Page 91 of Lovesick Titan

Mal looked at Danny snuggled against his side and had to marvel at him, because even the things Danny thought mundane about himself were extraordinary, yet he never seemed to understand that.

“Maybe Andre can create a little 8-bit Prometheus to come give me a kiss on a good day,” Danny mused.

“Mmm. Or the real thing could do that.” Mal waited for Danny to look at him before he reached over to grasp the kid’s chin and tilted it upward for a kiss.

Only after their lips met did he realize this was their first kiss since that awful, bitter goodbye in his apartment.

There was that lightning again, like a shock straight to Mal’s heart. Thenagainwhen Danny’s mouth parted, teasing with the gentle tip of his tongue. Mal shivered as they connected.Damn, this kid. Damn him and bless him and never let him leave Mal’s side.

“I told you once…that I’d never hurt you again,” Danny said when they parted. “I failed. But I’m trying to be better. So this time it’s going to be true.” Big golden eyes blinked at Mal brilliantly. “I willneverhurt you again.”

Mal felt burned by Danny’s closeness, by his honesty. This was what he’d been avoiding, the inevitable wave of too many emotions that made him feel weak just by being near Danny. He wasn’t used to enjoying his own vulnerability, but there was no doubt in his mind now that this was where he wanted to be.

“You’re not like Thanatos, Danny. You’re not like Ludgate. You arenotlike my father.”

“Neither are you,” Danny said, shifting closer and causing the tablet to drop from his lap between them.

“I’m sorry,” Mal said. “For everything. You keep apologizing, but I haven’t said it enough back.”

“You don’t have to apologize for defending yourself.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You thought you were,” Danny smiled. After all, they’d had this conversation before, the other way around.

Try as he might, Mal never seemed to be able to beat his nemesis. “You had every reason to believe I was worth manipulating.”

“And you had every reason to believe I wasn’t worth forgiving.”

“I was wrong.”

“So was I.”

They were practically wrapped around each other, Danny’s hand at Mal’s hip, Mal’s hand on Danny’s face.

“I love you,” Mal said, because he needed to say it, without his doubts and insecurities holding him back.

Danny’s smile brightened but quickly faltered. “And not because I made you?”

“Made me? You didn’t make me do anything. I fell in love with the moments I was with the real you. With the things you couldn’t fake. And nothing is going to change that. Least of all Ludgate.” He pressed another kiss to Danny’s lips, slower and gentler than the first.

Danny shuddered. “I love you too,” he said, soft and meaningful and everything Mal had been waiting to hear.

They kissed again, propped up by the wall behind them, and wrapped their arms tighter in their embrace. Their hips aligned, and Mal felt the twitch and growing hardness of Danny between them. Shivering as it connected with his own through the fabric of his sleep pants, the clash of heat made Mal growl in his throat. He tugged Danny closer, kissed him deeper, then gasped away as the persistent voices at the back of his mind reminded him of everything they’d gone through and everything yet to come.

“Danny,” he tried to pull back as Danny clutched at him, “we don’t have to—”

“Iwantto,” Danny said, grinding forward as he continued to press their lips together in a desperate attempt to touch. “Please. If…ifyouwant to…” He blinked with uncertainty, betraying his fear that he was pushing for something Mal didn’t want, but the flutter of those long lashes against flushing cheeks only made Mal more frantic to reconnect.

“I want to,” Mal said, and as soon as their eyes met with what Mal would swear was an actual flicker of lightning, he pulled Danny to him with no intent to let him go.

R

Hades reared back a fist to punch the mirror before him but held himself in check. Anger was pointless. Team Zeus and Prometheus’s Titans were holed up in the basement of the downtown precinct leaving him no way inside the reflections; he couldn’t change that now.

A few days ago, he had simply walked inside, invisible with the suit’s help—unaffected by that damn reflection killer while the suit was on—and turned the program off just in time to take Zeus’s form and fool his friends. Now he’d lost the mask and didn’t have time to reverse engineer another one. He’d lost a contact too, but he no longer cared about leading Team Zeus astray as to his real powers and intentions. He needed a different plan while they were no doubt working on one of their own.

He watched their homes, their places of work, their neighborhoods, but nothing caught on his radar, and soon even Prometheus’s favorite shops blocked him from seeing through their reflections. He needed a way to lure Zeus out before they tried to lure him.

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