I gathered Lou into my arms, carried her to her bed, and laid her down. I grabbed a lightweight blanket draped over her clothing trunk and covered her. She snuggled her face into the pillow but did not wake. I slipped in next to her, careful to keep a body’s distance between us, and watched as she slept. Without her furrowed brows, clenched jaw, glaring amber eyes, and perpetually pursed lips, she wore the plump, innocent pout of a young maiden. I enjoyed the contrast. So much I wanted to trace her cheek with my finger but resisted the urge. After the last time we’d touched, I’d let her be the champion of any further intimacy. I rather liked my jaw’s original shape.

When I woke, the sun had left, casting us in darkness. My eyes adjusted and found a foreign appendage draped across my chest. In her sleep, Lou must have rolled into my side. Her head rested in the crook of my armpit, her heavy breaths warming my skin. Her normally tamed blond hair lay in a tousled fan across my head, neck, and chest. How in the underworld would I slip out of this? If I moved, what were the odds she’d stay asleep? Before I could figure out what to do, she stirred.

I froze.

Her eyes snapped open, and she jackknifed up in bed. “What in the—” She looked around the room, pupils dilating until they found me. She reached for her blanket and held it to her neck. “What are you doing in my chambers? Get out of my bed!” Her head tilted upward, and a hand went to her forehead. “Wait a minute. Hermes, the god…”

She edged to the end of the bed and struggled with the blanket, trying to discard it like it’d caught flames. “It can’t be… It did happen…” She tore at the covers like a rabid animal. At least she didn’t foam at the mouth. “Why won’t this get off of me?”

I held up my hands. “Why don’t we calm down? Let me explain.”

She surrendered to the bed and focused on me.

“You fainted. I stayed with you just to make sure you were all right and to be here when you woke up. And yes, you met Hermes. He goes by Smitter in his current mission, assigned by Zeus and Apollo to help me rid the world of sirens.”

Lou jerked at the principle gods’ names, but her legs tangled further in the blanket, and she wasn’t firing all her cannons. She lost her balance and tumbled off the bed. With a thump, she landed on the floor.

I jumped over the bed and rounded the corner to find her laughing hysterically on the ground.

My brow raised. “Are you okay?” Her sanity concerned me more than her posterior at the moment, but she needn’t know it.