28

Iruined my beautiful satin slippers sprinting through the gardens with the magic-flecked mist dampening the gauzy layers of my gown and the sharp sting of the evening chill scraping over my exposed arms and collarbone.

Apollo whirled around the moment he heard the shuffling of my steps on the neat grass of the maze. A look of genuine surprise braced his face. And I slapped it right off of him.

He staggered, one hand holding his reddened cheek, the other grasping the hedge behind him. "What the—"

"You had no right to tell Ryker that I'm his! You do not decide for me, Apollo Zayra, do you hear me?"

"Nepheli—"

I slapped him again. My palm was already tingling from the first collision, but gods did he deserve it!

Apollo groaned, "Fuck! How are you so strong?"

I shoved at his chest with my fists, pushing him back against the hedge. "What do you want from me, huh? You kiss me, and then you tell me to forget that it happened, and then you have the audacity to act jealous every time a man breathes near me! You have no right! You hear me? No right!"

I went for a punch, but he was better prepared this time and caught my wrist in midair. So I tried to kick him instead.

"For fuck's sake, Nepheli," he bristled, and by the hold he'd secured on my wrist, he spun me around to pin me against the same leafy spot he'd just been. "Just give me a second to—"

"I hate you. I should hate you. You're the most selfish, impulsive, arrogant man I've ever met. I should be repulsed by you." I writhed, trying to break free. But the more I fought, the more his body pressed up against mine, and the more I didn't want him to let go, the struggle dwindling to a half-hearted, please-don't-stop-this kind of wrestle.

He angled his head to the side and loosened a breath I ended up inhaling. "But?"

"I just hate you. There's no but."

"Yes, there is," he panted, licking his bottom lip. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have followed me out here."

"Is this a game to you?" I snarled. "Are you testing me?"

"I was trying to make it easier for you," he growled.

"Don't you mean easier for you?"

The vein in his forehead pulsed. "You honestly think it was easy walking out of that room?"

"Then why did you leave?"

"Because of the way you talked about him the other night!" he exploded. He looked wild and undone—and a little broken. "I was trying to do the right thing for once and not let this ridiculous passion between us get in the way of you and the man you love."

"Love? I do not love Ryker. And you and I share no passion," I hissed.

He loomed closer, crowding me, closing me in his body until I began shaking. The want washing over me like a tide.

"Then what would you call this?" he demanded.

"A continuous lapse of sanity."

His fists tightened around my wrists. He leaned forward and carved his hips into mine. "Is there a but, Nepheli?"

Looking at him became almost unbearable. He was everywhere and in everything. In my caving chest, in my burning skin, in the next words that left my mouth without permission, "But then you look at me. How dare you look at me?"

He smiled. A slow, lazy curve of his mouth. "I'm sorry, darling. My eyes don't obey me anymore."

"You're lucky," I whispered. "Nothing in my body obeys me anymore."

Carefully, his hands left my wrists and glided downward to cup the sides of my face. I wanted to collapse on his shoulder. I wanted him to hold me really, really tight and tell me that it was all going to be okay. That it didn't matter he was heartless. He would find different ways to care for me. That my heart, this pounding, fragile thing dangling so precariously between our bodies right now, was enough for the both of us.

"Kiss me," I said. It sounded impulsive, a request plagued by the heat of passion, but it was as imperative as my next inhale.

A shiver went through him. I raised my hand and cupped his cheek, waiting, wanting, asking. He closed his eyes and leaned into my touch for a long, rending moment. When he opened them again, they were dark like onyx and hard with resolution. "I have to let you go, Nepheli. I don't want to hurt you. And I will hurt you. Eventually. Inevitably. That's what I do. That's what I did to myself. I used to think heartbreak was a personal thing. An inward agony. But it's not. It's the people you hurt afterward, when you're raw and unhealed, who suffer the most. So don't ask me to kiss you. Do the wise thing and ask me to let you go."

But I could not let him go. I tried to remove my hands from his face and only ended up gliding them over the hard plane of his chest. I tried to reason with myself, remember that I had protected my heart from the world my whole life. How could I put it in danger so carelessly now?

Easily, the bold, star-made girl inside me argued. So very easily.

"Kiss me."

Apollo shook his head, yet his body aligned with mine, his hands slipping down to the lowest part of my waist. "Ask me to get my hands off of you."

"Kiss me."

"Tell me you never want to see my face again."

"Kiss—"

"Nepheli!" he begged, shoving off to knock a fist against his empty chest. "Darling, I'm heartless. I'm as volatile as the wind. I'm a danger to your sanity. One moment I'm a decent man, and the next I act in ways I don't want and say things that I don't mean, and I have absolutely no control over myself when I'm around you—"

"Do you want me?" I demanded, stepping forward.

He stepped back. "Aren't you listening to me? I'm bad for you."

I took another step. Stomach flipping. Ears ringing. Heart throbbing. "Do. You. Want. Me?"

He only stared at me, wild-eyed and breathing hard. His silence was an axe to the chest. It struck me right in the heart.

Not bearing it anymore, I went to leave.

He caught my wrist. "Like a madman," he gasped. "I want you like a man possessed. I need you like the air I breathe. My head is so full of you, you'd have to kill me to grant me some peace, and I cannot be killed, damn it! You think you'll leave Thaloria, and I'll be okay? That I'll be rid of you? There is not enough distance you can put between us to repair the damage you have done to me. You are all I want and everything I cannot have."

Desperately, my body collided with his, and our foreheads found each other. "Kiss me," I whispered. "Kiss me until you have a heart again."

I rose to my toes and brought my mouth to his, and before I knew it, he was kissing me back a million times harder, as if the kiss were an object I threw in the air and he caught mid-fall.

My lips parted on a ragged breath, and his tongue swept into my mouth, tasting me like it was the first time, the very last time. And I liked him like this. I wanted him to feel for me. Yield for me. I wanted to burrow into his body and become the heart he was missing. To beat inside him. To bleed. To own. To know that he could not stay alive without me.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my whole body to his, needing the friction, the relief of his intimacy. My knees weakened and my breasts ached. I felt feverish and drunk. I felt like I was going to start screaming if he didn't put his hands on me right now.

And just as I was about to beg him for a touch, his hands raced to the slope of my back and settled on the curve of my backside. He squeezed me over the layers of organza and chiffon, nudging my pelvis forward.

I moaned into his mouth and he left a low, satisfied sound in mine. "You like that, darling?"

"I like everything you do," I sighed, my head dropping back in ecstasy.

He landed his mouth on my exposed throat and kissed and bit and licked on my skin until starlight burned in my veins. "Even the terrible things?"

"Especially the terrible things," I exhaled.

He traced a path back to my mouth, threaded his tongue between my lips, and kissed me so deeply that, for a moment, I felt possessed by him. I slipped a hand between our bodies, wondering if he felt the same. And, gods, he did. He was so hard that I couldn't fully grasp him over the taut fabric of his trousers and only managed a few strokes with the pad of my palm.

With a rough growl, he removed my hand from him and pinned it over my head. "Please don't make me come in my pants like a fourteen-year-old."

"Let's go to your room, then," I said, emboldened by need. "And you can come on me if you'd rather."

"Nepheli," he groaned, his voice strained. "Don't tell me such things."

"Why not?"

"You'll kill me."

"You're undead."

He shook his head. "I'm more alive than ever."

My heart leaped from me, but I was not alarmed by its escape. I knew exactly where it went.

I sneaked my arms around his neck and curled my fingers into his hair to finally experience their softness. He took my jaw in his hand and held my face a mere breath from his, looking both determined and surrendered to me. "My room is in the east wing, but we can cut through the maze."

My eyes darted to the lightless, intricate path behind him. "What if we get lost?"

"Darling," he said darkly. "That's the point."