Chapter Nine
Another breath shuttled in and out of Wen’s lungs. Okay, attempted to. It wasn’t half the oxygen she needed to think straight right now.
Hell. In this crazy, cartwheeling moment, she’d settle for halfway straight. A gentle, gliding path between one synapse and the next . . .
But only one recognition glared at her—he’s going to kiss me—irrefutable even after his sideways hookup line. A sentence so cheesy, lesser men had ended up with bruised balls for stuff in the same category.
Lesser men.
Not breathtakingly beautiful gods.
Was that why she couldn’t move? Because he was literally made of stardust and magic, with the power in his pulling hands to prove it?
With the same force in his twin greens riveted on her like interplanetary crystals?
With all that intent acting on her senses as if he’d rented a billboard on Sunset Boulevard just to declare his illicit, incendiary intent?
Yeah, sweetheart. You got it right. I’m going to take over your lips with mine now.
And by all the gods of his homeland, he did.
First much softer than she expected—wanted?—but quickly hypnotizing her with the rolling, needing motions that seemed to involve his whole mouth . . .
Except his tongue.
Thankfully that came soon after, as a groan vibrated from his throat and echoed clear into hers.
Before she could send any response of her own, he plunged into her mouth with wet, lusty force—and didn’t stop until she was so consumed by his hunger and heat, all she could do was hang on for the surging, sensual ride.
The ride . . .
It was an apt comparison, though she’d never been a thrill ride girl.
Sky diving into a czar’s castle for a drug lord?
She was first in line. Hitting Mach speed to catch a corporate cheater on the run?
That jet joystick was officially her bitch.
But surrendering to a container no bigger than a go-cart, on a track she hadn’t designed or inspected? Just no.
The recognition slammed her with a terrible question.
So why him? Why now?
She’d only meant the question for her head, but it was her soul that spoke up with the answer.
Apollo of Olympus is a thrill ride you can never take. A fall you can never risk.
At once, she pulled back. Far enough to catch some air but not enough to ignore her chest still heaving hard against his.
Every thunderous beat of her heart confirmed it.
A heart in which there could be no room for a presence like his.
A connection that would consume then endanger her. Perhaps lethally.
Not just her.
Genny . . .
“Well, now you look really uncomfortable.” The man’s observation, borrowing from his earlier tease, wasn’t suffused with that kind charm anymore—yet its rumbling concern made it a hotter ignition to her attraction. “Hey. What is it?” he prompted in a lower husk. “Too much? Too rushed? Irowen?”
Not fast enough.
God help her, she nearly gave in and said it out loud.
Maybe she just should have. Maybe she should have grabbed his face, kissed him hard, then guided his mouth between her legs and gotten things going into a hot, heavy release for them both.
Quick and easy, fast and forgettable, just like a favorite drive-through order.
Weren’t orgasms pretty much the same thing?
An intense taste and then crumbs and leftover fries into the trash. Bang. Boom. Done-sies.
“No,” she finally eked out, clearing her throat to free it of the wobble. “You’re fine. It was fine. I just—”
“Fine?”
“Shit,” she grumbled, moving to stroke the insult out of his terse jaw. If only the allure of his matching pout didn’t call so adamantly to her fingertips. “I didn’t mean . . . It was better than fine. Seriously. It’s just . . . ”
Shit, the silent sequel, especially as her fingers slid across his lips as if magnetized there. They were such perfect lips. Not too full but full enough; the kind she’d expect to see on a statue of him in some museum, except as far from cold marble as she could imagine.
“Just what?”
Well, there was the frigid stone, carved into every syllable of his sub-guttural growl. Her nerves reacted to the order first, shivering and stiffening, before spreading and becoming her all-over squirm.
“It just . . . you scare me, okay? Since you’re being a pushy cookie about the whole subject, that’s the issue. Happy?”
Okay, she might have pulled the punch a little on that one.
Cookie wasn’t her first insult of choice, but god or not, the XY chromosomes were strong in this one, and he’d need a little mojo to go back out and hunt his eventual conquest for the night.
So why did he look as if she hadn’t been so generous?
She seriously should’ve just gone with something out of Genny’s lexicon, like needy weenies or hardup pup, especially with his stupefied stare providing so much instant justification.
“I scare you?”
Well that, along with his dorky huff, surely locked his Game Over screen. At least enough that he’d back off and—
Unless he didn’t.
Unless he chose to go for the whole damn tournament.
He started by freeing his hands from her waist, only to lift and whump them next to her head against a wall she never remembered right here.
But here she definitely was, flattened against the short span of brocade-wallpapered space between the atrium and the living room, with this glorious Olympian again cutting off all the air in both her lungs.
This time, with the full press of his sleek, sculpted body . . .
His half-naked skin . . .
“Oh.” It sprang from her lips before she could gulp it back. That and nothing else. How could there be? He felt too good. Moved too well. Shit, even in the middle of hell and after everything they’d been through, he even smelled too freaking wonderful. What in the living—
“I scare you.” Not a question this time, but his tone nailed it for the incredulity, nonetheless. “Because you obviously feel all the arrows I’m still packing, hmmm?”
Wen swung her head to the side, hoping for a visual diversion. Like that diluted the potency of his scrutiny by a single degree. Through gritted teeth she countered, “Who says your arrows are your most terrifying toys, Fancykins?”
Only a few seconds of his contemplative silence passed before he backed off, audibly scathing the fancy wall with the push. Though Wen let loose a relieved breath, she also brushed a hand along the front of her body, accommodating for the skittish emptiness that set in.
What the hell was happening to her? And why was it not a good thing that Apollo stepped back even farther?
Eventually he braced his hands back along a stocked wet bar.
The backlights for the bottles limned his hair to halo-ish effect.
That prettier-than-an-angel shit did not help her thinning composure, especially when he lifted a frown that could’ve been a hot take on Lucifer regretting his life decisions.
“Explain like I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he uttered. “Since it’s the fucking truth anyway.”
She nodded and pushed from the wall herself. Though the move was necessary, because she already craved an opening to let him trap her there again, she swayed in place before regaining her central balance. Yep, his kiss had literally depolarized her.
“I’m not trying to play coy,” she stated.
“You’re smart and seasoned, so you’ve likely already sussed that out.
For the last eight years, I’ve spent the majority of my time with guys who are more like hound dogs.
They like crawling through the dirt, cleaning their guns, sniffing out bad guys, and playing with stabby things. ”
“Which, from time to time, have included their dicks.” His gaze glimmered but his frown tensed. “In your vicinity.”
“Hey, nothing I never agreed to. Believe me, when missions got crazy, I was grateful for the chance to zone out and let go.”
The second the words were out, she yearned to retract the confession. Though she was far from a sweet cornfed girl, and Apollo had known so since they’d “met” over the barrel of her gun then the shaft of his arrow, this part of the equation tracked different.
Really different.
So how did she just yap this out at him? Just openly admit that her only sexual experience was a bunch of wham-bam-thank-you-boys?
Maybe . . . she couldn’t.
She let her nervous kicks at the floor speak about that discomfort.
Dropping her gaze the same direction felt too much like the few times Grandma had dragged Genny and her to church, and she’d feigned an upset stomach before getting to the confessional.
Not that she expected a different outcome.
Shame was shame, no matter which god was judging her for it.
Sure enough, the depths of Apollo’s greens darkened by several shades. A new energy overcame his expression.
Except his vibe wasn’t anywhere near censorial.
His gaze stayed the same. Intense yet affirming. Shadowed but supportive. Even . . . understanding?
A long time ago, after one of those divinely discomfiting church trips, Grandma treated her and Genny to a matinee at their local discount movie house.
Wen hadn’t thought about that film in so many years but suddenly recalled a scene toward the end, when the heroine recognized the prince without his disguise just by peering deep into his eyes.
“I’d never be able to let you zone out, Irowen.”
And by joining a vow like that to a stare like his, this male sealed the deal on that conclusion.
She’d found her prince.
“I know.”
But could never have him.
A truth he accepted with the same miserable reluctance as she, if the dents clamping the corners of his mouth were a clear sign.
“Which is why it’s best that we shower separately.”
Somehow she controlled her gaze from flaring like an anime meme. He was thinking of taking her to the shower? And how would she get any other thought or image into her head tonight?
Thank God she was nowhere near a confessional booth now.
Still she managed to stammer, “Y-Yeah. That’s likely for the best, I guess. But . . . Apollo?”
“Hm?”
The way he pushed it out like more of a hint, somewhere between the top of his throat and the roof of his mouth, lent him a boyishly bold air that was new yet somehow so familiar.
At least to her. An attitude that tugged at more than her libido, though the shower fantasies certainly still assaulted with hot and heavy force.
Vivid confirmations of the truth she gave him next.
“Just so you know, I’d probably still feel like this, even if you weren’t . . . you know . . . ”
“The god of a dozen things and a crown prince of the Pantheon?” he muttered, as if admitting he’d been raised in a cave and had zits across his ass. “Yeah. Okay. Sure.”
“Hey.” That helped emphasize her determined stomp back over, to trap him against the bar similar to how he’d caged her at the wall. “I mean it. Do you think, after everything we’ve been through tonight, that the labels are all I’ve noticed? The flash is all I’ve cared about?”
Every syllable of it was a risk, about as huge as making this move.
Stupid, stupid. Getting close to him again, in more than the obvious ways, was more than she needed.
Not with so much of her world up in the air.
With Ito holding all her figurative cards.
In no way was she in a place to give up her body to this beautiful male, let alone her heart.
But . . .
Still . . .
This.
Him.
Such a gloriously touchable dream. His flesh, so firm and fascinating beneath her hands. His rasps, so rough and responsive. His hisses, so addicting and adoring. The undulations of his hips could be the very drug that banished every assertion she’d just made into the land of oh-fuck-it . . .
But somehow, she dug deep and generated coherent words. This point was too important to shove beneath the rug of dumb lust.
“Apollo?” She slid one hand up the middle of his torso and scratched her fingernails along one of his clavicles. It was silken but hard, yielding but resisting. Damn, he was an exquisitely formed thing. “Listen to me, Glow Worm.”
As she whispered it, his head dropped. He gazed down at her through a backlit curtain of his luxurious hair, his stare a covetous creature in its own right—until his sensual voice upstaged the amazing sight.
“Not until you kiss me again, Monster.”