Chapter 20 One Last Time
ONE LAST TIME
Sybil had thought she’d been mistress of Apollo’s many moods.
She’d seen them all, after all—defiant and angry, hopeless and despairing, lusty and aroused, tired and amused.
Even slightly murderous. But she realized now—sitting across from him in the fog-thick garden behind the house—she’d never seen him brooding.
Apollo brooding was a fascinating study.
The lock of hair falling over his forehead, hiding the gleam of one eye.
The hunched shoulders, the gaze that seemed to look years into the future without liking what he saw there.
He tapped one fingernail on the tabletop, his muscles winding up each lift and drop to the slowest rhythm imaginable.
Also, Apollo brooding did fascinating things to her.
She wanted to dive deep beneath his skin, peek between his ribs, and spy on the mutterings of his heart.
She wanted to round the table and climb into his lap, kiss him until the brooding went away.
But she did not simply wish to banish the brood from his brows with a little sensual distraction.
She wanted to know what caused it, to take up arms against that evil and defeat it entirely.
My she was fanciful.
“I’d like to go into town today,” she said in her cheeriest voice. “To speak with an alewife.”
He grunted.
“Mrs. Collins was telling me about her. She may be using a combination of alchemy and potions to brew her beer.”
No response.
“I thought I might strip down and bathe naked in a barrel of the stuff.”
He stared off into the fog. It had been thick without relief for days and seemed to grow more impenetrable by the minute.
“Apollo! What’s wrong?” She reached across the delicate wrought iron table, between the tea things, but could not quite reach him.
He shifted his jaw side to side. “The damned fog hasn’t lifted for more than two hours straight. My babies will die if this keeps up.”
“Your plants will not die. Just go stand near them for a minute or two, and they’ll be ecstatic.”
His cheeks pulled in as his chest rose, and he seemed to stall there, frozen. She’d not thought he could go farther away from her. But he had.
“Are you thinking about Stone? About London?” Since their success in the forge, the specter of the future had hung over them. They could return now.
But now… she didn’t want to.
He stood and wandered so far from the table, she could see only the dark outline of his body in the fog. His voice drifted to her, flinty, cold, sharp. “You won’t tell Stone, though, will you?”
“I’m still thinking about what to do.” She twisted her fingers together in her lap.
She wanted to defeat Stone at his own game.
She didn’t want to return to London, but she wanted the choice, to return eventually because it was safe for her to do so.
But this device… it could change so much. And if the wrong person possessed it…
Stone was the wrong person. Unequivocally.
“You are being na?ve, Sybil,” Apollo said. “If you do not give the device to Stone, he’ll come for you again.”
“I know.”
“You’ll never be safe.”
“I am.”
“You’re not!” He appeared out of the fog, eyes wild, muscles rigid.
Sybil stood to meet him, grasped his wrists. “I am safe right now. No need to worry.”
Did he worry about her? His twitching jaw and racing pulse suggested he felt… something for her.
Her own pulse kicked up its pace, and she released his wrists. She could not look at him. “For now, I am safe. And when we return to London, Temple—”
“Damn Temple. He thinks he can control everyone around him, but he can’t control Stone.
Stone owns the Guild, owns every damned invention housed in the ground beneath the museum.
He has hundreds, thousands of alchemists ready to do as he says.
He has an army. What does your brother have?
A wife, a little queen who’s no more than a girl with a transcendent talent that’s little more than a party trick. ”
Sybil’s pulse took another upward tick, anger urging it higher. Another sip of her beer couldn’t cool her, so she rose. “I’ll meet with Mrs. Morrison another time.” And she swept for the door.
He didn’t let her have more than two feet of distance between them. As she stepped out into the street, he was right behind her, curving over her, hissing in her ear.
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“I am. That is why I’m taking my time, considering every possibility. We could just pretend we know nothing about the device, or that we never got it working.”
“He won’t believe that, even if everyone else does. You’ll be trapped in the dungeon as soon as you set foot in London. I can’t spend every waking hour keeping you alive and free.”
“I did not ask you to.”
“Sybil.” Her name softer than she’d ever heard it before, and his hand on her neck even softer than that. So much in that small embrace.
Or there was nothing in it at all. For him.
When he dropped a small kiss, warmed by his exhalation on the curve of her neck, she almost cried.
“Ah! There you two are!”
They heard Mrs. Collins through the fog before they saw her, and they jumped apart. When the housekeeper finally appeared, she held a letter aloft like a sword, then held it out to Sybil.
“It’s for you. You’ll be wanting to pen a reply, no doubt, so I’ll leave you to it.” Mrs. Collins wouldn’t quite look either of them in the eye as she darted back inside.
Holy Hestia… she’d seen.
She’d seen the kiss, and chaste though it had been, there’d been nothing brotherly about it.
“Mrs. Collins!” Sybil stepped after her.
But Apollo caught her wrist, chained her in place. “Later. If you corner her now, you’ll just be nervous and give the game away. The letter first.”
She broke the wax seal and unfolded the paper and read.
And then her heart stopped.
She dropped the paper as if it were a spider, backed away from it as if it were trying to bite her.
“What is it?” Apollo knelt and picked it up, read. “Shit.” He pulled her inside and up the stairs, then locked them in her bedchamber. “Your brother is on his way here.”
She nodded and dropped onto the edge of her bed.
“He has news he does not trust to mail.” Apollo folded the paper and set it on a nearby desk. “We only have a few days at most before he arrives.”
She fell backward on the mattress, her spine lost and useless.
“I have to leave,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Right now.”
“Yes.”
The mattress dipped, and she looked toward the end of it. He had one knee on it, and was adding the other, crawling over her.
“I have to leave.” His gaze was roaming over her face as if he were gathering up every inch of her, as if it might disappear if he looked away.
“I know.”
His hands in her hair, his forehead resting against hers, his eyes squeezed shut. Something was coiled within him, mercilessly tight. Then he kissed her. And in the kiss—hot and aching—he set three words he didn’t have to say out loud for her to hear.
One last time.
Yes, one last time of their tongues tangling. One last time reveling in the long strength of his back beneath her fingertips. One last foray into the jungle of his thick hair. One last good grind against the muscle of his thigh.
A sigh as he did away with her bodice.
A moan as he ripped off her skirts.
Fumbling and frantic, she ripped off his clothes.
And then they were naked and bare before one another.
One last time.
Each moment lasted forever.
Each moment was too short.
She lay beneath him, letting him trace the heat of the sun across every inch of her skin with tongue and palm.
She straddled him to remember the indentations and swells that crafted the muscles of his torso.
She tasted the long length of his shaft, working him into a sweat with her tongue and lips and teeth.
She knew when he’d had enough because his muscles rippled and he sat partway up, gripping the hair at her nape, tugging her chin into the air.
He scooted out from under her, toward the headboard where he propped himself, dragging her along.
She came willingly, on eager hands and knees, and straddled his waist, lowered herself on top of him, taking his shaft fully into her as she cupped his jaw and kissed him, kissed him, kissed him.
She needed as many last kisses as she could gather up.
And he seemed to need them, too. He whispered in her ear hot endearments without end. Princess, goddess, beauty, divine little thing, temptress.
My sun.
My lovely.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
And so busy was she gathering them up like jewels scattered carelessly, she could not give him words of her own.
Don’t leave.
Don’t leave.
Please. Do not leave.
She dragged her lips down his neck, and that seemed to hit him like a runaway horse.
His hips bucked, his muscles flexed, and he flipped them both, pressed her into the mattress and thrust hard and deep inside her.
No more words. The silence grew with the pleasure.
Each stroke and touch, the melody of breath and bodies, its own language; a necessary one when they could not say the only words that Sybil wanted to hear.
I’ll be back.
Not over.
Impossible. This thing between them had always only been temporary, a comet scorching across the sky.
When her climax hit her like a fallen star and she cried his name, he kissed her to silence it. He came quickly after that, a frenzy of thrusting then hard release, kissing her like he could sip life from her lips.
He remained inside her, holding her close as their hearts raced together, calmed together, too. This would be the last night he held her. It wouldn’t last forever.
And she wished she didn’t want it to.