Chapter 16 The Test
THE TEST
Apollo shifted in his chair. The morning sun coming through the open window was much too hot for the time of day and amount of fog in the atmosphere.
But then half the heat came from the woman sitting next to him, eating a point of butter-smeared toast as if it were a delicacy.
A crumb sat just at the corner of her mouth, and once Mrs. Collins disappeared, he would…
Ah, gone
Excellent.
He snaked an arm around Sybil’s waist. Another around her head, and he stole the crumb from her mouth with his tongue.
She squeaked, surprised.
But then the toast dropped from her fingers, and those buttery digits were on him. Almost. He caught her hands, sucked her fingers one by one into his mouth, laving his tongue around each one, watching her eyes go wide and as foggy as the morning.
“Delicious,” he said when done. Greedy for more.
“Dangerous.” But still she let him pull her into his lap.
“You love it.”
The tremor of excitement that rippled through her felt like a storm wind—strong enough to blow him over, to tear down everything he knew and leave him with nothing but an appreciation for deadly forces of nature.
And a desire to be torn down again.
He kissed her neck. Seven kisses, all in a row, one for each day they’d been playing this game.
Pure gratitude. That’s why she let him do this.
And because she was feeling rebellious, saw him as a means of acting out all her suppressed, wanton desires.
It would dissipate like the fog beneath the noon sun before long. Until then…
Until then, he’d enjoy the finest pair of breasts he’d ever encountered and how eagerly she let him worship them.
She clung to him eagerly, too, demanding his lips on her mouth and kissing him like she’d been doing it for years. A quick learner.
“Is Stone the only other man you’ve kissed?” he asked after licking a bit of butter from her thumb.
“No. There was Luke. He apprenticed with my father.”
“Luke,” Apollo growled.
“Stop that and kiss me. We have precious time before my goaler returns.”
“Mrs. Collins is certainly unnerving.”
“She’s Temple’s spy.”
“Likely.”
Sybil wiggled on his lap, found what she wanted—Apollo’s cock, apparently—and ground her sweet little arse atop it.
“Do. Not. You know what it does to me.”
“Yes”—her eyes flashed wicked—“I do.” With a glance at the door, she lifted her skirts and straddled his lap.
He groaned and grasped her waist, wondering for the millionth time what it felt like without layers of corset and cloth between his palms and her skin.
When she settled her fingers at his fall, her blue eyes leaping fire and never leaving his face, he hissed and rolled his hips into her wide legs, into the heaven that set at the very middle of them.
He’d never get to heaven, wherever and whatever it was, had known that since last summer. This one, too, he’d never enter. He’d guard the gate himself.
“What are you doing?” he grit out.
“You have used various appendages, what, ten times now to give me pleasure.” She leaned low and whispered in his ear, “Tongue and teeth, lips and fingers. And I assume I can… reciprocate. At the very least, I would like to explore. I must take my education into my own hands. You’re being surprisingly uncooperative.
I thought you were going to write me a book, an educational pamphlet. ”
“I’m more of a hands-on instructor.”
She flicked a button of his fall open. “Excellent. I’m a hands-on learner.”
“Sybil.” A warning.
Against his lips, flicking open another button, she said, “Apollo.”
The only reply he could give was a kiss, long and slow and deep as her clever hands worked him free from his trousers. She wrapped her hand around his cock, and he ripped away from the kiss with a curse.
“Sybil fucking Grant.”
All wide-eyed innocence. “Yes?”
“You can’t…”
“I can.”
God, she was bold. She had an inventor’s understanding of the body, as if it were a machine, and she knew just how to make that machine work, all its cogs and gears and ins and outs.
She nibbled at her bottom lip as she watched herself learn the length and breadth of his shaft.
His head fell onto the back of the chair.
His grip on her waist tightened. Surely he didn’t mark her through all those layers.
If he was leaving little half-moon bruises on her, she didn’t seem to mind.
She squeezed and stroked and explored with delicate fingertips and confident thumb swipes, and he held tight to the heavy readiness that spiraled through him, shot eventually to his cock like lightning.
He wanted to kiss her when he came, and he shot one hand up her spine to cradle her neck, to press her closer until he could capture her lips. And when he did—all over. His climax shot through him, and he clasped her close, chest to chest, belly to belly, his shaft spending between them.
No letting satiation take him. Her turn. He found the bare skin of her thigh as if his hand were a magnet for that luscious flesh, and he made a straight line for her cunny, palm flat, fingers greedy.
She hopped off his lap, her messed skirts swinging to her feet, her slash of a grin playful.
He reached for her. “Get. Back. Here.”
“No.”
“You don’t need me to relieve you?” He reached for a serviette, dropped it over the mess on his waistcoat just in case Mrs. Collins happened to barge in.
“I do.” She closed her eyes, shivered. “But I’m going to keep this arousal. And use it.”
“For what, pray tell?”
“I’m taking the test today. The metal affinity test. I’m hoping… well you know… arousal seems to impact inner heat, and—”
“You’ve used me for your own practical purposes.”
“A bit, yes.” She shot into the hallway with a laugh that ripped a hole right through his chest.
“You’re lucky I understand selfishness, wench,” he mumbled, striding after her. He parted from her at the top of the stairs, and after he changed into a new suit of clothes, he beat her to the forge.
She appeared a few minutes after him in her usual forge uniform—men’s trousers and a man’s shirt held fast to her form by an old-fashioned corset.
She busied herself at the shelves, choosing a variety of metals, then placed them on the worktable and dug about in her pockets. She emptied their contents alongside the other metals. Among them, Apollo’s gold glinted.
He picked it up, tossed it up, caught it. “The ones you’ve been carrying about will be better for this task.” He tossed it up again.
She caught it. “I need this to work.”
“Why? What does it matter, knowing your metal? From what I can tell, most alchemists use all metals, no matter their affinity.”
“Yes, you’re right. But… it can guide you, and I need every bit of guidance I can get if I’m to build a true alchemy device.”
“A myth, nothing more. Stone’s mad.” If it weren’t a myth…
holy Hades, what a discovery. The man who could turn lead to gold would hold the world in the palm of his hand—wealth, titles, power…
If Stone was close enough to decoding the old myth that he’d abducted a woman to help him, that was reason enough to stay by the master alchemist’s side.
“Diana’s letter says that many believe alchemists used to possess the ability.
But we lost it. I wonder if the design is Stone’s own.
Now that I have a notion of its purpose, the device seems too sophisticated for him.
But also rather… old-fashioned. It uses crude parts that have not been used for at least a hundred years.
And its design is old fashioned as well.
Simple yet elegant. Newer inventions tend toward an elaborate and embellished sort of style. ”
Apollo leaned the back of his hips on the table, holding the lump of lead up to the light. “Well, he has been grave robbing.”
“What?”
“Oh yes. The man can’t come up with anything of his own. Any invention that comes out of his forge came first from some poor alchemist’s grave. I had no idea you lot buried your dead with work. Work. For the afterlife. How plebian. And unimaginative.”
“It’s honorable.” She snatched the lead from his hands. “Shall we begin?”
He shifted from foot to foot, crossing his arms over his chest. “Are you sure you’re ready?” They’d been practicing all week. Between the kissing. She was improving quickly now that she had a little confidence. He was too. When they worked together, shaping metal felt easy as breathing.
She nodded. “I’m ready.”
With bellows and coals and firewood, they stoked the flames. When it raged, Sybil tossed a handful of metal chunks inside.
But not his gold.
Apollo swept it off the table and held it out. “You’ll need this, too.”
She shook her head. “It’s yours. It would be wrong.”
He kissed her forehead and slipped it into her pocket. “For luck.”
“Thank you.”
They watched the metals until they glowed.
“Now,” he said, “Steel yourself for the heat and reach into the flames. Close your eyes. Don’t cheat like I did.”
She laughed and closed her eyes, and with one steady inhalation, reached into the fire.
She stood like a statue, the flames licking at her skin, as the minutes ticked round the clock in the hallway.
He began to worry. Her entire body began to heat, glowing around the edges.
A little sun bloomed in her pocket, her body heat igniting the gold.
“Sybil…”
But she didn’t even flinch. How long should she stay like this? In any of the tests he’d observed, even his own, it had taken minutes, seconds, not close to an hour.
Her arm began to shake.
“Sybil…?”
She remained outstretched, arm thrust in the fire, and fear crept up his spine. She burned so bright, she might shatter. Or melt.
“Sybil, come out. Now.”
Except for her shaking arm, she didn’t move.
She was going to hate him for this.
Let her.
He swung an arm around her waist and yanked her out of the flames.
She cried out, lurched forward, but he kept tight hold, even as she kicked her legs and thrashed against him.
“I’m not done! I could feel something! Something! But it would never come. It will come. It will!” She pounded small, furious fists against his shoulders. “Release me! Let me go!”
“I’m not going to let you burn up.”
“I want to! I won’t!”
He tossed her over his shoulder, and she shrieked and writhed like a wild cat as he carried her out of the forge. Mrs. Collins caught them in the entry hall.
“The heat got to her brain,” Apollo said. “She needs to cool off.”
Mrs. Collins backed wearily into another room, and still Sybil fought him.
All the way across the lawn she fought him and all the way through a small wood and down a hill.
Still she fought as he approached the lapping edge of a small man-made lake.
He waded out into it, and when she felt the cold water brush against her toes, she froze, quieted.
When he was hip deep in the water, she’d stopped fighting entirely, and he slid her down the front of his body until she stood, waist deep in the water as well.
“Breathe,” he instructed.
She did, taking great big gulps. Around her, the water sizzled and bubbled then quieted, too.
She ducked all the way under, and at the count of five, when he was about to duck under and bring her back up, she bobbed to the surface, coiffure destroyed, hair streaming soaking wet down her back, shirt plastered to her corset-lifted breasts.
Those breasts rose and fell with ragged breaths, and she hid her face behind her palms.
She needed time.
So he returned to shore, removed all his clothing but his smalls and swam out into the depths of the lake, crossing from one side to the other with smooth strokes over and over again, keeping a careful eye on her.
When she leaned backward in the water and raised her feet to float, his chest relaxed its vise grip on his heart. The sun gathered power, banishing the fog, and when she finally trudged back to the shore and sat in the grass, it was a bright, hot day, and he joined her.
He didn’t miss the flicker of appreciation in her gaze as she watched him slog up the small incline to the grass. He sat next to her, nearly naked, bending his knees, and propping his forearms on them.
“Do you want to… I don’t know…” He ran a hand through his hair, wringing droplets of water down his back. “Tell me what happened?” He winced. He sounded so ridiculous, asking her to trust him. Of course she wouldn’t. Why would he even want her to?
She swallowed and laid back in the grass with closed eyes.
The sun caressed her face, light draping across its angles and blooming berries in her cheeks.
“I’m not sure. Everything. Nothing. I thought the silver called to me, first, but when I tried to pick it up, I…
couldn’t make myself. And then I thought the lead…
but the same thing happened. And it happened to all of them.
Again and again. It was like I wanted every one of them, but they did not want me.
Perhaps I was trying to force it. The metal does not like that.
” Her last words were so soft the wind carried them away.
“Sounds like potential to me.”
“Potential sounds better than rejection, I suppose. Perhaps everyone is right.”
“I do not know what you’re about to say, but I still don’t think you should say it. Everybody is most often wrong.”
“Women shouldn’t—”
He groaned and kissed her.
“Be—”
Another kiss.
“Alchemists.”
“Sybils can be whatever the hell they want.” Then he kissed her so she couldn’t reply, so she didn’t have the brain to do so. And he knew he’d found success when her hands found him, cupping his cheeks, sliding down his shoulders, exploring the skin stretched taut over his ribs.
The sun was keeping the fog back, and their chests were heaving with desire, and the grass was so soft. As soft as his willpower.
“Sybil,” he breathed, nudging his nose against hers while they gulped for air.
“Y-yes?”
“I’m going to do something I shouldn’t do.” Absolutely shouldn’t for more reasons than he had a brain at the moment to enumerate. But mainly because she deserved a man who made her his center. He’d never be able to do that, having no center himself, no loyalty, no heart, no soul to worship hers.
But he could give her something.
Be honest, Apollo.
He was taking this for himself.
He crept his hand down her body, cupped her sex through her sodden trousers.
“Please.” She rolled against his hand.
“I’ll take care of you, make sure that—”
“I know.” She kissed him. “I trust you.”
But she shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t.