Dark threads of hair flying in her face, she whips her head to-and-fro, searching the forest. The sound of a twang reaches her ears. Northeast. Twenty feet away. Behind a prickly shrub grouted with snow. Love twists, dodging the next attack and releasing her own arrow at the same time, which punches the bush.
“Fuck,” a voice hisses as its owner leaps from his hiding spot.
The arrow whizzes past him and punctures a tree trunk, producing a crack in the dense bark. Her target rolls across the ground, catapults himself upright, and launches two projectiles in succession.
Love spins one way, dodging the first. Then she runs and vaults over the next. For no logical reason, her lips curl upon landing. This creature has impressive skills.
Disguising her immortality is a lost cause by now, for he’d witnessed her dropping from that tree without severing a bone.The battle continues, each of them maneuvering around the other. Arrows fly like missiles, needle leaves splintering in the shafts’ wake. Love’s archery cleaves through massive branches and fells a sapling, much to her remorse.
Each time, her weapons vanish and reappear in her quiver. And because his weapons lack the same vigor or capacity to replenish themselves, the mortal swears under his breath.
Love takes a moment to gloat. Then she snarls when his incoming arrow streaks past her cheek, narrowly missing her flesh. But unlike Love, he shall run out of projectiles soon.
She arches backward and dispatches an arrow vertically into the sky, the weapon spearing upward and then diving for his skull. The male whips his head toward the whistling noise, the arrow’s iron shaft glinting like a falling star.
“Shit!” he grits out, dropping to one knee and propelling his own arrow at the final second.
The objects collide. Love’s iron shears through his weapon, but his aim manages to knock her archery off its trajectory. Wood pieces scatter across the forest. By contrast, Love’s arrow blasts a crater into the ground, puffs of snow exploding like a geyser.
Separated by a dozen leagues, they swing their loaded bows toward each other.
At once, the man bolts upright and stops, a mushroom cloud of snow cascading around him. Silence descends apart from their panting exhalations, the woodland clearing in shambles from the combat.
Damnation. They’ve destroyed this area.
As he takes another hard look, Love does the same. Their eyes narrow, indicating a ceasefire.
The mood shifts. Evergreen needles stretch toward what little sunlight remains. At last, she and the man study oneanother closer, from their contrasting hair colors to the differences in their archery.
His penetrating gaze stalls on her eyes, which is understandable given Love’s maroon irises and starlit pupils are not of the mortal world. Yet his gaze clings to hers without flinching, the magnetic connection affecting her in an unfamiliar way. Deities might be immortal, but they require oxygen as much as humans do, and it seems as though her breath has gotten tangled up in her lungs. The deprivation makes her feel powerless.
Her. A goddess.
“Now then,” he snaps. “Where the fuck did you come from?”
His brazen attention registers her short dress. The thin material is wrapped around the crescent of her waist. He reassesses the skimpy garment, the distance from which she’d jumped, and the intricate design of her bow, which flashes as though it was forged by the hemisphere.
Not an ounce of disbelief. Instead, the man accepts what he sees.
After a moment, his bow lowers a fraction. “Are you lost?”
The sudden concern is unappreciated. Her mind whirls like a tornado destroying everything in its wake. He’s the one who invaded her territory, not the other way around.
Love glowers. “Do I look helpless to you?”
That wry mouth tilts farther. “You look underdressed to me.”
“And you look like an easy target to me.”
“Is that right? Because from where I’m standing, I wasn’t the one taken off guard.”
He doesn’t advance, doesn’t prowl her way, nor does he need to. Try as she might, Love cannot move. She’s riveted, bound to the cliffhanger of what will happen next.
The man’s gaze sketches her appearance once more. In such circumstances, sex-starved mortals can be predatory, but his pupils reflect cautious intrigue. Nothing lecherous. If it were otherwise, Love’s arrow would have impaled his cock by now. She has disposed of such humans before, when they’ve been on the verge of attacking a victim.
“Fuck it,” the man hisses, then sets the archery against a tree trunk and tears off his coat. She’d been right about his athletic build. His shoulders are marvelous—living, breathing cliffs beneath his shirt.
He holds the garment out to her. “Here. Take it. Jesus.”
