The Deep End of the Sea, page 13
I want to kiss him. Feel his mouth against mine. I want my hands in his hair and his in mine. I want my body pressed against his, his against mine. I want all of those things Poseidon ripped away from me on that awful night so long ago. He stole my innocence. I can’t offer that to Hermes, can’t offer it to anyone. He stole my first kiss, even if it wasn’t reciprocated or loving. As painful as those memories are, I wish so desperately to replace them with new ones made with somebody I love.
Kisses, in books and movies, are supposed to be heavenly. I want that experience. And I want it with Hermes.
I want to stop living in fear.
I drink more of the golden liquid courage in my glass and ask for the first time in our relationship, “Why aren’t you married?”
He stiffens once more. “What?”
I can’t look up at him, though. So I focus on the lights in the lagoon and keep my words light. “Most of your siblings are married. I am curious as to why you aren’t.”
He clears his throat. “They most certainly aren’t. Dite, yes. She’s an exception. The rest, though ... not married.”
“Hades and Persephone—”
“Not my siblings.” He’s amused. “But they are lucky exceptions, too.”
I try again. “Your father—”
“Also not my sibling. And ... unhappily married most of the time, I think. So he’s an exception of the exceptions.”
I have another sip of champagne. “All right. I stand corrected, but my question is still unanswered. Why have you never married? You ...” I quickly finish the rest of the glass. “You seem to be the sort that women would want to marry. What do they call that nowadays? A good catch. You’re an excellent catch.”
I can feel his surprise ripple through the lean muscles pressing up against me. And yet, he says nothing.
“You can tell me.” I swallow down the bursts of fear-laced anxiety threatening to surge up my throat. “I’m your best friend.”
He’s still silent.
A nearly hysterical laugh breaks free from my chest. I have to know the answer to this or I fear I might go as insane as so many people have thought me in the past. “I’ll go first. Obviously, the reason I’ve yet to marry is because I was a recluse of a monster living on an enchanted isle. Most men draw the line at scaly women whose hair can bite them during arguments and eyes which can turn them into stone—in a bad way.” Oh, stars above, did I really just say that out loud? I need more champagne, but that would require me getting up and going and getting it. And that would mean I might have to make eye contact, which would make all of this even more humiliating. I’m botching this; he’s got to be utterly confused over why I’m suddenly asking all these things I’ve left alone before. More hysterical laughter escapes me. Like a lunatic, I waggle the ringless fingers on my right hand in front of us. “Thus, my singleton status. Your turn. You’re not married or ... dating, I think?” I nearly groan at myself. Smooth moves, here, Dusa. That doesn’t sound like blatant prying at all. “You’ve never mentioned dating. Fess up, friend. What’s your reason?”
His hand comes up to meet mine, still dangling uselessly in the air between us. And then he laughs, too—that exasperated breath of a laugh of his that I’ve come to love over the years. “You really don’t know, do you?”
My heart joins the anxiety rising in my throat. What does that mean? “Well, we’ve never talked about it, so ...”
I feel the deep breath he takes, long and steady and calming. “Are you sure you want to know?”
Yes. But then ... not if it means my heart is going to break when he tells me he is in love with somebody who is not me. The chances are good—excellent, really. Just because he never admitted it before doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. But even still, even under the threat of agony and despite how my heart has decided to leap out of my throat so it can run a marathon, I’m left dizzy as I lay still against him in the wide chaise in his aunt and uncle’s backyard, in desperate need of an answer. It’s funny, just flat-out ridiculous that I’ve had years and years to ask such a question, yet never did. And now I think if I don’t get one, I don’t know what I’ll do.
He’s my best friend, somebody who has seen me at my very darkest and weakest, and it’s only now that I am terrified of losing him.
I love him.
I love him.
I force myself to sound bemused. “I asked, didn’t I?”
His fingers knot in mine in our still raised hands. And then my breath leaves my chest to fly up toward the constellations when he pulls our enjoined hands down so he can kiss the back o mine. “The reason I’m not married is that you are my best friend.”
The back of my hand is on fire—aching, lovely, torturous fire. It spreads out until every last bit of me is consumed, which is so unfair, because here he is, telling me he is in love with somebody who apparently won’t marry him because he was foolish enough to become friends with me.
I have the worst luck. Absolute worst luck of anyone ever born.
My hand is still so close to his mouth, so when he exhales that exasperated, quiet sigh of his again, a shiver rips through my body at the mere brush of his breath against my skin. “Dusa ... how is it that this is so painfully obvious to everyone except you?”
How do people breathe in situations like this? I wouldn’t be able to catch my breath or slow my heart right now even if I tried. How do hearts break and race at the same time? I want to ask what he means by, about the girl who is cruel enough to withhold her love because of our friendship, but my words are disappeared just as easily as the air in my lungs.
He presses another kiss on the back of my hand, enflaming me once again. “You want to know why I haven’t married yet? Because I have yet to ask the girl who owns my heart entirely, let alone actually tell her what she means to me. I’ve been too selfish to do so, because I’ve been fearful that once I do, things will change between us for the worse if she does not feel the same way, and I know I can’t lose her. So I’ve held on to what we have, even though I want to be with her more than anything else in the entire universe. See, I am completely, irrevocably, in love with the best person I know. And I have been for a very long time.”
I hate her, HATE whoever this nameless girl is. How could she be so cruel? Hermes loves her. Hermes. He is the best person I know. I would trade places with her in a heartbeat. She has no idea how lucky she is. I’d like to see how she’d feel when she has no love, locked away on an island for years. Maybe she’d wise up then.
But for now, no matter who she is, if my friend is unhappy, then I will do anything in my power to change that situation for him. Even if it destroys my own heart. I say, shamed at how my voice cracks just as easily as the brittle muscle in my chest, “Maybe if I talk to her for you ... explain how things are between us ... she’d not object ...?”
He shifts in the chaise, rolling over to his side so he’s now facing me. I blink the tears back, praying he can’t see them, but it’s a moot point when he gently tugs my chin until I turn to face him, too, my body following suit.
His eyes are so green tonight as they pin me to where I lay. He’s so beautiful. So wonderful. The best kind of friend.
I love him.
Our faces are so close to one another right now, and all I can do is selfishly think how easy it would be for me to lean forward and kiss him like I’ve dreamed about for the last couple of weeks. One kiss, and then I’d let him go.
One kiss, to replace the one stolen from me.
This would be my first kiss, not what happened with Poseidon. Because a kiss should be born from love, and want, and need. A kiss should be beautiful, something a girl can hold onto for the rest of her life, to pull out in her memory whenever she wants butterflies to come back. A kiss shouldn’t be roughly ripped away from her and turned into a thing of nightmares.
I want that kiss, and I want it from my best friend.
So I do it. I take the risk. I lean forward in the scant few inches between us until our foreheads touch and our champagne-tinged breaths mingle in the miniscule slice of space left between our lips. I don’t want to steal this from him, not like mine was stolen from me. I give him this moment to pull back, but ...
He doesn’t. Our hands, still clasped, are wedged in between our bodies. I can feel the beating of his heart right now against the back of my hand.
It’s racing just as fast as mine. That’s ... good?
My lips brush ever so lightly against his. It’s lovely, just absolutely the most lovely sensation, because tingles flare up and down my body and my head swims and I burn and float and all that happened was the delicate slide of skin against skin.
There.
My first real kiss.
I pull back, ever so slightly, but a low moan escapes him. And then his hand is in my hair, bringing my face back, and our mouths come together again. This is no brush, though, no soft slide: this is his mouth, on mine and mine on his, and oh stars above and everything wonderful in the world, this ... impossibly this is more beautiful than what happened before. But I have no time to process it, because his lips are moving against mine and it is everything, everything I could have ever dreamed it would be.
I’m melting right into him. My body melts right into a useless puddle of nerves and heat and it’s just soaking right into him, it has to be. Because I can’t feel anything other than his mouth on mine, his breath against my skin, and I don’t think I want to feel anything right now if it wasn’t one of these things.
I love him.
His tongue touches the seam of my mouth and I gasp, and then it’s in my mouth, twining with my tongue and all of that melting that just happened happens all over again. Something in me switches on, some need that tells me I must do the same with him, and when I do—when I ease my tongue into his mouth—he makes that same, low groan that just might be my new favorite sound in the world.
For the first time in two thousand plus years, time stands still. I pray it stays that way, because this moment here?
Divine.
He shifts in the chaise, his mouth never leaving mine, until he’s above me. My heart thunders in my chest as I reach up both hands and dig them in his hair, just like I’d imagined earlier. I’m drunk, and I can’t blame any of it on the champagne. It’s all him, and of how he makes me feel.
When we come up for air, we’re both breathing heavily, and as I gaze up in his eyes, so bright green in the moonlight, I can’t even begin to piece together all of the sensations wracking my body right now.
“Dusa ...” he murmurs, my name word barely voiced against the songs from crickets and frogs surrounding us.
Don’t do it, I think. Don’t tell me what just happened between us was a mistake, because if you do, I don’t think I can survive that. I’m not ready for this dream to be done.
His head shifts just a tiny bit so he can press a lingering kiss against the corner of my mouth. “In case it wasn’t patently clear, that was me finally telling you how much I love you.”
My hands, currently on his shoulders, still. Surely, he did not just say what I think he did? Because—
“I am in love with you,” he whispers against my mouth. “Desperately. Hopelessly. In. Love. With. You.”
Something long-lost yet effervescent bubbles up in me, threatening to tear me apart in its efforts to burst free: joy. Blissful, radiant, incandescent joy. “That’s a good thing,” I whisper in return, a hand coming to cup his dear face. “Because I’m in the same situation.”
I can feel his mouth curve against mine. “You’re also hopelessly in love with you?”
I can’t help it. The elation filling every single one of my cells won’t let me do anything else—I laugh. And then I kiss him again: deeply, so he has no doubt of what I mean.
I can’t stop touching him. He can’t stop touching me. Even now, as I lay back in his arms once more, staring up at the stars, one of his hands runs lightly up and down my waist; the other twines through my hair. I’m tracing patterns on his chest, marveling how there is no awkwardness, no fear as I lay here with him—just love, all-consuming, effervescent gorgeous love.
“So,” he murmurs, his mouth lingering against the top of my head as he leaves a kiss there, “when did you finally decide to give me a chance?”
I play with one of the buttons on his shirt. “What do you mean?”
Another lingering kiss finds its way to my forehead. “I’ve been waiting a very long time for you to wise up and realize your feelings toward me.”
My fingers pause in their effort to undo his button. “What?”
I feel his chuckle before I hear it. “Was that unclear, too? Wow. I’m apparently horrible at this. But that’s okay—as long as I finally have you in my arms, I’m more than content.”
I shift and lean myself up on an elbow so I can look him in the face. He looks content. Amused. Happier than I’ve ever seen him before.
But surely, there is no way his feelings for me could be older than just a few weeks old. Friendship, yes. I have no doubt about the validity of our friendship. But love? There is no way he was ever in love with me, because I was a monster who killed people.
“What’s the matter, kardia mou?” he asks me softly, a hand smoothing stray strands of my hair away from my face.
He calls me his heart, but he is mine and has been for so long. “I love you,” I tell him. I let every last ounce of that very real, very valid feeling coat every syllable I speak. I’ve never said those three words out loud before. And now, now I want to say them all the time, as often as I can, as long as his ears are the ones to hear them.
He groans quietly, his lips finding my neck, and I arch toward them. “I cannot tell you how long I’ve dreamed of this ... being here, with you,” he tells me, his words soft and sweet and hot all at the same time. “I’ve imagined it thousands of times, in a thousand different ways, but ... you taste better than anything I could have ever imagined in even my best dreams. And believe me, there have been plenty of those kind when it comes to you.”
I struggle to focus as one of his hands runs the length from my waist to my breast. The arm propping me up turns to jelly, making it difficult to stay upright. He catches me easily, his mouth once more claiming mine. I shiver when his fingers dance across my skin to circle my breast, cupping it in a way no other man has done before.
I fall apart all over again.
“Do you know what I used to dream about?” he murmurs in my ear as his hand drifts to my other breast.
I manage to whisper, “What?” even as he steals my breath away when he lightly pinches my nipple. I jerk, but not from pain. No, there’s only delirious, delicious pleasure here. This must be what odes were written about, infinite movies attempt to depict, books desperate to describe—the perfect, exquisite sensation of lust and love all rolled into one.
“What you sound like when you’re kissed.” His mouth brushes mine. “What your body would feel like under mine.” His index finger traces a light circle around my hardening nipple. “What you would taste like.” His teeth lightly graze my neck. “What it feels like to hear you tell me you love me, too. I cannot tell you how delighted I am to finally have those answers. How it makes me feel like I’ve been given the best gifts in the entire universe.”
My eyes go blurry; too much happiness threatens to spill out. After all that I’ve done, after all I’ve gone through, how did I ever deserve this? Him? “Then listen closely. I love you, Hermes. I. Love. You.”
He groans. And then I gasp when his lips travel to meet where his hand is, my back arching so he can easily capture my breast, still hidden behind my dress, in his mouth. Oh, sweet stars in the skies, surely Zeus has just struck me with one of his lightning bolts because I have been electrocuted. Nerve endings I didn’t even know were there before flare to life, turning achy and hot.
I need something—desperately need it, but I don’t know what it is.
Suddenly, he pulls away from me and calls out something in that language of Olympus I don’t understand, his hoarse voice ringing out across the courtyard. Faint rustling follows.
I struggle to form coherent words. “What did you just say?”
An embarrassed smile slides across his tempting lips. “I basically told the Automatons patrolling the villa that if they came within a two thousand feet of us tonight without me or you giving explicit permission first, I’d personally ensure that they would lose their jobs.”
It takes a few seconds for his words to sink in before I jerk into a sitting position over him. “Have we been watched?”
He leans up on his elbows, eyes drifting to my chest. This, of course, makes my embarrassment grow tenfold. “Dusa. Love.” He eyes finally meet mine. How do they manage to pierce me so? “No. They—while I certainly never guessed that this would happen tonight, I always make sure that when you and I are together, it’s just us. They are on the property, yes. They are within a safe distance if needed.” He lets out that wonderful exasperated breath of a laugh. “The only people here ... it’s just us. I would never expose you to anything that I would ever think would harm you—not even if my lust threatens to get the better of me.”
I want to look around the patio, ensure for myself that his words are true, but he’s captured my attention so fully. “We’re alone?”
He nods, biting his lower lip, like he’s worried that I’ll somehow take back what I’ve said, how I feel. What we’ve done.
For some reason, that undoes me. This god—this powerful, popular, wonderful god has fallen in love with me. All that bad luck I thought I’d cultivated over the years evaporates out of my pores. Because I am the absolute luckiest girl to ever live in this moment.
He gave me my first real kiss. He’s given me his love, his friendship, and his devotion. But I am suddenly greedy, because I want more than that. I want to entirely erase what’s come before. It’s been two thousand years, yes, but I want that memory completely overwritten in my life with one from this man here.
