Page 92 of Raising Hell
I circled around him and dipped the brush into the water to scrub his back. He took a big breath and let it out, visibly relaxing as I worked. When I finished with his back, I moved to his arms then his chest. After that, I made him grin by lifting one of his feet and almost making him fall back into the water. That grin only grew as I studied his foot.
“Come on. Who has perfect feet, and how in the hell can they possibly look sexy to me? This god thing is completely ridiculous. It’s time to tone it down a little, don’t you think?”
Annoyed with myself, I swiped the brush over the bottom of his foot.
Hades let out an awful howl a second before he jerked his foot from my grasp and plunged it back into the pool.
Water dripped from my face as we stared at each other in shock.
“What was that?” I asked after a second.
“I don’t know. It didn’t feel right.”
I blinked at him. “Are you ticklish?”
“What an absurd question.”
“Give me your foot.”
“No.”
“If you really thought I was Persephone, you would give me your foot to please me. But you would deny Ashlyn the human.”
His face twitched a second before he lifted his foot out of the water. I trapped that thing in a full nelson hold and ran one finger over his arch. He jerked back so hard that I landed in his lap.
“You are ticklish,” I crowed, already scrambling off his lap and trying to find his feet under the water.
“Cease this torment,” he said, backing away from me.
“No way. I’m the goddess of pain and punishment, remember? I need to torture you so you know how very much I hate it here.”
I found his foot and tugged it to the surface again. He groaned and twitched as I gently ran my fingers over his arch and started swearing when I poked between his toes.
Then, he started to laugh.
Big laughs.
Full belly laughs.
I grinned and kept testing how ticklish he was until tears ran from his eyes. Then, taking pity on him, I released his foot and gave him a hug.
“That’s the only form of torture I will ever use on you,” I whispered as he caught his breath.
“You are a deviant.”
“Only for you.” I chuckled and ran my fingers through his wet hair.
His arms tightened around me, and he stood.
“Enough of the bath. You have yet to eat.”
He fed me from the tray of snacks and touched me lightly on the arms. When he moved to the legs, I knew what he was doing.
“I can already tell you that I’m not ticklish. But if you want to give it a try, here you go.”
I lifted my foot to offer it to him. But he didn’t look at my foot. His hungry gaze fell on what I’d inadvertently exposed, and he mumbled something about sipping heavenly nectar as he shifted closer. I quickly withdrew my foot.
“Forget being ticklish. What other fun things don’t I know about you? And when I say fun, I mean nice fun, not sexy fun or cruel fun.”
