Chapter 18 Honey
HONEY
Sybil was becoming used to the sound of Apollo talking to plants. And to the sight of him doing it shirtless.
He cooed at a pink flower of some sort and started stripping right as Mrs. Collins brought them tea in the conservatory. There went the jacket. There the cravat.
The housekeeper looked at Sybil with a silent plea for her to tame her brother, but Sybil merely shrugged and said, “Alchemists care little for propriety in this way. Heat work cannot be done in flammable garments, after all.”
Apollo smirked. Ah, and there went his waistcoat.
The housekeeper said, “You’re not in the forge.” Oh yes, Sybil heard the distaste rolling off that last word. She’d long been appalled at what they’d done to the back parlor. She shuffled off with a sniff.
Sybil picked up the prototype from where it rested among the tea things, notebooks, and pencils on the table.
It matched the sketches perfectly—round tubing with four bulbous chambers, one with an opening in the top.
It was the second she’d made. The first had been exactly to the notebook’s vague specifications.
It sat in the forge still, in the center of the worktable.
This one was her own updated design, sleeker and still useless.
“All I can think is that you put the lead in the open chamber. But then what?” She held it up to the sun filtering through the glass ceiling.
“Transfiguration.” Apollo was behind her, rustling about in his plants. “A common enough concept for you, isn’t it darling.” He was speaking to a plant.
She’d come to recognize that particular tone of voice, as if the long fronds and bright blooms were a beloved lapdog instead of a fern or a daisy. “What do you mean?”
He ran a careful caress along a long leaf, and the plant—whatever it was—shivered like a lover.
Holy Hestia, he’d ruined her. He’d left her bed before daylight that morning, and she had already begun to crave his attentions, so much so she imagined a plant shivering—like she always did—from his touch.
He straightened and poured them both tea, an amazing gesture. Surely before the last year, he’d never poured tea in his life.
“What I mean,” he said, “is that plants begin as one thing—a hard seed. But under the right conditions—rich soil, adequate water”—he reached a palm toward the ceiling and closed his eyes in the sunlight—“plenty of sun. They transform.”
He glowed. He always did in the sun, that warm skin of his gulping up all the light and giving it back out again. The plants seemed to lean toward his brightness, to need it.
Or was that her?
He tipped her chin up, licked his lips in a way that made her heart fall to her feet and bounce back up. “From unassuming seed to stunning creature. Under the right conditions.” He lowered.
And his words hit her in the head like a hammer.
She ducked away from his kiss, grasping the prototype and pacing with it across the small room.
“The right conditions! That’s what we need.
But what are they? Is there a certain metal we should be using to make the device?
A certain heat it should be fired at? A certain amount of lead to load into the chamber? ”
He wandered off with a sigh as she put her questions to the page. When done, she stretched her lower back and sipped from the tea he’d poured for her.
A knock on the door preceded Mrs. Collins, who carried a small jar and a bottle. “Here’s the honey you asked for. And the vinegar.” She handed both to Apollo. “You seem awful fond of the flavors of late.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t use them all up.”
She left, and Apollo pushed various bits and bobs scattered across the tea table out of his way, searching for something. “Ah! There.” He pulled a small copper bowl out from under a notebook. It held a lemon and one long green stem from Governor Grimm.
“What’s this?” Sybil asked.
“You’ve run out of the potion I gave you, yes?”
Blood rushed to her cheeks. Baring her body to his gaze and touch was easier than talking about the potion he’d given her after their first encounter. Corked in a little brown bottle, it would, he’d said, keep her from conceiving.
“I have.” She peered into the bowl. “And these are the… ingredients?”
He nodded and pulled a knife from his pocket, one she’d helped him forge a few days ago with an elegant handle and sharp blade. He used it to cut the lemon open, then squeezed its juice into the bowl.
“Where did you find a lemon?”
“On a tree.” His tone dry as sand.
She elbowed his ribs.
With a grin, he said, “There was a lemon tree in this very room. I thought it was dead, but once I started tending everything in here, it perked up.”
“You have a talent for horticulture.”
He shrugged, squeezing the aloe leaf until it oozed.
His fingers—long and lithe and sure… He knew well how to wield them.
A tingle crept across her skin, and arousal bloomed low in her belly.
A dribble of vinegar, a drop of honey—all into the bowl, except for a little drop of honey that now rested on his knuckle somehow.
He wiped his cheek, and it transferred, the smallest, slickest slash across his cheekbone.
He produced a whisk from… somewhere, and—
He froze, those strong hands pausing just above the bowl. Then he dropped the whisk and lifted his gaze to her. “You’re staring awfully hard, princess. Want me to teach you how it’s done? You can make it yourself, then.”
She shook her head, unable to look away from the swipe of honey across his cheek. Her breasts felt hot and tight, and when he pressed the pad of his thumb into her lower lip, pulled it out from between her teeth, she released a sigh built of sun and need.
“Your cheeks are pink as roses,” he said.
“A-are they?” She placed the back of her hand on one.
He swept it away, replaced it with his palm. “Mm. Red as a little berry. Delicious enough to eat.”
Yes. “Eat.” She took his jaw in her hands and urged downward, closer, and with a spark of curiosity in his eye, he obliged. She could see the stubble on his chin, the tiny quirk upward on one side of his mouth, the lines that radiated out from the corners of his eyes.
And that bit of honey.
She popped up on tiptoe and placed a chaste kiss just over it. Then, on a soft inhalation, darted her tongue out to taste it.
He caught her wrists. “Sybil.” Her name a raspy growl.
“Yes?” She put as much honey into the single word as possible.
“I’m going to lie you down and do that to you.”
“Do what?” Each breath stuttered.
“You do love to play the innocent. But I know better.” He walked her backward step by step, kiss by kiss, through the wide leaves and flexible branches until they found a wall in a jungle, steam rising around them.
Until her back hit a wall.
A resting place for lovely torments best unseen.
He skimmed his lips along her cheek, her jaw, her neck, not quite touching, his gaze as foggy as the early morning atmosphere.
Pressing one palm into the wall just above her head, he tugged the sleeve of her gown down her shoulder with his teeth.
He lifted his other hand—wicked hand that it had not touched her yet—and—
Hestia.
He held the honey pot.
Nuzzling the valley between her breasts and breathing hard, he said, “Reveal yourself.”
Unable to look away from the thick drop of golden sugar sliding over the edge of the pot, Sybil twisted her arms behind her to loosen her gown.
She shrugged one shoulder then the other out of her sleeves, shimmying the fabric down until it dropped below her breasts and caught at her slightly bent elbows.
She worked the laces of her corset then.
And he watched with hungry eyes.
He dragged his thumb up and down the honey jar, the tip of it flirting with the sticky trail, and when her corset gaped, he said, “Stop.”
She paused, fingers frozen at the laces. Then she dropped her arms, and he bent over her. His teeth scraped her skin as he took the fine lawn of her chemise between them. He tugged, and the feel of the fabric, the slide of his teeth, the tease of his lips—unbearably wonderful.
She arched. She moaned. She welcomed the blast of warm air across her skin. As her nipples pebbled, she knew what to expect—his mouth, his tongue, her pleasure.
She got nothing. Nothing but cold air and disappointment. He wasn’t even looking at her.
His gaze had shifted to the honey. He slipped a finger inside the jar, lifted it, watched the slow drizzle of honey downward. He slipped his finger into his mouth as his gaze shifted back to her.
“Sweet,” he said, “but you’re sweeter.”
Her knees buckled. Thank Hestia for the wall holding her up.
“Would you like a taste?” He dipped his finger back into the jar, and when she barely managed a nod, he slipped his finger into her mouth.
She met it with a tentative tongue, then a greedy one, and her attempts to swallow down every last drop of the honey made his eyes burst from blue to gold. There was an audible pop as he removed his finger from between her lips, and his jaw ticked.
He seemed intent on devouring her as she had the honey. But he did not move to do so.
Instead, he carefully curved a calculated half grin into one cheek and lifted the jar. “Look up. All the way up. And tell me what you see through the glass.”
She swallowed, tipping her head back where it rested against the wall.
Through the miraculously fertile branches and wide leaves of Apollo’s resurrected garden, through the spotless glass, she saw the sky—blue as Apollo’s eyes and not quite as gorgeous.
No glittering gold there to tempt a sensible woman to disastrous ends.
He moved before her, raising an arm, and she tried to look at him, but his hand at her jaw stopped her. So did a vine that had crawled across her throat, holding her soft but steady, just as he did.
“Look up, Sybil. And tell me.”
Another swallow as she obeyed. Between his hand and the ivy, she had no choice.