Page 77 of Apollo

Right hand, lyre string.

Left hand, brave dad waistband.

Center brain, it’s all okay on repeat.

“Sore wa nan desuka?” To his credit, Jun handled the pale strand as if it were spun from gold instead of sheep gut. “What is it? Piece of a violin?”

“A lyre.” Irowen’s interjection was fast—and yes, probably furious too—if he correctly assessed her husky undertone. “His lyre.” She whisked her sights up, hurling up all the green glass in her glare at him. “Apollo? What are you . . . ”

The cuts from those shards were the sweetest, and roughest, torture for his resolve. Every jade-colored jab affirmed what he already knew: the woman would be just as stirred if he proved his feelings with an orgasm for the ages, a bouquet of flowers, and a profession of feelings from the corners of his heart, instead of this. Still, he stepped back from the young man holding one of his highest treasures and didn’t regret a single step of the action.

Because she’d be happy with climaxes and roses . . . but he wouldn’t.

And now it was time for a new spin in the game.

Left hand, Irowen’s waist.

Right hand, Irowen’s cheek.

Irowen. His precocious, precious, perfect Irowen.

“Let me do this for them, Monster,” he whispered with worshipping notes, lightly bussing the tip of her still-scrunched nose. “I mean, it’s still not as good as handing them some portable solar flares—”

“You’d be able to do that?” She bugged her gaze.

“No. I can’t even do that for Zeus.” He dipped his head again, going for her lips with his instead. “But I’ll train them up on what it can do, as well as how they can access the Underworld place for limited stays if they really need to lay low.”

“Wait.” Eugenia stepped over, interrupting them with her stunned croak. “Underworld place?” She added a full head tilt, brandy-colored curls spilling into her wide-eyed gawk. “You . . . you’re . . . really that Apollo? Of that Olympus? That fire tunnel transporter wasn’t some new Japanese train prototype?”

Irowen burst with a knowing snicker. “Damn, why didn’t I think of that one?”

Apollo strung out a teasing growl. “Like I’d let you believe it.”

Her expression mellowed. The glass in her gaze, now melting from fires of gooey adoration, was also fresh quicksand for his heart.

Shit. He was so doomed.

“What I don’t believe is this part,” his darling Dagahra admitted. “The string . . . Apollo . . . you were so obsessed with getting it back.”

He speared her with a purposeful stare. “Now I’m more obsessed with other things.”

As soon as a flush suffused her cheek, if only for seconds, he chalked the emotional exposure as worth it. But too quickly, stress conquered her features again.

He tamped his first instinct of a reaction, to simply kiss away her worries, and instead murmured, “Hey.” Then tugged her face back up with a strict yet caressing finger. “I’m going to put as much of a cloak on the string as I can. Ito and cocksuckers like him won’t know the kids have it.”

A fresh flare claimed her gaze. “You can do that?”

“Of course. Now, it also means some powers won’t be as potent. This is just going to be a stepstool for them. The two of them have to climb the rest of the mountain for themselves. But we’ll never be far away, right?”

Irowen’s breath hitched to the point he heard and felt it. But as if needing to ensure he got the point, she raised a hand and mirrored his move, flowing her hand along his jaw. Her touch progressed in tentative spurts, just like the anxious inches of her stare into his own.

“You know I never enjoy being far from my sister, Your Godship,” she uttered. “But you’ve already done so much, and you’re not obligated to—”

This time, he did kiss her into silence: openly, boldly, and damn near brutally. “Oh, my sweet Godzilla,” he rasped against her lips. “I’m very fucking obligated.”

His chest thrummed and his soul soared when she let him into her mouth with a willing moan. As he drank from her warmth and passion, savoring every drop of her cherry and rose essence, it occurred that his obligation had already started—and nothing, in the long years of his existence, had made him happier.

Genny’s and Jun’s wild applause, along with laughing crows and singing seagulls, dragged his mind back to the present and his mouth away from his woman. He was about to swear about the intrusions, but a glimpse of liquid diamonds in Irowen’s wide, wonderful greens dissolved his bitter thoughts.