Chapter 17 Sun and Fog
SUN AND FOG
If Sybil let him, Apollo would chatter away about protecting her from ruin or conception or something important like that.
But Sybil didn’t want important. Not right now with the bright sun making his golden skin glow, not with the heat they could call up so readily between them blazing, making her clothes steam.
Not when he was only wearing smalls.
And she could only think of taking them off.
He hooked a finger into the waist of her trousers, and she realized those needed to be gone, too.
But they’d become water-fused to her limbs, and any attempt to wiggle out of them had her panting, and not in the way she wanted to be.
What she wouldn’t give to be wearing skirts.
She wiggled and growled, huffing, tugging and pushing.
Until Apollo straddled her, stilled her hands.
“No touching,” he said, and she obeyed, dropping her arms to the grass beside her.
He set his palms at her hips, and between one breath and the next, they were glowing, warm and lovely.
There was a soft sizzle as her trousers dried where his hands lay, and then he curled his fingers into the waist and tugged.
They gave way so easily for him, as they had not for her, and he bent and placed a kiss just below her revealed navel.
He didn’t linger, tugging her trousers down inch by slow inch, his lips following, a hot trail of touch that burned more than the forge flames had. Soon the sodden garment was dry beneath his palms, then gone entirely.
She wanted this.
But how odd, how almost terrifying to be uncovered beneath the wide sky. They’d been kissing in shadows for days, in corners and in the dark while all the world slept. But to kiss now, to disrobe and lay bare before him with the sun high and curious above them…
She tugged at the hem of her shift, covering herself.
But then Apollo caught her gaze, and she no longer cared about her hem. Oh, she knew the rules, and she knew the risks, but never had she felt so alive than she had since coming to Foggy Hill House. A hammer defiantly in her hand, a man languidly between her legs.
He kissed his way up her leg, his warm palm lingering behind her knee. So softly sensuous. He left a kiss between her legs then stood and held out a hand. She took it, too wobbly to stand on her own. He bent to kiss her. Not too much. She was…
“Am I taller than before?”
“You must be.” He busied himself with the ribbons of her stays, untying them, loosening them. “Your head is at my chin instead of my shoulder.”
“Then something was happening. It was working. I almost had it!” She threw herself at him, hugging him hard, clutching at the back of his neck as he hugged her back, lifted her, spun her. “I’m going to get it,” she said when he put her back on her feet. “I am. I will discover my affinity.”
“I know.” The grin that curled his lips was wonderful and true, and the finger he hooked beneath her stays was clever indeed. They melted off her, and she shrugged out of the shift, leaving it a damp puddle of linen at her feet. Not terrified any longer. Not when he said the most romantic things.
I know. Those two words ruined her. Whatever happened next… worth every risk.
Besides… no one had to know. No one ever had to know.
She laughed when he lifted her and cradled her against his chest, only to kneel in the grass and set her gently atop it.
Soft and thick, almost better than a bed, as if the ground and grass were plumping itself up for her.
For them. He remained there, though, his blue eyes rimmed with gold, the sun gilding his skin.
She felt his regard in every part of her. It began to make her squirm and ache.
“Apollo, come to me.”
“Not yet.” He ran the tip of his tongue along the line of his upper teeth, as if contemplating a delicacy he intended to devour.
“I need you,” she moaned.
“Not. Yet.”
“This is payback for earlier?”
“Patience.” He palmed his cock, squeezed his bollocks, hissed.
So she did the same, smoothing her hand over her abdomen and between her legs, cupping her breast.
“Wicked woman.”
“No worse than you. Apollo, please. Let us get to it.”
“Where’s the poetry in getting to it? No, no, no, princess. Since I’ve decided to do this, I’m doing it right. I’m going to take my time.”
A shiver rocked through her, half anticipation, half fear. “We’re so exposed.”
“No one here but you and me and the wind and the sky and the sun. And they don’t care. Now”—he slung a leg over her, straddling her—“slip your delicate little finger into your cunny.”
On a shaky inhale, she did just that.
“You enjoy misbehaving.”
She nodded.
“Curl your finger.”
She did, and a moan slipped out, wavering and wanton.
He cursed and kissed her, replacing her hand with his.
Thank God. She’d never needed anything as badly as she’d needed his touch.
And now she had it, was burning up with it—his hand on her breast, his mouth tracking across her skin to slip around one nipple, his smalls the most insignificant barrier between them.
When she wanted none.
Calling up her heat was easy with him stirring the coals of her body into leaping life, and she used one finger to hook into the waist of his smalls. The smell of singed linen surrounded them as she tugged and burned until she’d split his smalls from top to bottom. They fell off him.
He pulled back, his gaze jerking from his now naked body to her. He raised a single brow slowly. “You could have simply asked.”
“Not as fun.”
“Vixen.” He pressed the entire length of his body into her, kissing her hard, rolling them both so she laid atop him. She sat up, exploring the contours of his chest and taut belly. Chiseled and lovely, panting and powerful.
He wouldn’t let her have control for long.
When she was distracted by the bunching of his biceps, he dragged his hands up her thighs to her hips where his thumbs stroked up and down the sides of her belly.
He didn’t stay there long. When she bent over him to taste the swell of his shoulder muscle, he found—with such ease—the bud at her center that pulsed with each of his touches.
He circled, and she tried to concentrate on him.
How many times would she have him like this before their time was done?
Too few. She needed to savor each second, to learn the texture of his skin and hardness of his muscle.
She rubbed a thumb across his lips. And he slipped a finger inside her.
Two. He found a rhythm of teasing he’d perfected well over the last few days, and she rode his fingers with his name on her lips.
Her body rocked, and rocked, and when she put her lips to the pulse at his neck to kiss it, he curled his fingers and she came undone.
Writhing against him.
Finding the pure elation of climax in his arms as he rose up, gathered her close, and flipped them once more. The grass still soft, soft enough to catch her as she floated back down from the heights of pleasure to find him teasing her opening with the head of his shaft.
She couldn’t touch enough of him—his broad back, his chain-tight arms, his rounded arse. She dug her fingernails into his shoulder, tugged at his hair, hooked a leg around his waist. Before, the aftermath of her climax had made her lazy. Now it maddened her.
Because it wasn’t enough.
“More,” she breathed. She felt sweat trickling between her breasts, and when he dipped to lick it up, a gasp caught in her throat, became a moan.
Like lead to gold. He was gold, the sun positioned behind his head a halo.
“Apollo.” She felt like crying. “Beautiful.” She laid a palm on his chest, right above his heart.
She couldn’t see his face with the sun behind him, but when he ducked his head, she just glimpsed his cheeks in the shadows.
A blush rushed red and true across his cheeks, and her heart swelled to see him so stripped bare, not only of linen, but of artifice.
No pretending in the curve of his lips, no hiding in the blue gold of his eyes.
His touch was pure awe, adoration. She felt like a goddess beneath him.
No, nothing so trite.
She felt… fully herself. No pretend, nowhere to hide. Just her and him and the sun, and it was—she laughed as he smiled down at her—to use his own favorite word, fucking magnificent.
“I need you inside me,” she breathed. She’d always wanted so much and never asked, thinking even the smallest of her desires out of reach.
Not with him.
She trailed her fingertips down his shaft and rubbed her thumb in circles around its head.
His muscles seized. “Don’t ever stop.” His jaw tightened. “Hades, you have to stop. I won’t last.”
“No.”
He groaned. “I love it when you say no. What do you want, then?”
“You. Now.” She grasped his shaft and positioned it at her opening.
“Wait a little longer, love.” But he was dragging its head between her folds, teasing her.
“No. No more waiting.”
“Fuck.” He bucked, an almost involuntary jerk, and entered her. Not entirely. His every muscle seemed poised to keep that from happening.
She held her breath, and she held so very still. So did he, his gaze meeting hers, panicked.
“Does it hurt?”
The grass seemed to sway beneath them, small, smooth undulations that soothed her.
It felt… odd. She felt so very full. A little uncomfortable. But it was Apollo, and the look of helplessness on his face, how it careened into flagrant ogling then back again to desperation, made everything about this right.
And then there was the grass, curling across her skin, caressing her.
She cupped his cheek and, softly, brought his lips down to hers as, softly, she rolled her hips into his. A small, sinuous dance that brought them together, that sunk him to the hilt inside her.
He hissed and squeezed the back of her neck and kissed her, kissed her, kissed her.
They rocked together, awkward little retreats and thrusts as they worked together to find a rhythm.
Around them, the wind picked up, lifting his dark hair, cooling her heated skin. The fog was rolling back in off the lake behind them, swallowing them, cocooning them in their little world. That had been them from the beginning—two alone against the world.
Two together against the world.
The world shrank. To lips panting in the fog, to a tongue twirling around her nipple, to his hand cradling her head and caressing her breast, to that conflagration where their bodies joined. The world was also his firm muscle beneath her palms, his hard thighs settled next to her softer ones.
A rhythm found. Harder, faster, faster—
He jerked out of her and spilled on her thighs with a curse. For several heady moments, he was poised above her, muscles hard and jaw slack. Then for several moments after that, he collapsed beside her, only his arms touching along the length of hers as they regained their breath.
Her brain barely functioned. She wasn’t… quite… sure… what to do next.
Apollo’s hand clenched. “What’s this?” He held something up in the fog.
“Your gold. It must have fallen out of my pocket.”
He grunted then called up his heat. No. It was not like calling up heat at all. The heat was already there, ready and willing, and he used it to reshape the lump.
“There.” He handed it to her.
“What’s it supposed to be?”
“My cock and balls. So you can carry them with you—”
She smacked his shoulder. “Apollo!”
“Ow.” But he chuckled.
And her heat was waiting, too, there sizzling beneath the skin.
She brought it up and reshaped the gold well, taking more care than he had done, making sure every curve of it was perfectly smooth.
As she worked, he rolled into her, kissed and tasted her shoulder, lazily teased her body into arousal once more.
When she was done, she rolled the gold across his skin.
“What’s that?” he mumbled. He caught her hand, took the gold. “A marble? A bit too big for that.”
“A sun.”
“I think I win. A sun’s much easier to shape than a co—”
She kissed him, tried to tell him without words that it was more than a sun.
It was what she thought of when she was with him—light and brightness and life.
He was beautiful and well-hidden, like the sun hidden behind the fog in these gently rolling hills.
And she swore the very grass they laid on knew it, curled around them, stroked against him, seeking his warmth as a chill stole through the air.
His hand wandered lower, stopped on her hip. “Damn. Looks like you need cleaning off, princess.”
He didn’t give her time to respond, merely hauled her up and into his arms and strode with her out into the lake. When they were thigh deep, he grinned.
And dropped her.
As she sank beneath the water, her laugh cut in half, she grinned, too.