Chapter Thirteen #2
How else was she going to commemorate the only lover she wanted to remember?
To be real, the hookup who wasn’t even that yet.
But weren’t semantics often just that? Was sweaty-and-naked the necessary rubric for sliding over the relationship tag?
If so, did that also mean she couldn’t believe in this magic yet either?
That she couldn’t lean down and press her chest to his gleaming golden one, and feel the cosmic cadence of his heart?
That she couldn’t seal her lips atop his and not think she now knew the taste of ultimate decadence?
Opulence wasn’t a palace on a hill or a buried treasure in a valley.
It was his mouth rolling against hers with knowing carnality.
It was his hands, once more bracing her hips to help with her suggestive slides along the glorious bulge in his slacks.
It didn’t take her long at that pace before he gave up new brilliance from his gaze. The sight was close to blinding, but she didn’t care. Her retinas didn’t feel so vital anymore.
Okay, death by god sex might be a real thing.
If so, what a way to sacrifice for the cause.
“Hey. Irowen. It’s really okay.” Clearly, he misinterpreted her wobbly gasps as fearful confessions. “This is simply what you do to me, Sweet Monster. I promise, neither of us is going to explode.”
“Hold up.” She clarified the injection with a sarcastic smirk. “Isn’t that the general idea?”
His own sly smile, adding to the wattage of his eyes, actually did threaten to implode her—from the inside out. This male and his damnable, diabolical allure . . . honestly, it’d coax a she-lizard into a mongoose den.
And she had to go there with the metaphor game.
At a time like this, when he studied her face as if reading every one of her thoughts. When whatever he saw only intensified his grin. Oh, and then the brutally awesome grip to her hips . . .
Just before he coaxed her into a quicker ride along his cock.
“Oh, fuck,” she exclaimed, not even minding the rough chuckle to which she was treated in return.
“As you said, Miss Steed, that would be the current mission goal, hmmm?”
She twisted her lips with mirth but took a second to form a worthy comeback.
He’d given her some good material to play with there, after all.
Only now, she didn’t want to play that way.
Not with the friction of their clothes doing blissfully nasty things to her sex.
Not with how Apollo’s reaction began to match, with his lips parting, his neck straining, and his biceps bulging every time she cleared the crest of his arousal.
Holy shit.
In flipping their positions, her lover had elevated his generosity to match his beauty.
She now had the best view in the house. An aerial shot of this god, in his ascending arousal and glory .
. . how had she ever proclaimed any earthly vista as the Creator’s most stunning achievement?
He was sexier than Santorini. More breathtaking than Banff.
He took her higher than Half Dome, Victoria Falls, and the Burj Khalifa combined.
So yeah, they really needed to be done with words now.
And clothes.
The thought alone nearly blow-torched the last tatters of her self-control. She was helplessly, hopelessly on fire, newly fallen to the moment of accepting she had no escape yet embracing the inferno.
Maybe living was overrated.
There came the thought that didn’t get a second to catch flames. Not when an iceberg ran it over in the form of a crow’s fresh caw. On top of that, Quil’s unmistakable squall inside her head.
Boss!
The burnished beams in Apollo’s eyes disintegrated.
The swollen rod between his thighs didn’t fade so quickly.
Good or bad thing? She held off on the final call about that since the strident bird sounded ready to break in the bathroom’s door, ornate embellishments and all.
Oh, no. Could she shield Apollo’s girth, not goliath but absolutely a credit to his kind, with only three seconds’ notice?
Yo, Big Man. Sorry, but I’m not here with extra pillow mints. It’s—uh—Quil, by the way. I didn’t dance off on Kaw or anything, but—
“Quil,” barked the man beneath her. But for all the volume of the shout, Apollo was still as hard as—she hated to connect it but did—a fraternity bro on half a handful of moonrocks. “Spare me the prologue. What’s going on?”
Click-Tap-Click. The corvid paced the space directly in front of the door, seemingly rethinking the goal to break it in. Thank God.
Still, Wen reluctantly returned to her feet.
It was pure hell to force her gaze away from the male still sprawled before her.
From the messy halo of his hair against the mirror to his spread thighs straining inside his dark pants, he redefined the term rock star decadence beyond what Rizon ever dreamed of achieving.
“It’s all good, Quil,” she called then, flinging a pacifying wink before Apollo threw one of his elbows over his face.
What on earth—and heaven and hell, for that matter—did these poor birds do to cope when the big guy was grouchy with them before?
At least she could spare Quil from that ops manual now.
“We’ll be right out.” Hopefully. “Hang on.”
All righty. That’s, errr, pretty dandy. Sure, sure, sure. Though Kaw’s lieutenant, even with his typical jingo-rah-rah, didn’t concede half a second of his stressed strides. Because the other guys just reported in from their recon flights, and we have some interesting information about Miss Steed.
“Huh?” she volleyed. “But I’m right here.”
Before she finished, Apollo swept to his feet. Though he grimaced and readjusted himself, it didn’t stop him from gritting, “Shit. I think he means—”
The other Miss Steed.
She gasped, lunged to the door, and yanked it open. Quil stood in the center of the doorway, appearing prepared to salute if Apollo so ordered it. But if that was some kind of corvid corps protocol, Wen didn’t care. She hit the crow with the imperative in her stare first.
“Speak,” she ordered, making sure he understood her full emphasis by practically straddling him with her two new stomps. “Now.”