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over his countenance with silent intensity. What had she just seen in him? What was causing her to be so fearful that she began trembling beneath his big body?
    “Daphne, tell me,” he urged, but she responded by tugging his head downward decisively. She covered his mouth with hers and sank her tongue deep inside his mouth, as if she meant to consume him, take him into her very core and hold him captive. It was the most fervent, aggressive kiss she’d ever given him. She began pulling at the hem of his linen shirt, working it upward. He complied hungrily, only breaking the kiss long enough to strip out of the rough fabric.
    Her small, warm hands swept over his back, a smooth contrast to the hideous scars that marred his shoulders and middle back. She didn’t seem to notice, kneading her fists against his muscles, moaning into his mouth as they kissed.
    He cupped a firm hand along her nape. “Daphne,” he murmured against her lips, “I love you. I love you with all that is in me, and—”
    He wasn’t able to finish—a hard male laugh rang out, piercing the field’s mellow, late day quiet like a pistol shot.
    Daphne dug her fingernails into Leo’s back, her heart instantly slamming so hard that he could feel it against his own chest. Leo froze, positioned right between his beloved’s legs and half-naked atop her. Not the best posture to be in when confronted by an enemy of epic proportions, but at least with his prone body draped across hers, she was protected physically.
    Ares strolled right up to the edge of the cloak where he and Daphne lay. “Oh, hearts and flowers, lovemaking in a meadow!” he sang saccharinely.
    Leo didn’t hesitate to launch into action. In one fluid motion, he rolled off Daphne, and sprang to his feet. Ignoring the answering, razor pain in his knee, he spun to face the war god. Leonidas moved in on him, broad chest out, tall and proud, even though he was shirtless and without a weapon in hand.
    Ares towered over him, as always. Leo was one of the stockier members of their immortal cadre, with a thick muscularity that lent itself to their style of Spartan combat, but didn’t give him a height advantage against a tall, lean wildcat of a god.
    Ares let his tawny gaze slide past Leonidas’s shoulder to where Daphne now stood, having scrambled to her feet. She clutched Leo’s cape about herself protectively, even though she was fully dressed. That Ares could elicit such fear in her, and so easily, infuriated Leonidas. She was everything good in this world, where her half brother represented the darkest and cruelest parts of the universe. How they’d both managed to spring from Zeus’s loins was a mystery, especially since Zeus had done so little to protect his half-human daughter.
    “I’m the one you want to grapple with today.” Leonidas stepped between Daphne and Ares, shielding her body with his own. “So I’m the one you should be staring down—not her.”
    A slight smile played at the edges of Ares’s lips, but his gaze never wavered from Daphne. “Sister, you should know that, above all things, I’m a god of my word,” he said with apparent significance. “When I make a promise, I never fail to deliver.”
    Leo moved in on the god, thrusting his bare chest out defiantly. “I suppose that would apply to the bargain you made with us . . . and broke, Ares?”
    “Leo, don’t,” Daphne cautioned, touching him lightly between his shoulder blades. “He’ll only . . . lash out.” She sounded legitimately afraid, and, for the first time, Leo wondered if Ares might be holding something over her. Something that would put that kind of tremor in her voice and in the shaky hand she kept against his back.
    Ares’s golden-eyed stare fixed on Leo right then, revealing cunning calculation. Whatever was behind his sudden appearance today, the god was up to something ominous. As if to underscore that fact, a distant peel of thunder rumbled across the open field, a promise of a coming