Goddess (Starcrossed)

You’re a guest in my house. There are rules about this,” Hector whispered pleadingly. She looked up at his face, arrested by his tone. “You haven’t spent much time around men. Have you.” It wasn’t really a question, but she shook her head in answer, anyway. “Fix your nightgown,” he said softly.
    Andy caught at the fallen strap with her fingertips and slid it back over her shoulder, loving the way Hector’s eyes followed every move she made, like he was trying to read something written on her skin.
    “Come on,” he sighed regretfully, standing up and taking her by the hand. He led her back upstairs to his sister’s room, pausing outside the door.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, sensing that she’d done something wrong.
    “You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for, do you?” Hector asked with a humorous glint in his eye.
    “No idea,” she admitted, feeling a bit silly.
    He leaned close to her and brushed his lips against her cheek. Andy felt a shiver radiate out from where he’d kissed her, like ripples spreading on the surface of a pond.
    “I’ll show you later,” he promised, his voice shaking slightly.
    Hector opened the door to Ariadne’s bedroom and gently pushed a very confused Andy through it.
     
    Helen sat up in bed. The sound of lapping waves greeted her and clear sea air, sweetened with the scent of rain-forest flowers, wrapped Helen in dewy heat.
    She ran her hands over the crisp sheet under her and felt the dent next to her that still smelled like Lucas. She swung her bare legs to the side, parting the gauzy curtain of mosquito netting that hung over the wide, white bed. The teak floor was glossy and cool underfoot. A seashell wind chime announced where the entrance to the hut was, and Helen padded barefoot toward it.
    Outside, sparkling blue-green water harbored teeming coral reefs. Beyond the watery expanse, impossibly steep and verdant islands jutted up out of the dazzling aqua water like the elbows of giants.
    Helen walked the circumference of the wraparound deck and saw that their little hut was raised up on stilts in the middle of the water of the shallow cove. She found Lucas—out for a dawn swim.
    Helen sat down on the deck next to a skeptical sea turtle and watched Lucas goof off with a lemon shark. She knew animals weren’t pets here, because she had made it so.
    The sea turtle wasn’t about to risk getting in the water with anything that had as many teeth as a lemon shark. Helen didn’t blame her. Respect for the power of other animals was something that Helen wasn’t about to monkey with, not even in paradise. Why have a shark at all if it wasn’t dangerous? Where was the thrill in that?
    Lucas seemed to be aware of the fact that the lemon shark was not a toy, and he met it in the water with all the respect that creature deserved. But they darted under the waves almost like they were having a game of tag.
    It reminded Helen of how Lucas moved around the ring when he and Hector were sparring. She decided that was what Lucas was doing. He was honing his reflexes and bettering his fight skills with a creature that he’d never had the opportunity to spar with before. Maybe the lemon shark was as well.
    Lucas noticed Helen watching him. He floated under the water, angling himself toward her, his arms spread out like wings. Helen’s tummy hit the floor and she smiled at him, amazed that he could still do that to her after everything they’d been through. Lifetimes that she could remember—some that lasted only a few brief years, and others that lasted decades—and he still made her all tingly like a girl who had never been kissed.
    He pulled himself out of the water and sat next to her, dripping wet and soaking in the newly dawning sunshine.
    “I’ve always wanted to do that—stay under and not need a breath,” he said, so excited his voice was high and boyish. “Hector and Jason may have envied me when I flew, but I died a little when they jumped in the water together and disappeared for hours. I couldn’t follow them.”
    Helen heard a sad note creep into his tone, and she realized that he must have always been slightly isolated from his cousins. He couldn’t take them flying with him, and they couldn’t take him under the water with them.
    Helen knew it wasn’t that Lucas envied Hector and Jason for what they could do. He envied that they could share their talents with each other, and he couldn’t share his with anyone—until Helen came