Chapter 11
Maybe I shothim because he was on the phone.
Maybe I shot him because he knew that being on the phone would give him away, and he answered that call regardless.
Or maybe it’s because he was angry and irritated and feeling hunted by that phone call, and he was already trying to hide it from me, and I knew he’d keep trying to hide it until it ate him alive. I knew he’d tell me some younger-sister-appropriate nonsense about what the call was about, and I’m done.
His ring is on my finger. Maybe Apollo will decide to dump me in front of our entire family and take it back one day in some ridiculous attempt to free me from being engaged to him or whatever he thinks he’s doing, and when he does, then he can go back to protecting me.
Until then?—
Well. He’s definitely not going to protect me from this.
He pushes me hard against the tree and drags his mouth down the side of my neck, ending in a bite through the collar of my shirt that’s a hundred times hotter than the air around us. I make a sound that I’ve never made before, because it hurts, but I like this side of him and I want more of it. The side of him that’s not afraid that he’ll snap me in two if he pins me to a tree trunk and ravages me.
Not that he’s?—
Not that he’s ravaging me. Not that I didn’t want this. I do want this. I want the hint of pain that says I’m alive, that we’re both alive, and I am not, in fact, a delicate princess who can’t be touched and handled and taken without Apollo worrying he’s going to break me.
You can’t, I want to shout into his mouth. You have no idea what I’m capable of.
But that would only tear the curtain off what I’ve worked so hard to hide.
What I’ve worked so hard to keep to myself. Not hide. I’m not ashamed of how I am.
Or—
Maybe I am ashamed.
No, it’s not that.
Apollo finds his way back to my face, heat gusting through my shirt and then to my bare neck and finally to my mouth. He kisses me with a hard grip on my chin. He makes a sound that I don’t think he’s aware of when his muscles flex. It’s a sound that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the kiss. Or it’s part of the kiss, but it’s an involuntary reaction to a separate layer of the kiss, which is the cut I left on his biceps.
I would never have shot him anywhere that could really hurt him. Yes, I know, I know, cutting his hurting, but all I meant to do was?—
All I meant to do was prove?—
I don’t know what I meant to prove. Maybe I wasn’t proving anything. Maybe I just wanted this.
Oh, but I was. I was proving something, but I turned it inside out. I didn’t show him the bigger, darker want that pulses through my veins almost like it’s following the moon, waxing and waning but always, always coming back.
The thing about being shoved up against a tree trunk is that the shovee can use the tree trunk for leverage. I use it for all the leverage I need to throw myself back at Apollo like I threw the arrows at him a few minutes ago. In my quest for balance, one of my hands lands on his arm.
On blood.
The blood from the cut is as hot as the hiss that comes out of his mouth. His biceps tense under my touch, but Apollo doesn’t pull away. He leans harder into it. My heart is like thunder in my ears, my own blood racing toward his.
My own blood wanting his.
I’m not even into blood, as a general rule, and I have no explanation for the urge that comes over me to break the kiss, creating an inch of space between us, and lick the blood off my fingers. It tastes fine and fresh and metallic in a way that nothing else does.
Apollo watches like I’ve transformed into a supernatural being in front of him, his chest heaving and his eyes black in the moonlight. I pull them out of my mouth with a pop.
We’re both frozen for a long, crystalline instant.
“Holy fuck,” Apollo breathes.
“Did you think I was scared of blood?” I whisper, like I’m letting him in on a secret. “I’m not.”
“There’s something you’re scared of,” Apollo says, a strange note in his voice, as if—after having shot him with an arrow, after making him bleed—as if I might suddenly reveal a list of fears that I’ve never before mentioned in all the hours we’ve spent together. I don’t have a list. There is one small, knotted fear, deep down, that if he knew how little I minded—if he knew how unafraid I was—that he might not want me like this. That Apollo, with his near-miss of a childhood with its happy ending in my parents house, might only want what’s sunny-blonde and beautiful, and not the rest.
But that doesn’t count.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“What if it’s worse than blood?” His arms rise and fall with every heave of his breath. The heat of us together is heavy between us in the chill of the night, and I want it to be heavier.
“You’re not making any sense.”
“What if it is?” Apollo insists. “What then?”
“Do you think I’m scared of dicks,Apollo? Do you think I’m scared of yours? Do you think I’m scared of men? Because I’m not. There’s nothing you can say that would scare me. You can’t push me over the edge. I’m not going to run away screaming and—and hide from you. I’m always going to be stalking you through the woods. Don’t you know that? I’m not afraid to hunt you and find you and?—”
And then, possessed of the adrenaline from hearing his voice on that phone call and wanting like I’ve never wanted before, I drag my fingers over the cut again.
I get one glancing lick with the side of my tongue, and it’s Apollo’s turn to be a supernatural being. It’s not out of the question that Apollo has always been a supernatural being, and he was just holding back.
His hands are all over me. His mouth is all over me. Not one single touch is light or tentative. They’re all possessive. Urgent. He moves down my body, capturing all my attention and burning it up in so much bright pleasure—being seen, being wanted, being needed so much that he can’t stop himself—that it takes me several crashing heartbeats to understand that he’s on his knees.
That he’s wrestling with my belt, working it with his fingers and jerking it apart. That he’s yanking my zipper down so hard I think it might break. Apollo’s knuckles graze my skin—cold, from being in the open air—as he pushes his hands into my waistband and tears my pants off. Somehow, he’s got my boots tugged off, too, and they’ve landed somewhere I can’t see. The boots are a small price to pay. I can always get more boots. I can never get this moment again, with anticipation pounding in my chest and my ears and everywhere Apollo’s touching me. I put a hand on his shoulder for balance, my other hand finding his hair—where do I touch him? How do I hold on?
And then my panties are gone.
I arrive at the full understanding of what he wants, what he’s going to do, when he tosses one of my legs over his shoulder and buries his face in my?—
Oh.
My.
Fucking.
Fucking.
Fucking.
God.
I did not grasp the meaning of being eaten before now. I didn’t understand what it meant to be devoured.
I did not.
Understand.
That it could feel this good.
I do not understand how Apollo learned this, nor do I care.
All I care about is how his tongue feels, licking desperately over every inch of me. How his lips feel, brushing over my clit, sucking, oh, God, I didn’t know he would do that. I didn’t know anyone would do that. How his mouth feels. Hot and experienced and confident, like Apollo always knew exactly how I’d want to be eaten—he’s eating me out, oh my freaking God—and he’s just been waiting for the opportunity. He’s been waiting for me to shoot him with an arrow, or tell him that I’m not afraid of a skilled tongue, or?—
It’s a miracle that he’s got so much of my weight balanced on his face and he doesn’t seem to mind at all.
He seems to want more of it.
And I can’t help but give him more of it. My hips move of their own volition. I rock them harder into his face, one hand scrabbling at the tree trunk for balance, the other hand?—
Grabbing him. Somewhere. I’m just trying to hold on.
There are fireworks, or the pleasure is reflecting off my optic nerves and filling my vision with red and gold starbursts.
Apollo does something concentrated and wicked with his tongue. Something incredible. All the pleasure that’s been humming along my nerves concentrates under his tongue. He’s found my clit and he’s not stopping for anything. The pleasure feels tidal, celestial, so much bigger than I am that I don’t know how I’ll stand it when it peaks.
And then it does, and I discover that both my hands are in his hair, pulling. It has to hurt, but the only sound he makes is a needy groan, directly into my cunt. And then another one. As if he’s never tasted anything so good or felt anything so good, which can’t be the case, it can’t be—what can this be doing for him? My mind doesn’t have enough free space to figure out how this can feel so good for him because all I can do is feel him—his strong shoulder under my leg, his hands bracing my thighs, his thumbs pressing in to spread me open that much wider.
Unless he wants me that much.
Unless he wants me so much that he has to make that sound because he has me, even though I’m not giving him anything?—
He keeps licking me while I shake out what has to be the most monumental orgasm in history onto his tongue.
It lasts forever.
It lasts for no time at all.
It leaves me trembling and slightly confused, like I’ve just woken up in a strange place and don’t remember getting here. Also, it doesn’t matter where we are. We could be on Park Avenue, for all I care.
My vision comes back in stages while Apollo holds me up and kisses the inside of my thigh with wet lips. The sound of the breeze returns.
Apollo turns his head and kisses my clit, darting his tongue out to taste me again. My whole body lights like he’s taken his glow, with all its heat and energy and approval, and centered it between my thighs. Yes. I’ll have more of that. Of course. Yes. Please.
I get one long, lingering swipe over the length of me—oh, God, he’s planning to take his time—when I hear it.
A howl, rising in the distance.
And a second one.
A third.
Wolves.
I become newly aware that I’m half-naked, my boots strewn somewhere in this clearing. My bow is on the ground. I’m down to a single sock.
“Apollo.” I tug gently at his hair, and he pulls back with a disappointed confusion that’s far more adorable than it should be in the moonlight. Apollo looks up with me, his face shiny and hunger visible in his eyes. “We have to go.”