Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“I love that musical! Both versions!”
The young lovers’ tandem outcry was actually the moment they needed for proving their point.
Even Irowen, who looked ready to run and ram her head in the toilet while the pair started singing the romantic number from West Side Story, had to be conceding the fact.
It looked like her sister had found the perfect harmony for more than just her voice.
Apollo slash a hand sideways, cutting them short before the final crescendo. “Okay, okay. So, you two also clearly watched that one to the end, yes?” he queried. “You know shit didn’t eventually go down so well for Tony and Maria.”
“Your point, Glow Worm?” Irowen huffed and folded her arms. “Because if I’ve got to stand here through the weepy version of Somewhere—”
“OST points for big sister,” Genny chimed in. “See, Jun? She does understand.”
While watching the pair get newly canoodle-y seemed a great way to pass another ten minutes, Apollo ordered himself to embrace a figurative eye roll.
“Well, she also understands, perhaps with a better head than most, that you two are in for some challenging times ahead. But if you’re damn certain about wanting to stay together through all this—”
“We are.” Once more they declared it in flawless sync, as well as the beats of their shared laughs and the unanimity of their follow-up: “We do!.
“Then you’re going to need . . . this.”
He copied their confidence with every syllable of his own declaration, inwardly ordering himself to remember the surety for his next action.
It proved a valuable asset as he stepped over with jittery haste, lest his nerve escape and his balls truly shrivel before he followed through with his decision.
Because even with the air as effervescent as champagne, pulling the lyre string from his jeans pocket was an exercise in unease that’d been nowhere near his Twister mat for the day. The year.
Right hand, lyre string.
Left hand, brave dad waistband.
Center brain, it’s all okay on repeat.
“Sore wa nan desuka?” To his credit, Jun handled the pale strand as if it were spun from gold instead of sheep gut. “What is it? Piece of a violin?”
“A lyre.” Irowen’s interjection was fast—and yes, probably furious too—if he correctly assessed her husky undertone. “His lyre.” She whisked her sights up, hurling up all the green glass in her glare at him. “Apollo? What are you . . . ”
The cuts from those shards were the sweetest, and roughest, torture for his resolve.
Every jade-colored jab affirmed what he already knew: the woman would be just as stirred if he proved his feelings with an orgasm for the ages, a bouquet of flowers, and a profession of feelings from the corners of his heart, instead of this.
Still, he stepped back from the young man holding one of his highest treasures and didn’t regret a single step of the action.
Because she’d be happy with climaxes and roses . . . but he wouldn’t.
And now it was time for a new spin in the game.
Left hand, Irowen’s waist.
Right hand, Irowen’s cheek.
Irowen. His precocious, precious, perfect Irowen.
“Let me do this for them, Monster,” he whispered with worshipping notes, lightly bussing the tip of her still-scrunched nose. “I mean, it’s still not as good as handing them some portable solar flares—”
“You’d be able to do that?” She bugged her gaze.
“No. I can’t even do that for Zeus.” He dipped his head again, going for her lips with his instead. “But I’ll train them up on what it can do, as well as how they can access the Underworld place for limited stays if they really need to lay low.”
“Wait.” Eugenia stepped over, interrupting them with her stunned croak.
“Underworld place?” She added a full head tilt, brandy-colored curls spilling into her wide-eyed gawk.
“You . . . you’re . . . really that Apollo?
Of that Olympus? That fire tunnel transporter wasn’t some new Japanese train prototype? ”
Irowen burst with a knowing snicker. “Damn, why didn’t I think of that one?”
Apollo strung out a teasing growl. “Like I’d let you believe it.”
Her expression mellowed. The glass in her gaze, now melting from fires of gooey adoration, was also fresh quicksand for his heart.
Shit. He was so doomed.
“What I don’t believe is this part,” his darling Dagahra admitted. “The string . . . Apollo . . . you were so obsessed with getting it back.”
He speared her with a purposeful stare. “Now I’m more obsessed with other things.”
As soon as a flush suffused her cheek, if only for seconds, he chalked the emotional exposure as worth it. But too quickly, stress conquered her features again.
He tamped his first instinct of a reaction, to simply kiss away her worries, and instead murmured, “Hey.” Then tugged her face back up with a strict yet caressing finger. “I’m going to put as much of a cloak on the string as I can. Ito and cocksuckers like him won’t know the kids have it.”
A fresh flare claimed her gaze. “You can do that?”
“Of course. Now, it also means some powers won’t be as potent. This is just going to be a stepstool for them. The two of them have to climb the rest of the mountain for themselves. But we’ll never be far away, right?”
Irowen’s breath hitched to the point he heard and felt it. But as if needing to ensure he got the point, she raised a hand and mirrored his move, flowing her hand along his jaw. Her touch progressed in tentative spurts, just like the anxious inches of her stare into his own.
“You know I never enjoy being far from my sister, Your Godship,” she uttered. “But you’ve already done so much, and you’re not obligated to—”
This time, he did kiss her into silence: openly, boldly, and damn near brutally. “Oh, my sweet Godzilla,” he rasped against her lips. “I’m very fucking obligated.”
His chest thrummed and his soul soared when she let him into her mouth with a willing moan.
As he drank from her warmth and passion, savoring every drop of her cherry and rose essence, it occurred that his obligation had already started—and nothing, in the long years of his existence, had made him happier.
Genny’s and Jun’s wild applause, along with laughing crows and singing seagulls, dragged his mind back to the present and his mouth away from his woman. He was about to swear about the intrusions, but a glimpse of liquid diamonds in Irowen’s wide, wonderful greens dissolved his bitter thoughts.
“Sweetheart?” he murmured, caressing her cheek again. “What is—”
“Nooo,” Genny cut in. “Call her Little Monster again! Oh em geee, that’s so cute. Right, Hani?”
“Sou desu ne,” Jun chuckled back.
Still wrapped in Apollo’s arms, Irowen ducked her head and gave it a soft shake.
“I’m so speechless. Apollo . . . you’re a god, but you’ve been so much more than that.
You saved my life, reopened my heart, helped me find Genny .
. . ” She rose her head once more, letting him see her teary, beautiful smile.
“And helped me find myself. But now . . . ”
His spirit took a nosedive the second new shadows crawled across her face. “But now what?” he snarled, preparing to slay every member of the yakuza for her if needed. Or an army of stalker-y goblins. Anything. Anyone.
At last she soughed out, “Now, I have no idea how to repay you for all of it.”
Ohhh, that.
Sheer, shimmering relief took over his own smile.
He couldn’t hold back the dirty thoughts likely morphing it into a rogue’s grin, especially as the woman visibly squirming in her borrowed jeans.
Meh. He’d get Ama a new pair. Besides, what good was having the sun on speed dial if a guy couldn’t use it for more advantageous circumstances?
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll find a few ways, Little Monster.”