Page 75 of The Rose (The Godwicks 2)

She would have let him kiss her all night, but her face was soaked with tears and itched. She pulled away and started to dry her face, but he stopped her, picked up his T-shirt and used it to wipe her tears.

Then he held it to her nose and said, “Blow.”

Lia grabbed the T-shirt, swatted his arse with it and tossed it to Gogo, who immediately sank his teeth into it and trotted off with it to his dog bed.

“I deserved that,” August said as he unbuttoned his jeans.

“Are you planning on sleeping naked?” she asked.

“What other option is there?”

Lia sighed. He dropped his jeans and kicked them off.

“I have seen so much of your penis today,” she said. “So much.”

“I should take a shower. I’m covered in dog kisses.”

“Bathroom’s over there.”

“Aren’t you going to order me washed and brought to your tent?”

She glared at him.

“I’ll be in the shower if you need me,” he said.

When she heard the water turn on, Lia went to work. First things first—she stripped the covers off the bed and replaced them with fresh pink sheets, a clean white quilt. No dog hair. She dug through her chest of drawers, looking for a nightdress that was both cute but covered all her bits, and found a pink cotton nightie that would do.

By the time August returned from his shower, she was tucked up in bed, propped up on her pillows and hard at work on a drawing in her sketchbook. August, now naked and damp, stood in the doorway of her bedroom, toweling his brown hair, which had turned black from the water.

“What are you drawing?” he asked.

Lia smiled and turned the picture around to him—a tiny cat clutching a knife in one paw.

“Kitten with a switchblade,” he said, grinning. “You’re good.”

“At least I got something out of my art lessons with David. Other than a broken heart.” She quickly sketched a heart with an arrow through it. She added a few drops of blood. Then more blood. Then more. Total bloodbath.

August crawled into bed next to her.

“May I see?” he asked, holding out his hand for her sketchbook.

“There’s nothing interesting in there,” she said, handing over the book. “Just outlines for tapestries.”

August took the book from her and turned through every single page slowly, examining each sketch with an appraiser’s eye. He said little except to name the myths she’d been toying with as possible new subjects.

In one drawing, a girl lay on a bed, naked, as thick drops of rain fell from the ceiling.

“Zeus and Danaë,” August said. “The original golden shower.”

In the next drawing, a woman knelt in a nighttime temple as a man too massive to be human loomed over her from behind.

“Poseidon,” he said. “And that’s... Aethra?”

“Right,” she said. “Mother of Theseus.” In that myth, Aethra was summoned to the temple on her wedding night where she was impregnated by Poseidon.

“Penelope and Odysseus,” he said, turning a page to a drawing of a woman’s hand clinging to a bedpost—except the bedpost was not a bedpost but the slim trunk of a tree. “When Athena held back the dawn so they could have more time together in bed getting reacquainted.”

August laughed softly.

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