Epilogue
“Wow, Glow Worm. When you said you were going to show me the world . . . ”
Wen flashed a look across the small Ferris wheel bucket, full of as much mischief and sarcasm as she could muster after a massive bowl of gyudon, two melon sodas, a soft ice cream cone, and a pretzel the size of her head.
It’d all been delicious, part of a surprise date day at the adorable theme park up the coast from their villa, but she began to second-guess all her menu choices when Apollo pointed to the towering ride that overlooked the place like a kid threatening to throw a tantrum if they didn’t climb aboard after lunch.
Five minutes later, settled against the seat a few feet away in their enclosed capsule, the man had definitely shed his bratty side.
Now, he only looked a little temperamental—but in all the best ways.
The ways that made her want to lick her lips.
Sort of in the way he licked his.
His appraising grays admired her in the souvenir Watashi wa Monster tee he’d bought her yesterday from the gift shop at the Godzilla theme park. Today she paired the souvenir with a comfortable swing skirt, lacy socks, and the trendy new Docs he’d also gotten for her.
“Don’t tell anyone your boyfriend doesn’t go all-out, hm?” he teased in return.
Well, damn it. Their little carriage was air-conditioned, giving her no citable excuse for the jolts of color to her cheeks. All too aware of Apollo’s follow-up hum, blaring how he noted every dot of that pigment, she averted her gaze outside.
“Wow. We’re really high. Look; their Taj Mahal is nearly as stunning as the real thing. The Wat Arun too. I’ve never seen Segovia Castle in person, so getting to at least see th—”
And nope. The chitchat tactic scored a massive Fail for calming her stomach, her thoughts, and her heart during what should have been a relaxing spin in the sky.
“Errr . . . boyfriend?”
The rustle from his side of the cabin had her glancing back over.
Bird crap on a Taj Mahal brick, he’d started channeling pure rock star energy.
With his shoulders angled against the seat corner, he slid the leather tie free from his hair and secured it around his wrist. Did he keep the appendage free after that, though?
Of course not. The man had to start taunting her with small but graceful swirls of his obscenely immortal fingers.
Obscenely . . .
She readjusted her own position. Fought for surcease against the thoughts invading her head.
Visions of what her magnificent lover had done to her with those fingers, from across the bedroom, just last night.
“Does that make you uncomfortable, Irowen?”
He asked it with the same halcyon husk, resting his head in a bracket of his opposite fingers while cocking that elbow atop the seat cushion. He’d dressed for the weather too, so every hump and vein in his bare arm was beautifully contrasted against the cloudless sky and his black tee.
Seriously. Obscene.
So much more resisting a long lick of her lips.
“N-No. Not at all,” she rushed to say, even hoping he’d fixate on her mouth because of it. “It actually . . . sounds nice.”
Way to go and blow the effect, turning into the loser panting after the god who wanted to be her boyfriend. Well, if that was indeed the case, she might as well get every second of the salivation out of the way now.
“But in the interest of full disclosure, buddy, I don’t know how I’ll pass muster as a girlfriend.”
The sharp inward V of his tawny brows, while expected, would’ve had her making excuses to sprint for the bathroom and forget the whole subject. But since they didn’t have a choice at seventy meters above Eastern Awaji Island, she might as well honor him with the whole truth of her personal mess.
“I don’t get it, I guess,” she admitted, shrugging with blatantly forced nonchalance.
“Apparently, the perfect girlfriend gene passed me by. For a while, I tried blaming it on the day job. Chasing derelicts and dickheads across continents doesn’t give a girl time for Netflix-and-chill or cooking anything beyond boil-and-eat ramen. ”
His gaze tightened. “And that’s what you think I want?”
She flung her stare away once more, barely avoiding a full grimace. Well damn, this place also had a cool Neuschwanstein replica. Not that this moment, newly incised by the scalpel of his scrutiny, was the time to mention it.
“Isn’t it?” she rebutted. “I mean, most guys want what they want, right?”
“I’m not most guys, Irowen.”
“I’m glaringly aware of that, Apollo.”
“Apparently not.”
As he slowly stressed every syllable as if just conceiving the sound, the maddening male tripled—quadrupled—on his disarmingly smooth energy by flowing his free hand through the air.
With gentle energy that bordered on eerie energy, he began working his thumb and pointer finger together.
Not more than a few of those strokes later, the top two buttons of her dress bodice detached from each other.
Wen swore beneath her breath. The sound was her best effort at a protest, since another invisible force already snuck its way beneath her bra, swirling toward her left nipple.
“A-Apollo . . . wh-what . . . ”
“After five days together in the guest bedroom of that villa, I thought you already knew me better, Monster.”
Her heart skipped too many beats to even think of what to swear at him. Was a girl expected to actually form words when an arrogant god thought it’d be fun to hike up her skirt from several feet away?
Not fair, Glow Worm.
But even attempting to phrase it as a glare across their compartment was a lesson in futility. The air co’s breeze against her thighs: shiver-inducing. The touches that came just after, running up from her knees to her panty edges: scream-seducing.
“Apollo!” With her voice back, she surely had more to generate now.
A warning. A censure. A lecture about the utter stupidity of teasing her there on a rural island where hand-holding was scandalous.
She could do it. She knew the context. Now she just had to fight clear of the fire in her blood and the tingles in her every skin cell . . .
“Hmmm?”
And yes, past his utter delight—his exquisite exultation, so much better and worse than his slickster strut when she was first gasping and helpless beneath him—to find her damn words.
“Th-this isn’t . . . you can’t just . . . ”
“Just what?” He worked his hands beneath her underwear, quirking the edges of his lips in time to the small burst in his fingertips. Within seconds, he’d totally dissolved the thin scrap of fabric.
“Ohhh.” His searing strokes to her ass, along with the fresh rush of air across her bare mound, again stripped every cognizant word from her brain. But she swallowed hard, knowing she still had to try. “Listen. Listen to me, Glow Worm.”
“To every note of your cries and whisper of your sighs, my love.”
My love.
Her heart throbbed for him too. Until it resounded in the deepest part of her eardrums and the remotest sands of her soul.
“I—I love you too.” She framed his gorgeous face with her hands, digging her fingers into his hair, and lifted a thorough kiss to his sexy mouth. “I really do. Even before you trusted your treasure to Jun, I knew it.”
Yet as they pulled apart, his features were dark. “But?” he pressed, filling her telling pause.
“But I was scared,” she confessed. “And . . . I still am.” A breath shuddered out, having nothing to do with how he trailed his touch back in toward the depths that craved him the most. “Which has nothing to do with the ride technician we’re going to face in five minutes n—ohhh!”
As reiterations went, this second time was more a chant than a charm. As if she could control any note of the sound as the bucket bumped hard, swung twice, and then stopped.
She bolted a bewildered gaze up at Apollo. He hitched a shoulder like the worm who’d casually flipped the fates on his attacking bird.
“Huh. Guess no matter where you are, these carnival rides are hinky.” He dipped in, doubling the lengthy languor of her own kiss, until her senses spun yet again.
But the ruthless god didn’t stop there. His mouth was just as wet and sensual as he slid kisses along her jaw, around her ear, down the column of her neck.
“There’s probably just enough time for you to say yes, Sweetheart. ”
“Uh . . . huh?” she somehow managed to reply. “What? Say yes? Why?”
He softly bit the beginning of her collarbone. “Be my girlfriend, Irowen. Be mine and nobody else’s.”
Again summoning all her self-will, she angled away and shook her head. “Wait. Wait. Seriously, Apollo . . . I can’t. We can’t.”
With the compartment at a total freeze, her balance was thrown off in new ways.
For a second, up was down and the opposite held true, so her effort to straighten up and away from him brought the opposite yield.
She grimaced, expecting to take a painful thunk on the carriage floor, except that she didn’t.
Apollo caught her with barely a grunt of effort, arms upstretched around her waist—and his face pressed at the space between her legs.
“Oh . . . my,” she blurted.
“I didn’t plan this part,” he protested in the same moment. “But even through all the surprise falls, I’ll be here to catch you, Irowen. I swear.”
She didn’t suppress her huge eye roll. “Like this?”
A fresh chuckle from him, vibrating along every cord of her muscles and awareness of her being. “If you like.” He followed with a devastating grin while scooting and resting his chin in the dip of her belly button. “Or even if you don’t.”
“What about what you want?”
She should’ve used the emphasis to push up and away, giving them the necessary distance for this exchange, but damn it, he felt so perfect where he was.
For the first time in her life, she liked being this bare and exposed with a man, even with all the lights on, so to speak. Even with the light being his . . .
It was one of the most incredible epiphanies in her existence.
And likely the worst.
“Come on, Apollo.” At least she secured a better view of his beauty by hiking up to her elbows.
“Don’t look at me like I’m cracked. If you want me to seriously consider that question, then assess it for yourself.
What do you want here, as well?” With their gazes glued, she gave him her full, serious intent.
“Because even if I’m the partner you want now, I’m going to change.
And maybe, even just in a few years, I won’t be that same girlfriend anymore . . .”
And I don’t know if I could stand that, Glow Worm.
Not being the one basking in the sunlight of your stare and the strength of your arms . . .
Not being the woman you smile at, exactly like now.
After a long, silence—a stillness too stretched for her nerves but not long enough for her heart—Apollo pushed out a weighted sigh. She examined its every nuance, struggling to suss his intent, but the sound was as fleeting as the wind itself, gone from her understanding.
“All right, then,” he finally murmured, once more channeling the mystery of a bare breeze. “Don’t be my girlfriend.”
Her spirit dropped anchor in her stomach. An equally awful lump lodged in her throat. “Oh,” she grated out. “Um. All right. That’s cool. So then—”
“Be my wife.”
Okay, that ground the damn muscles to a halt. At least the ones she planned on ordering into action for scrambling away from him.
“Ex . . . cuse me?”
“Oh, you’re not excused.” The male, suddenly smugger than ever before, had the nerve to return her gawk with a stunningly serious one of his own. “Because you know exactly what I said, Monster. But just in case there’s confusion . . . ”
With the trails of that low, arrogant pronouncement, he dropped his gaze until she saw the tips of his golden lashes—as he lapped his tongue into her most intimate entrance.
“I’m going to take care of you, Irowen. Let me. Please.”
“Oh, Apollo,” she gasped.
“Just like this, Irowen.”
“Ah! There. Just like that. No, like that . . . ”
“Like this and so many other ways, Irowen.”
“All the ways,” she panted back. “Oh, put your tongue right . . . there, please.”
“I’ll put it into all your places, Irowen.
Until you grow into your later years. Until I come to your bed at night and taste you as if it’s the first time.
And I’ll still think you’re this delicious.
Because you’ll still be mine, with all the fire of your soul and the love in your heart, and that will be all that matters. ”
She bucked her hips now, knowing he saw the tracks of her tears along her face as he suckled every aroused drop from her tunnel.
Damn it, oh damn it, none of this was going to be easy—the god of the sun and a little monster mortal who wasn’t going to take any of his arrogant shit—okay, maybe a little of his shit—but as her body sang, her heart glowed, and her spirit reached for her golden lover, she reached past her insecurity and fear, believing her life could really be different.
She could be different.
Just as he pledged to be different, especially for her.
“Apollo.” She spoke his name with new reverence and revelation. With longing and love and hope. “Take me over. Don’t stop. Please.”
He released a long hum along her flesh. Every note of it made her glow with the light of his adoration, the force of his love.
“Just say yes, Little Monster.”
“Yes. For the rest of my life . . . yes.”
*
Thank you so much for reading Apollo and Wen’s story!