Chapter Twenty-Three
“Irowen.”
Every cadence of his growl was a startling replica of the first time he’d used it on her, with his soles stained in her blood and his gaze sharper than the chandelier chips in her spleen.
Just. Like. That.
Except completely different.
Sometimes, spilled blood made a difference for good. One step could change cold chandeliers into brilliant rainbows.
And the angel who’d grudgingly saved her body into the male who peered into her soul.
Who made sure she got that message without any crossed signals, tilting up her face with one of his elegant hands.
He wrapped the other one against the back of her head, tangling his fingertips deep into her curls.
That dual touch, as warm and strong as the fire star he ruled, would have been enough to hold her in place for hours—but when he suffused her with the intensity of his twin greens, it was like he’d ordered the pines to hurl all their needles at once.
Oh God, that penetration hurt.
Worse than the glass in her hair and the crystals up her spine.
She never wanted it to end.
What the hell are you doing to me, Glow Worm? And why-why-why do you keep doing it so much better every time? What do you think you’ll accomplish from it? What you’ll get from this stupid human who has so little to give you? Who doesn’t know who she is anymore?
But he heard none of that. Of course not. This god was in her mind and her heart and fuck, every molecule of oxygen she breathed, but her rant didn’t even make him blink.
The rising wind lifted his hair. Several raindrops pelted his back. But he kept channeling the pines themselves, keeping her close with evergreen patience.
“What?” After all that, she could only manage that much. She locked her teeth, damning him and herself for the words that still roiled inside but refused to come out. “What is it, Apollo?”
Just say it, damn it. Makes better sense to toss away the umbrella in the rain, anyhow. Impossible to discern if the dumb human is really crying, right? How tedious that all must be for you. Let’s spare you from sopping up the rest of the mess, okay? Get it out, let me go, and—
“I’m having trouble with your crisis.”
Well, she had asked him for it. Just not quite like this, in his full OG Phoebus mode. Not in the tone that was half confrontation and half are-you-really-done-because-that’s-as-clear-as-a-hieroglyphic-poem mode.
“Huh?” Not that she helped with the clarification at all. But could she be blamed? “Buddy, you’ll have to get a little more specific than—”
“Stop.” He braced her jaw with the same gritty force, stretching fingers across her cheeks until the tips pushed at the edges of her ears. “Just stop, okay? I’m not your buddy, and we’re not just talking about Genny anymore, or Ito, or your stupid squad guys.”
“Hey.” She squirmed, only to glower when he locked her harder in place. “They’re good men. None of them asked to get beaten to a pulp by your half-lion of a stepbrother.”
“You’re changing the subject again.”
“About the facts you got wrong?”
“About the soldiers you’ll defend more than standing up for yourself?”
She opened her mouth, ready with another retort, but then the hieroglyphics fell away.
His point sank in. Beneath his palms, her skin burned with fresh mortification.
Why was he fixating on something she’d spilled at her weakest moment?
Guys weren’t supposed to pay attention when things were blubbered between snotting and sobbing.
It was like watching a woman gyrate to take off a sports bra.
Some things were seriously meant to be ignored.
“Okay, look.” And there was the line that deserved its own laugh track, since the maddening male seemed intent on adding High God of Staring to his credentials.
“That’s my own mud to slog through.” She slid her hands up to cover his.
“Honestly, you need to forget I babbled a lot of that. I mean, not that I don’t appreciate your—uh—concern, but I’ll sort through it.
I mean it. I handle things better alone, you know? So can you just—”
But no, he wasn’t going to just.
Not if his intensifying gaze was a decent indicator. The scrutiny that jolted just before he cut her off—with a plunge of his lips over hers that was nothing less than raw command. Unswerving purpose. Unalloyed passion.
Oh, her helpless, tingling toes, the passion.
Thanks to the city she grew up in, the word was an overused commodity.
A hock tool on everything from billboards to busses to freeway graffiti.
Even so, Grandma raised Genny and her to understand the real world past those shiny freeway signs and the backdrops in the studio backlots.
She was more than aware it should be spelled with a small p, not in neon caps.
She’d been a clueless, careless fool.
It wasn’t a lowercase word. Yet nor was it a garish marquee.
It was better.
It was pine-scented wind and lips that stroked hers like hurricanes. Rain in her senses and fire in her blood. She opened herself to it all, yearning to hang on and never let go. She dragged her gaze open to read the same purpose in the lush forests of his.
“You’re not alone, Irowen.”
And then in the brimstone edges of his whisper.
“Because I’m not going anywhere.”
Syllables that permeated like smoke, twirling into the chasms of her core—by way of every chamber of her heart.
“Glow Worm . . . ”
She didn’t hide her all-over shiver, nor the rolling shake of her head. As she ended the action by pushing her forehead against his, she imitated his needy move by palming his jaw with her hand.
“If you want in my pants, you know that poetic shit isn’t necessary, right?”
She almost didn’t say it—seriously, he’d had her with the kiss—but it was always her go-to for putting lovers at ease, a tried-and-true sexual ice breaker.
But mistake marker number one: she kind of liked this ice the way it was.
For the first time in—well, ever—it was mixed with glorious flames, licking against the glaze, turning her nerve endings into a mix of tangerine heat and turquoise meltdown in the same seconds.
In the depths of his eyes, she found the same mesmerizing mix of temperatures.
Blazing the path to mistake marker number two.
The flag ten times harder to confront.
“If that’s the only thing I wanted, Little Monster, you’d already be naked and spread beneath me.”
The slip of inciting him to drawl glorious, dirty words like that.
In the doing, he pushed closer. Harder. The flames in his greens turned nuclear, all but glowing at her . . . into her. Just like the turbines accepting his thermal heat, her core revved faster and faster. Burned hotter and hotter.
Until it warned her, with blaring clarity, why his naughty imagery might be best as just a fantasy.
Make smart choices.
It’d always been one of Grandma’s mantras, applying to everything from homework over doomscrolling and sipping anything out of a red party cup.
Nothing on those lists about sleeping with a full-on god. Not even with the pretty poetry factor.
But if Grandma had known about this god . . .
Basic biology wasn’t the snag. Even without being a mythology expert, she knew damn well that the whole Pantheon enjoyed their frequent “leisure sports time” with humans.
And just a few hours ago, even a few minutes of indulging their lusties had assured her their bodies would fit better than a well-oiled Remington.
But what about when the shooting range was closed?
When this game was over? When they had to go back to their actual lives and duties and homes: hers a two-bedroom prefab in Inglewood, his the freaking Temple at Delphi, the swanky condo in the Underworld, and Zeus-only-knew how many other mansions and palaces?
Sure, they could make time to conveniently cross paths—he had a mortal world pseudonym and a bunch of businesses to go with it—but could they really make such an arrangement work? Could casual fuckbuddies ever become part of their lexicon?
Smart choices . . .
She almost let loose a laugh, wondering why she’d questioned the wisdom to begin with.
Long-term booty call buddies was as possible for them as Kaw working for a nun.
“You make a valid point there, mister. But . . . what if I kind of like the idea of being naked and underneath you?”
Yet no one had taken short-term booty call off the table.
And with all his beautiful muscles fitted so close, then the sneaky male working his hands lower down her body, it became a better concept by the minute . . .
The seconds . . .
So screw the doubts. And all the what-ifs.
Unless it was the one assaulting her mind now.
What if this is your only chance to have your sun god all to yourself? All of him . . .
“Ah, my gorgeous little Gamera, what illicit ideas you stir in me.” The renewed grit in his voice only fired all the coals of her hopes, until the second he cocked his head with a pensive expression. “Except that does depend . . . ”
She rumpled her own features as answering dread tolled in her chest. “On what?”
He righted his head. And in those two seconds, ripped the clapper out of her inner bells—along with it, the breath from her lungs—with his sun-spirit-turned-seraph smirk.
“On whether you want to be spread out Beverly-Hills-Crashed-Chandelier style, or Underworld-Condo-While-Contemplating-Shower-Turns style.”
Oh, yeah. That did it for the bells, all right. In their place, she simply let the rain fall, the wind whoosh, and the air crackle with her palpable pull toward this man.
At last she murmured, in a rasp only for him to hear, “Depends on what you mean by all those qualifiers, Godship.”
She reveled in the new moment, watching his nostrils flare and his pupils dilate, before pushing her jaw against his hold and locking in on his attention.
“You saying you want me in nothing but a towel and some water?” she taunted in a rough rasp. “Or something more like broken glass and pleading moans?”
His brows ticked up. His lips parted. But as soon as he swallowed hard, he lowered self-imposed shackles back over the rest of his body. Well, the rest minus the bulge that throbbed against her center . . . holding her like she hadn’t just suggested getting bare, naked, and beggarly for him . . .
“Glow Worm?” she prompted. “Did you get all that, sir? Happy to repeat anything if you didn’t catch—”
A fresh clash of thunder and lightning broke overhead.
Wen gasped and swore, the rest of her words garroted by a new blast of freezing wind and rain—
And shock.
As she was lifted straight into the air, then flown across to the Zen garden area.
Within seconds, after Apollo muttered some sexy-as-fuck phrases in Greek, her arms were hoisted and her wrists lashed together, secured to a low-hanging pine bough. More invisible forces lifted her left leg then her right, securing them in spread-eagle positions atop two of the flat rocks.
But her lover wasn’t done yet.
As she blinked against the driving rain, more of the cold drops pelted down against her bare skin—as Apollo swirled his glowing fingers, directing every thread of clothing to shed itself from her body.