Gods, she was beautiful.
Her fall of onyx hair shimmered in the light from the pool and the house to his left. Her pale blue eyes were bright as she locked them on him, ringed by black make-up that only made the colour of them even more striking.
And she smelled of sin and magic, that scent teasing his senses as wickedly as her smile did as she slowly bent and grazed her fingers across the water of the pool, as if testing the temperature.
Blocks of ice formed, clunking together and breaking apart, spreading towards him.
The water temperature dropped to a dangerous level, where it was liable to freeze completely.
“You need to cool down.” She held his gaze, her smile drawing his to her lips, his thoughts to things he shouldn’t be contemplating. “And listen.”
She drew her hand away from the water and it began to warm again.
Daimon stared at her. She was singing a song to his heart. The icy water was a delight, exactly what he needed tonight. Sheer pleasure rippled through him and her smile turned more wicked.
She gave him a coy look, one that said she knew what she had done, how she had pleased him, and that she took pleasure from it too.
“Will you hear me out? Perhaps you will be more inclined to listen if I joined you in there?” She stroked her fingers across her cleavage and his gaze tracked her black nails.
He wanted to touch her like that.
She reached beneath her arm and he shivered as she lowered a zipper, the sound of it sending a hot wave of need bolting through him.
His breaths came faster as she eased the front of her dress forwards, flashing the side of her breast. Her bare breast.
If she got naked, if she came into the pool, he would want to touch her and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.
He shook his head. “You shouldn’t get too close to me, Cass.”
She smiled knowingly and held her dress up with one hand as she stroked the fingertips of the other one across her chest. “You can’t freeze this heart. It’s been frozen for a century… but I could thaw yours.”
She dipped and touched the water again. The ice melted in an instant and steam rose from the water.
Daimon stepped, appearing on the broad white tiles of the terrace. He stared at the steaming water and then sneered at her, need tangling with anger, pain with fury. It all collided inside him, tearing at him, filling his head with ridiculous impossible things.
She was tormenting him.
“What do you want from me, koldun’ya?” He stalked towards her, determined to get an answer, because he was tired of her toying with him when she knew all about him.
When she knew he couldn’t touch anyone without hurting them.
She disappeared when he reached her and reappeared behind him. He turned on a growl and lunged for her, but she was too quick, nothing more than a blur as she sped around behind him again, evading him. She laughed, high and infuriating, pushing him right to the edge.
Darkness poured through his veins, roused by the thought she was taunting him, toying with him.
Out to hurt him for some reason.
He let it get the better of him as he tried to grab her again, as she evaded him and moved to the other end of the pool. Her smile ripped a growl from him and he stepped, appeared and stepped again when she went to move. He snagged her arm but she disappeared in blue-black smoke, and he realised it had been a decoy, a false impression of her.
His senses sparked.
He turned on a pinhead to face her, raising his hand at the same time.
Her fingers locked around his wrist, stopping him from grabbing her.
Her gaze ran over him, heat rolling in the wake of it as she stared at his bare chest and stomach, and then ventured lower, to his black swimming trunks.
“Such a chilly reception.” She smiled dazedly, her eyes glittering with sparks of silver and blue. “Here I thought you would have warmed to me by now.”
He glared at her and then realised something.
His eyes leaped to her hand where it gripped his wrist. It was warm. Soft.
And his touch wasn’t harming her.
He couldn’t believe it.
Cass released his wrist and trailed her fingers along it, sending a thousand lightning strikes chasing up his arm. She stroked her nails over his hand and all he could do was watch her, lost in sensation, swept up in the feel of being intimately touched by a female for the first time in centuries.
“I only wanted to apologise,” she murmured, that pout back in her voice.
He kept staring at her hand, shivering and on the verge of groaning as she teased his palm.
“What for?” he muttered, struggling to convince himself to stop her.
This was wrong of him.
Wasn’t it?
Was it so wrong that he wanted this?
Penelope flashed across his mind.
It was.
He pulled his hand away from Cass.
Her eyes lifted to collide with his. “For everything.”
Those words were sincere, as if she actually meant them. He tried to convince himself that she didn’t, that this was all some cruel game to her, a way of amusing herself.
But he got stuck on the fact she had touched him without being hurt.
That he could touch her.
Was this rush of sensation, this overload of need, how Ares had felt when he had met Megan? If it was, then he couldn’t blame his brother for succumbing to it.
But it wasn’t real.
Or at least what was happening between him and Cass wasn’t real.
Wasn’t what he needed deep in his heart.
She proved that by sidling closer to him, a seductive sway to her hips, and letting her dress droop a little lower, flashing the curves of her breasts at him as she smiled and gazed up into his eyes.
“I told you I could worship you if you let me,” she husked, her voice a throaty whisper. “Now all you have
