Page 3 of Apollo

His scoff became a terse compression of lips. The sexy fae shade of his eyes cured to spearmint hard tack.

And yet, deep in that gaze, she caught a glimpse of something else.

Something that sparkled at her. Spoke to her.

Solaced her?

“Hm. Tough as tacks but pretty as a chandelier. So, what’s your name really, Little Monster?”

So much for the solace.

You want a monster? That’s exactly what you’ll get, Gorgeous.

Except somewhere between that threat of her soul and the surface of her face, the torture of her wounds won out. Worse, it was joined by the agony across her spirit, a reminder that death wasn’t a luxury she could afford right now. Not with Genny still in Ito’s clutches, utterly unfindable. Not that Wen hadn’t tried. Oh God, how she’d tried. But the bastard had locked away her sister like the devil stashing coal in hell . . .

Her senses swam. Tears brimmed and flowed, tracking hot stings into every wound they ran into. Black dots swarmed her vision, a perfect match to the desperation that forced words to her lips.

“Help . . . me.”

Impossible words.

A plea she’d have spit out like hemlock just a month ago, even for an entrancing angel like him. But her dignity, destiny, and life were expendable, as long as Genny was safe. She’d planned that certainty down to every conceivable detail . . .

Or so she’d thought.

Even the inconceivable could happen.

“Please . . . help me.”

An inconceivability like this.

Her. Begging. From a man.

Didn’t matter that it was for her life and not just bus money. The acid was just as awful in her throat; the resentment was rancid in her psyche. But she’d set it to the tune of Monster Mash and sang it on repeat for the chance to survive.

And live to find Genny.

So why did her masochistic angel suddenly look like the newly impaled one here?

CHAPTER TWO

This wasn’t good.

Apollo grimaced to keep the syllables from rogueing out and repeating on him.

But was it rogue if it was the truth?

If her pleas continued tearing the air, but he felt like all this blood was his? As if the long gold arrow reared out of his chest, perhaps even joined by a machete in his gut?

Wrong.

No better time to prove it than now.

He clenched his jaw, gritted his teeth, and hauled his arrow out from the space between her ribs. But before he finished, he commanded the steel in his nerves to stay right where it was. If her astounding self-control dissolved any time, this moment would prove that out. Her scream would surely peel the paint from the damn walls.

As things were right now, with the fresh wound in her chest, the woman had paled by three shades and chilled by twenty degrees, though hardly made a sound besides her plaintive pleas. Rasps that obviously hadn’t come easy for her, which doubled their damn impact on every nerve he had yet to lock down.

Not the ideal moment for any of this, fucker.