Page 26 of Apollo

A truth he accepted with the same miserable reluctance as she, if the dents clamping the corners of his mouth were a clear sign.

“Which is why it’s best that we shower separately.”

Somehow she controlled her gaze from flaring like an anime meme. He was thinking of taking her to the shower? And how would she get any other thought or image into her head tonight?

Thank God she was nowhere near a confessional booth now.

Still she managed to stammer, “Y-Yeah. That’s likely for the best, I guess. But . . . Apollo?”

“Hm?”

The way he pushed it out like more of a hint, somewhere between the top of his throat and the roof of his mouth, lent him a boyishly bold air that was new yet somehow so familiar. At least to her. An attitude that tugged at more than her libido, though the shower fantasies certainly still assaulted with hot and heavy force.

Vivid confirmations of the truth she gave him next.

“Just so you know, I’d probably still feel like this, even if you weren’t . . . you know . . . ”

“The god of a dozen things and a crown prince of the Pantheon?” he muttered, as if admitting he’d been raised in a cave and had zits across his ass. “Yeah. Okay. Sure.”

“Hey.” That helped emphasize her determined stomp back over, to trap him against the bar similar to how he’d caged her at the wall. “I mean it. Do you think, after everything we’ve been through tonight, that the labels are all I’ve noticed? The flash is all I’ve cared about?”

Every syllable of it was a risk, about as huge as making this move. Stupid, stupid. Getting close to him again, in more than the obvious ways, was more than she needed. Not with so much of her world up in the air. With Ito holding all her figurative cards. In no way was she in a place to give up her body to this beautiful male, let alone her heart.

But . . .

Still . . .

This.

Him.

Such a gloriously touchable dream. His flesh, so firm and fascinating beneath her hands. His rasps, so rough and responsive. His hisses, so addicting and adoring. The undulations of his hips could be the very drug that banished every assertion she’d just made into the land of oh-fuck-it . . .

But somehow, she dug deep and generated coherent words. This point was too important to shove beneath the rug of dumb lust.

“Apollo?” She slid one hand up the middle of his torso and scratched her fingernails along one of his clavicles. It was silken but hard, yielding but resisting. Damn, he was an exquisitely formed thing. “Listen to me, Glow Worm.”

As she whispered it, his head dropped. He gazed down at her through a backlit curtain of his luxurious hair, his stare a covetous creature in its own right—until his sensual voice upstaged the amazing sight.

“Not until you kiss me again, Monster.”

CHAPTER TEN

Kiss me again.

Damn it, Irowen. Please.

Okay, he’d managed not to actually say it—beg it?—like that, but barely.

Barely.

It hardly mattered, once he concluded the plea with a glottal grind that betrayed every molecule of sensual misery in his cells, anyhow. He could’ve pretended he didn’t sound that bad, except the fast blowout of her pupils gave him no mercy on that front. Dear fuck, her pupils . . . like huge islands in the middle of her aroused, entrancing green irises . . .

Olympus help him, he was going to plead with her, anyway.

The supplication was there, burning higher up his throat, invading his tongue, stunning his mind.

What the hell? This was insanity.