you naked.”
Oh. A serious case of cottonmouth stole her voice. But anger gave it back. “Don’t order me around. You’ll get nothing from me like that.”
Too late she realized she’d thrown a gauntlet, and this was not a man to back down. Her challenge lit up his eyes, and he moved toward her, big shoulders rolling with every silent step. Her heart went ballistic, and with it came a zing of excitement, a growing desire to let him do what she thought he was going to do.
I need you naked.
Wait. Need. Not want.
I need you to shut up and strip. Her attackers had said that. One of them, anyway. She could never remember which.
The agimortus throbbed, and though she was getting a load of that pleasant sensation she’d gotten the last time Ares was near, a suffocating tightness clamped around her chest. What if her power surfaced at the wrong time? Ares said he was immortal, unkillable, but she’d seen what her ability could do. Terror shrunk her skin.
“Stay away from me!” Blindly, she swept up a clay bowl off his dresser and heaved it. Ares was nothing but a blur as he knocked it aside with his forearm and lunged with the grace of a pouncing panther.
A scream escaped her as she scrambled backward. Her foot caught on the towel she’d dropped to the floor. She stumbled into a wooden chest, and the floor fell away beneath her. Arms closed around her and jerked her up just before her head hit the floor.
“Ares!” Thanatos’s roar vibrated the very air, and with a snarl, Ares tucked her against his chest and whirled to face his brother, two powerful, lethal animals readying for combat.
Cara might as well have been a rag doll with the way her feet hung off the floor. The jersey had ridden up uncomfortably high, allowing her bare butt to feel the impressive bulge behind the fly of Ares’s pants and probably exposing a lot more than she wanted anyone to see, but the two brothers were too engaged in their stare-off to notice.
“Let her go, man,” Thanatos said, his voice now a soothing, silky drawl. “You need to get to the pub. Or find yourself a brutal, bloody war.”
Ares’s muscles twitched, his grip loosening slightly.
“That’s it,” Thanatos continued. “Go take care of yourself. Limos is fetching a sorcerer to lay wards around the house. No hellhound will get inside again.”
There was a heartbeat of hesitation, and then Ares peeled away from her. “Sorry… I wouldn’t have… fuck.” His skin glistened with a fine sheen of sweat and his eyes were wild, reminding her of a trapped animal, or of one in pain, terrified, and not understanding what had happened to it. She couldn’t have imagined Ares being terrified or trapped, but there was something going on inside him, a vulnerability she doubted he could name, and it bit right into her heart.
“Ares,” she murmured, in the voice she used with Hal, “it’s okay.”
He focused on her, and gradually, the feral light in his eyes faded, darkening to a smooth ebony. At the same time, the agimortus buzzed more urgently, becoming a tether that compelled her toward him. It tugged on her skin, walked a line between