29

We didn't get lost. However, Apollo did a marvelous job trying to get us lost, shoving me into dark corners every chance he got, kissing me until I was dizzy, whispering things in my ear that made even the stars above us blush, and touching me until every nerve ending in my body was delirious for some relief.

We tottered out of the maze, breathless and drunk on each other, crossed the short cobbled path that followed afterward, sprinted down glinting hallways and climbed winding staircases, passed through a jungle of damask and gilt, and finally, finally reached it. His star-dazed bedchamber.

A sprawling space, full of dark furniture, midnight-blue walls, and a black stone hearth crackling in the corner. Above, a sky of constellations: countless silver stars twinkling on a depthless ceiling. The magic of the animation was so vivid that as it expanded towards the floor-to-ceiling window, it seemed to connect the sky of the room with the sky outside. The window overlooked the city, the buildings glimmering like a hive of fireflies in the faraway distance. You could see the Dragonfly from here too, a haunting dark diorama sprawled amid the rolling mountains and speckled with a golden mist. But the window's purpose wasn't to enjoy the view, no matter how breathtaking it was. No, this window was for stargazing. A massive golden telescope was positioned on a wooden pedestal before it, pointing at the always-busy night sky.

My exhale sounded harsh in the silence of the room. "This is absolutely incredible."

Apollo smirked only the way he could do it so recklessly. "I agree," he said, looking at me very intently.

I licked my lips. They were swollen and a little numb from our kisses, yet all I wanted was for him to kiss me again. "I really like your room."

He started undoing his cape with his dark eyes pinned on me. The garment dropped to the floor with a soft thud, and he continued loosening the collar of his shirt, just enough to torment me with a sliver of smooth, bronze skin. "I really like you in my room."

I bit into the inside of my cheek, feeling a little awkward and jittery now that we were all alone here. Everything became very real, very fast, and I was trying my best to register the moment, fragment by fragment, frame by frame. I wanted it etched in my brain forever. How could anything feel more exhilarating and frightening than watching yourself get close to someone like this?

"You know, for someone who is always mocking my books, you've got plenty yourself in here," I hoarsely said, gesturing with a tremulous hand to the leather-bound books piled atop his window-lit desk. It was a quaint little thing, full of ornate stationary, frivolous trinkets, and mysterious artifacts. I imagined him sitting there—billowy shirt, messy hair, brows furled in concentration. Different from the Apollo I'd come to know, but one I yearned to learn just the same.

"I wasn't mocking you," he said. "I was just trying to make you hate me."

"Technically, it worked," I teased.

Grey eyes glittered with amusement. "How misfortunate to have failed on a technicality."

I strolled over to the small bookcase next to the desk and traced the spines of his books with my fingertips, craving to learn his tastes.

He leaned against a wall in that lazy, effortless way of his and watched me. I felt him watch me even as I faced the bookcase completely.

"Turn around and look at me," he said.

A wave of liquid tension burrowed between my shoulder blades.

"Darling, don't make me ask twice."

Shakily, breathlessly, I turned.

His heated eyes took a dive into my body before snapping back on my face. He looked at me like I was his. Like there was not a part of me that wasn't meant for him. "If this is our last night together, I don't want to waste a second not looking at you."

I allowed myself a moment to consider, because that was what sensible people did. But my heart already knew. And for once, I wanted to listen to it. "I'll have to write to my parents."

"About what?" he asked, holding back his breath.

I looked straight at him, confident in my decision. "About selling the Shop."

Impossible things braced his face. Relief, happiness, fear, doubt, longing. Things a heartless man shouldn't be able to experience at all. "Nepheli," he sighed, my name soft on his lips like a prayer. "You don't have to sell it. I know how much you love the Shop."

I did love the Shop. I would always, always love the Shop. And because I loved it, I couldn't bear to watch it crumble into oblivion anymore. I knew it needed a new story, a new breath. The Shop deserved someone who would give their whole heart to it. Someone who would be able to reintroduce the element of curiosity to Elora. It wasn't an impossible job. It just wasn't the job for me.

"The Shop doesn't need me anymore," I said, the admission as painful as a dagger but, at the same time, deeply liberating. "But someone else might need the Shop."

Apollo bore into me. "And what do you need, Nepheli?"

I stopped my strolling and leaned against one of the thin columns of his four-poster bed. "Magic. Adventure. Your hands on me."

In a heart-skip, he reached me, his hands on my hips, spinning me around. My back collided with his chest, and his hardness pressed into my backside.

I untethered, melted, crumbled in his arms.

He took two fistfuls of my dress. "Can I take this off you, darling? I really need to touch you now."

"Yes, please," I breathed.

I felt him working through the laces, the bodice loosening until the gown peeled off my body and pooled around my ankles, leaving me only in my corset and my frail, white camisole.

He lowered his mouth on my shoulder to kiss a slow, wet path to my neck. "Are you sure about this?" he murmured against my skin.

Flushed and delirious with need, I veered around to face him. "Do you need me to show you how much I want this, Apollo?" I rasped, taking his shirt in my hands to guide it up his chest. He raised his arms for me, and the garment flew to the floor next to my dress. He stepped out of his shoes, and I stepped out of mine, each movement easy and fluid like a dance.

"I'm talking about this, Nepheli." He groaned a little as I traced the hard muscles of his chest with my fingertips, entranced by each chiseled line and contour. "I'm talking about us."

My hands paused. I met his eyes. "I know it won't be easy. I know who you are."

Tenderly, he brushed the curls off my forehead. "Who am I, darling?"

I grinned. "A dangerous, beautiful, selfish man."

Suddenly, he seized my waist, lifted me up, and tossed me on the bed, making me gasp at the abrupt collision with the silk sheet.

"You're right," he said, climbing on top of me. His hands framed my face as his knee parted my legs. I stopped breathing. "I am a very selfish man. I do not care about love. I really don't. But I do care about devotion." He took my face in his hand and brought his mouth a breath away from mine. "So tell me, Nepheli, my darling, are these lips mine to kiss?"

"Yes," I panted.

He kissed me, his tongue as possessive in my mouth as his hands were on my body. With a hard tug on the plunging neckline of my corset, he exposed my breasts to the warm room. My head fell back into the bed with a moan as he brought his mouth over one while squeezing in his rough hand the other, his tongue and thump teasing my nipples until I was arching desperately into him for more.

"How about these, Nepheli?" he finally asked, staring up at me with drowsy, dark eyes. "Are these mine?"

I muttered something incoherent, and as punishment, he nipped at my nipple, dragging a whimper out of me. He soothed the sting with his tongue, tracing a few gentle circles before laying it flat on the tender spot. "I didn't hear you, darling. Say it loud and clear for me."

"Yes," I gasped. "Yours."

His hands traveled to the hem of my camisole. He pushed it up to my hipbones and put one hand on each of my knees to pry them further open. My undergarment was embarrassingly wet, and he made a low, satisfied sound as he touched me over it with the very tips of his fingers before pulling it aside and pressing down with his whole palm. He plunged a finger inside me, hard and fast, and white spots flecked my vision. "And this, Nepheli?" he demanded, breathless this time. "Is this mine too?"

"Yes."

Suddenly, he closed my waist in his hands and dragged me into the middle of the bed. He stood to work himself off his trousers but not his undershorts. And this piece of linen I knew was going to be my undoing because it did absolutely nothing to cover him, and the mere sight of his hardness through the fabric made my whole body pulse with anticipation.

"And you, Apollo?" I asked as he climbed back on the bed and came to hover over me. "Are you mine?"

"Body and soul," he promised. "And if I had a heart, have no doubt, my darling, it would have been yours too."

A wave of dreaminess washed over me—a sense of floating above the clouds. In a feverish haze, I passed my fingers over his body. His refined collarbone. His sculpted chest. His chiseled abdomen. His pronounced hipbones. I hesitated at the waistband of his shorts, then looked up, directly at him. His eyes were closed in pleasure, and his lips parted on a shallow breath. I let my hand slip in and wrapped my fist around him. "Prove it," I said.

Without warning, he flipped me onto my stomach, and I gasped against the pillow. He started tugging at the laces of my corset, and with each pull and each unraveling ribbon, he unraveled me too. The garments were peeled off my body carefully, in outspoken devotion. But when I was left utterly bare with his chest pressed against my back and his mouth kissing on my shoulder, he was not so reverent anymore. He was wild and starving, and did not know what to taste first.

I realized then that need, although not lovely, was a kind of devotion too.

He turned me over again, and I watched him marvel at the sight of my naked body. His eyes touched me everywhere. I kept as still as I could, feeling surrendered to him. As if to say, This is me. This is how I was made. This is what is now yours.

"You're so beautiful," he sighed, smoothing back some curls from my face. "Looking at you always makes me want to wish for impossible things. I want to bestow my most unutterable hopes on you."

I could not speak. I was aflame, warmth rushing through my body in waves of emotion and hope and magic. And then, I didn't want to speak at all because he gripped my thighs, brushed them wide open, and buried his face between them.

My back arched, my fingers found purchase on his shoulders and my mouth fell open to a sound I could not push out of me.

Finally, I understood why the gods wanted to be worshiped and not loved. It was an awing, flawed, freeing thing to be worshiped so indelicately. To be tasted like water and breathed in like air. To be the grace someone else was starving for. That was how he made me feel. Like something he would look for between the clouds and secretly pray on.

His tongue stroked and flicked and soothed. His fingers traced and plunged and curled until I was trembling, almost hurting from the pressure. Tightness built in my lower abdomen, and overwhelmed by the sensation, my body tugged up and away from him. With a low, almost inhuman grunt, he yanked me back down, wrapping a hand around my thigh to lock me against his face.

"Apollo!" I cried.

He didn't stop. He went harder instead, and my orgasm came like a tide pulled by the moon. Violent and overflowing.

I was soaring and drifting off in some murky dreamscape, in awe that my body could feel like that.

"Nepheli," I heard him call, but in my euphoria, I could hardly breathe, let alone answer. "Nepheli, darling, you're glowing."

My eyes fluttered open.

I was glowing. My whole body was silvery and sparkling, the light twinkling off my skin like sunbeams on a metal surface.

I looked at him, gaping in shock.

"I think your star likes my mouth," Apollo teased, still panting a little, a halo of sweat gleaming along his forehead.

I laughed, giddy with happiness. "Apollo, I'm magic!"

He tilted down and kissed my temple. "Yes, you are, darling."

"Do you suppose it knows that I'm staying in the North, and that's why it's glowing?"

"I think that for the first time in your life, you're letting yourself feel without fear or judgment, and it has awakened your magic," he rasped before dipping into the curve of my neck to leave a kiss here and here and there. "May I please fuck you now?"

"Such a gentleman," I mocked.

He grabbed the back of my knees and dragged me lower on the bed. "Do you want me to be a gentleman, or do you want me to make you come on my cock?"

I felt my whole body clench at his words. "The second one, please."

The barest of smiles emerged on his lips. "Why do I love it when you beg me like that?"

"Because you're despicable," I hissed.

He lowered his mouth to my inner thigh and sucked on the tender skin hard enough to mark me. "What was that for?" I cried.

"Because you like it when I'm despicable," he taunted, slipping off his linen shorts.

A little desperate sound left me as I finally saw him fully unclothed. He was almost too much to take in: his body of stone, his wild feral stare, his lips like summer—hot and irresistible.

"Are you okay, darling?"

I swallowed, watching wide-eyed as he shamelessly stroked himself against my core. "Just… a little nervous."

He stopped and hooked two fingers under my chin. Our eyes locked together. "We can stop now if you want. There's no rush."

"Please don't stop," I whispered.

"Are you sure?"

I nodded. "Just go slow."

"However you want it," Apollo promised. "And if you change your mind or something makes you feel uncomfortable, you tell me, and we stop then. Okay?"

I didn't know why, but I almost felt like crying. I could not remember a time in which I'd felt more assured than right here, with his strong arms wrapped around my body.

He slanted down and kissed me on the lips, deeply, leisurely, until all of my worries and fears waned and want started rising in my blood again. I locked my legs behind his back and nudged his pelvis down on mine, needing the friction.

Apollo groaned. "You're killing me, darling."

I slipped my hand between our bodies and wrapped my fingers around him. I couldn't really stroke him in this position, but it didn't seem to matter. My touch was enough to make him cave into the curve of my neck, grunting and panting. "Fuck, Nepheli."

"I need you inside me now," I sighed in his ear.

He shifted his weight so he could look at me better. "Yes?"

"Yes," I said, nodding.

He did go slow. He teased me for a while, rubbing himself on me until I was so wet and needy that I felt boneless, liquid. And then patiently, breathlessly, he pushed inside me. We gasped at the same time, staring almost in disbelief at each other as though we didn't know our bodies could connect like that.

The veins on his neck and forehead throbbed as he forced himself into stillness, throwing his weight on his palms, waiting for me to adjust. "You feel okay?" he panted, his lips trembling.

"I feel perfect," I breathed out as my muscles slowly unclenched and relaxed around him, the sense of fullness shifting from overwhelming to pleasurable. "I feel right."

He dropped his forehead on mine. "I feel right, too. I feel. You make me feel. You."

Little by little, he let himself go. His hands found the depths of my back and sculpted a perfect arch for him to thrust easier, harder, faster inside me. I could feel the strength of his whole body in each push, in his hands that held me down, moved me up, made me new. The room exploded into sound. Pants and plunges, sighs and incoherent pleas—all the noises bodies made in their most ecstatic state.

My pulse quickened and then lowered to a hum of electricity, buzzing every time he collapsed into me. His hands on my thighs. My calves on his shoulders. His skin everywhere.

"I want you on your hands and knees," he growled, not stopping.

"Have me," I sighed.

Before I knew it, I was on my stomach again, his fingers digging into my sides to push up my hips. My face fell into the pillows, and his knees widened between my own. Every movement was as easy and natural as breathing. He found his way back into me with one hard, unhindered thrust, and I screamed a little, scrunching the sheets in my fists.

Apollo was good with patience and brilliant with harshness. He moved slowly, then maddeningly, lovingly, then devastatingly, looking for that perfect combination of tenderness and irreverence. And once he found it, he was merciless with it.

I felt raw and novel and alive. There were no tomorrows and no decisions to be made. I was nothing but sensation and missing heartbeats and sounds that I did not know I could make.

How good it felt—to be so thoughtlessly reborn.

Apollo leaned over me, slid his arm past my collarbone, and pulled me up to him, my back on his chest, his thrusts so deep I felt him in my stomach.

"Apollo," I whimpered, digging my nails into his forearm.

He slowed his pace. "Gentler?"

"Harder."

He cursed under his breath but obeyed, dragging his lips up my shoulder to pepper my skin with kisses. I came breathing out his name, my body soaring and aglow. For a moment, there was no sound or light or color—only my release crashing into his.

I almost fell forward on the bed, but his arms tightened around my chest. "I got you, darling," he said, breathing hard.

My head lolled back on his shoulder, and for a little while I closed my eyes and simply let myself luxuriate in the safety of his embrace, his scent, his bare skin on mine, hot like the sun.

"I know," I said at last.