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Thalia
Thalia pulled her knees to her chest, biting her tongue to keep from speaking even when Pirithous sliced open his palm. He had done the same thing that first night, but she wasn’t sure if it reassured her or disturbed her to know it had been a sacrifice to his gods. She hadn’t understood what he’d been doing then, but it all made sense now: Nikki’s poor translation, her confusion over what he wanted. Burning prayers. She clutched the cross at her throat.
She didn’t understand anything he said, speaking in his native language, but it sounded like a prayer. Maybe two prayers. One with the food, spoken by rote judging by the cadence of his delivery, and the second with the drink, more heartfelt and halting. Pirithous stared into the fire as if he expected it to talk back, but if the spitting and hissing of the flames said anything, it wasn’t in a language she understood. Evidently, he did, because his whole body softened when the fire flashed red.
He gathered his plate and his glass, the lighter fluid and the matches, and his smile of relief turned into a grin. “Climb up.”
“I’m not sure we thought this through,” she said, eyeing the height of his shoulders from her seat in the chair. It had been one thing to hop onto his back from three stairs up, but one-legged on the ground, she wasn’t sure she was going to make it.
He chuckled. “I could always throw you over my shoulder.”
“Ha ha, very funny.” She stood, and with a bit of a stoop on his part, and a boost once she took the matches out of his hand, she found her grip. He smelled like wood smoke and sex, and she buried her face in the curve of his shoulder, breathing him in. She could get used to this. To his body and his strength and the way he smelled after he’d been playing with fire.
“That first night,” she asked, after they’d put the lighter fluid back under the deck, “who did you pray to?”
“Hermes.” He took the stairs up to the door two at a time.
She pushed the door open and tossed the matches onto the table as they passed. “What for?”
He tried to drop her on the countertop, but she didn’t let go, locking her ankles around his waist and tightening her hold around his neck.
“Hermes is the god of travelers, among other things.” He shrugged then, leaning into her hold. “I begged him for help learning your language, that I might speak with you. That’s why I asked for your help to build the fire, rather than Nikki’s.”
“Because you wanted me.”
He closed his hand around the gold band on her arm, his thumb caressing her skin. “From the moment you fell in the grass along the road, I wanted you.”
She snorted. “You wanted me because I fell?”
“No.” He brought her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss into her palm that sent her heart racing. “I wanted you because you laughed.”
“You make it really hard for a girl not to like you, you know that?”
He chuckled. “And why is it that when you say so, it does not disturb you, but when I told you that you would want me in time, you found it so insufferable?”
“Because when you say it, it really is insufferable.” She kissed the back of his neck and let him go. He turned to face her, his hands finding her hips. “I didn’t want to be just another woman who fell for your ridiculous charm. And that was the same conversation where you said you would have kidnapped me.”
He dragged her forward, pulling her tight against his body and dropping his forehead to hers. “I also told you I would have made you my queen.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“The last woman I wanted to marry was a goddess, Thalia. Nothing less would satisfy me.” He tipped her chin up, brushing his lips over hers. “Until you.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure if she hoped it was just a line or not, but her stomach flipped and her body flooded with heat. Her hands were fists in the fabric of his shirt, and she had to clear her throat before she could go on. “Well, I guess that’s different then.”
He kissed her again, and she decided as long as he kept doing that with his tongue, it really didn’t matter.
***
THALIA LEANED AGAINST Pirithous’s side, facing him, and traced the red mark that cut across his chest, above his abdominal muscles, which were, she thought absently as her gaze drifted below the mark, absolutely magnificent. Everything about his body was perfect, or as near as she had ever imagined perfection to be. He was built, every muscle defined, but not to the point of veins bursting out against his skin. All balance and beauty, like a work of art. The template for all the sculpture that followed.
He watched her with eyes only half-open, one arm behind his head and the fingers of his other hand making lazy circles on the inside of her thigh. They’d tumbled back into bed together after Pirithous had decided that the way her bare skin stuck to the countertop did not serve his purposes, even if the angle did. Even so, they’d barely made it back to the bedroom, but she’d been glad of the softness of the bed before they were finished. He hadn’t lied about his stamina and he was either incredibly creative, or highly experienced. Probably both.
She felt her face flush with anticipation as his hand moved just a little bit higher up her leg. God, he was a tease. She clamped her legs together and she felt his chuckle rise from where she leaned against his chest, low and sexy as hell. The place she was going, for all this sex she was having with Pirithous.
Totally worth it. She leaned forward, kissing his chest just above the red mark, and his chuckle turned into something that sounded like a rumble of pleasure.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
He wiggled his fingers, still trapped between her legs. “Not any longer. Though when Persephone freed me from the chair, it felt as though the skin had been torn from my body. The shadow that held me was so cold it burned.”
She traced her fingers along the edge of the mark again. It looked like a rope burn more than anything else. But it wasn’t the only mark on his body. Scars stretched along his ribs and stomach, the length of his thighs, too. And one on his shoulder, where it looked like a sword had gone straight through the joint. She kissed that one, and he pulled his hand free to stroke her hair. She shifted to lie beside him, her head pillowed against his shoulder, trying not to imagine the different ways he might have gotten so many scars.
“None mortal wounds,” he murmured, kissing her forehead. “Only scrapes and shallow cuts, but for the one on my shoulder and another beneath my ribs. And all in the past.”
“We don’t live like that now,” she said. “If you kill someone, they’ll lock you up. And if you hurt someone, they’ll press charges and sue.” Her stomach knotted, thinking of what would happen if he were arrested. If he was telling the truth—now wasn’t the best time to have come into the country illegally, whether it was the result of an act of God or not. “They’d find out that you aren’t a citizen, that you have no records at all.”
She sat up so she could see his face. “Pirithous, if Nikki and I hadn’t found you on the roadside, and the police had, you would have been thrown out of the country before you even knew where you were. Do you realize that?”
His forehead furrowed. “For what offense?”
“You have no passport, no ID. They’d probably treat you as an undocumented immigrant.” She fell back to the mattress, staring at the ceiling. She’d been planning to leave him with some cash, in case he needed something, but he wouldn’t even be able to pawn his own gold without some kind of identification. “Even if you had money, you couldn’t get a bank account—”
“Thalia.”
“—And if you asked people questions about things, they would think you were out of your mind. Even if they only called the hospital, the police would be involved if you resisted, and then they’d realize you had no insurance, no birth certificate—”
“Thalia.” He squeezed her hand, and she realized he’d rolled to his side, propping himself up on an elbow. “You are speaking too quickly with words that make no sense. Tell me again.”
She blew out a breath and rubbed her face. How could she explain passports and illegal immigration, the political nightmare of his existence in the United States at this moment in time when people at the border were being allowed to die in camps. Even if he lived in the woods, if something happened to him and he was found or some hiker came across him completely uninjured, it would be a mess.
New York State wasn’t the worst place for him to wind up, but ICE didn’t mess around and if they found him and even suspected he might not be documented—which considering his obvious confusion when it came to the entirety of modern society was basically a certainty—he’d be done. The minute they tried to ask him any questions and he opened his mouth, it would be over—no amount of proof, even if he’d had it, would keep him out of trouble the way things were now. ICE had the authority to take anyone with no accountability at all, and he’d be thrown into some kind of containment facility until he could be deported—and to God knew where, since he didn’t actually have a country to go back to.
“I don’t even know how to begin,” she said.
A fake birth certificate, illegal identification. How did people get those things? And of course it all depended on Pirithous never doing anything that would make the police look twice. How could he be expected not to break the law when he had no idea what the laws were? He’d absolutely resist arrest for anything he thought was unreasonable, not understanding or recognizing that anyone had any authority over him at all.
She met his eyes. “I thought you’d be fine when I left. You could just disappear into the woods, but if anyone finds you...”
His forehead creased. “When you left?”
“I have a job at the National Gallery, starting in September. I’m moving to Virginia.”
His eyes darkened and his mouth became a grim line. “When?”
She swallowed, suddenly aware that she hadn’t mentioned it. That he hadn’t realized there was any limit on their time together, and this wasn’t just about sex to him. Oh God. He’d been serious. All this time. He hadn’t just wanted her, he’d wanted her. Thalia, you fool.
His grip on her hand tightened. “When, Thalia?”
“Twelve days,” she managed to say.
He muttered something that sounded like a curse, and rolled off the bed. Ropes of muscle stood out on his shoulders, and she would have bet a lot of money that his eyes were burning white, though she couldn’t see them.
“Pirithous, I didn’t realize—I didn’t expect this to be anything more than just...” She sat up, chewing on her lip. Nothing was coming out right. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“Since we met, this has been in your mind.” It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t know how to answer him. “And you said nothing. Even just this morning, you said nothing, though I confessed all.”
“I didn’t think you were serious, Pirithous. I thought it was just... a line.” Something in the set of his shoulders reminded her that idiom wasn’t his strength. But he wouldn’t ask, now. Just as he had refused to ask for help with the zipper. Stubborn, proud fool of a man. She swallowed, then made herself explain. “Another way to get me into bed with you.”
He shook his head. “Are men so faithless here? Or is it only me you think capable of such things?”
“No, Pirithous—”
“Virginia is some distance from here?”
Her heart twisted at the coolness of his tone. Humorless. Insulted. She would have felt better if he’d been angry, but even when he was standing there naked, it was like talking to a brick wall. “Six or seven hours, driving, with traffic.”
“Hours and traffic mean nothing to me.” His voice was completely flat, and he seemed determined not to look at her.
“Um.” She tried to calculate the mileage, then realized he probably wouldn’t know what a mile was either. “I don’t know. It would probably take more than a week to walk there, I guess.”
Some of the tension left his shoulders. But he reached for the sword where he’d left it on the desk, and she held her breath. He could draw it and cut her throat, and no one would know for weeks. Alex would come back to check on the house and find her rotting corpse, naked in the bed. She closed her eyes. Please, God.
He touched her cheek, and she felt his lips press against her forehead. Her eyes opened, and he was looking down at her, his face expressionless, except for the darkness in his eyes. Like storm clouds. His hand fell from her cheek, and he stepped back before she could catch it, turning away.
He paused at the door. “At least in Virginia, you will be safe.”
“Pirithous, wait!” She tripped off the bed in her hurry to follow him, but by the time she made it down the hallway, he was already gone.