blinked over at the fantasy facing him. He wasn’t certain whether he should be happy—the woman knocked his breath away—or scared to death because she did.
Cutting the low purr of her bike, she was easily the most vibrant thing he’d ever seen. Red hair the colour of a burnt summer sun, gloriously kissed by the blondes and golds of a whimsical paintbrush, brushed along the top of her delicate shoulders and down her back in a mass of breathtaking silken strands against the black of her leather jacket. She lifted a trim leg and slid off her bike to stand sideways from him, presenting him with a view of the lushest, roundest backside he’d ever seen. He swallowed a groan when she bent to adjust something on the bike, displaying the curve of each cheek and the shadowed line between.
Sweat dripped down his forehead, and he had to reach up to brush it off before it his eyes. No way could he blink and miss even a second of her.
She glowed. Every inch of her glowed in colour so bright it hurt his eyes. She bent a little lower, and he discreetly shifted his hard-on so it wasn’t strangled by suddenly too-tight jeans.
She stood, reached up with both hands, and removed her helmet. His breath whooshed out as if someone had sucker-punched him in the gut. She had to be the most beautiful woman ever created. She shook her head slowly and brushed her hair back from her face with a slim hand before turning to look around the parking lot. She spotted his SUV and grinned.
Aeros forgot to breathe. He stared at her. The cream of her face contrasted perfectly with the pillow-soft pinkness of her full lips. Her eyes were a green that would make any emerald ever formed pale in comparison. Her hair was a combination of burnt cinnamon and golden meadows. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and then travel down the line of her body to dive between her slender thighs.
She was beauty.
His cock swelled to the point of pain. He took a breath and reminded himself to calm down. She was one of the two witches. She’d broken into a god’s palace and stolen an artefact that could get him killed. Her beauty might simply be a ruse to get him to do things he wouldn’t normally agree to.
Somehow, that logic simply didn’t affect him as it should. He’d lost more than the ability to see in colour over the years. He’d lost the urge to sink into a warm, willing woman. Those urges—fuck urges, demands—hit below the belt with a vengeance now, making him squirm in his seat like some teenager.
She quirked a finely shaped, arched brow and tilted her head slightly to the side to study him, a faint smile on her lovely face.
Gods help him if she knew he’d just adjusted his aching cock. His mouth went dry. She gestured with a rolling motion of her hand to put his window down.
After fumbling with the window lock twice, he managed to get the window down while he attempted to clear his throat and think of something reasonably intelligent to say to her that wouldn’t squeak out of his damn mouth.
She didn’t wait. Instead she said, “Uh, okay. So this is the pow-wow, huh?” She gave the dark parking lot a glance, before tossing her hair back and facing him with a curl of her pink lips. “No biggie, we don’t need to chat over drinks, we can cut the deal in the parking lot just fine. So, what’s the scoop? Whatcha want fetched and carried, big guy?”
Chat over drinks. Fuck. He wanted to chat over drinks. He wanted to see that snug leather jacket off and get a clear idea of the treasures she hid underneath. She would have rounded mounds for breasts. But what colour would her nipples be? Redheads, gods, he loved the idea of seeing—
“Hello?”
He blinked. “We need the godhead you stole from Ares.”
And there went the information he didn’t want her to have. Fuck! “I mean—”
She shrugged, cutting him off with a wave of her hand and a grin that hit right between the eyes before shooting down to join the pulsing party he had
Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl