Yesterday, when he’d shaped the gold, he’d been thinking of Sybil.
Clearly he needed physical provocation, lusty inspiration.But it did not have to be the woman across the hallway from him.Absolutely not.If her brother ever found out, it would be off with his balls.
So Apollo cupped his hands, closed his eyes, and tried with the candle once more, envisioning the flame as his last mistress, bonny and curvy and entirely willing.For the right price.She’d been pretty and?—
“Oh, hell.”It wasn’t working.He felt more clinical in his estimation of her bounteous beauty and quite, quitepoor.Which was something of an antidote to lust when he needed an aphrodisiac.
He cut a glance at the door.
She’d never know if he used her as inspiration.He’d certainly never tell her.
The image in his mind slipped so easily toward Sybil—the jolly curve of her cheek, the wide innocence of her eyes, the teasing tenor of her tongue.Bloody hell, her heart must be made of steel.She’d been locked in a dungeon and never given in to despair.And… and… he wanted to see her legs.Naked.Or with silk stockings.He wasn’t particular.He just wanted to know the shape and size of them.Beneath her skirts, her thighs, her arse—impossible to know their shape.He could guess.Anything would do.Whatever was under there was sure to be delectable.A fire would gild her pale skin, bloom it rosy, and?—
The candle’s flame was dancing.He laughed, and the flame seemed to laugh with him.
“Hello, darling.”He pulled his hands higher.“Play with me?”
The flame leapt toward his palm.Higher.
But not high enough.
“Come along, then, pretty thing.Hot and dangerous likeher, aren’t you.Let me feel you.”
A hesitation, then the flame stretched high like a woman’s languid arm to roll against his palm.Sybil’s arm reaching for him from a mattress, her knuckles rolling across his cheek.He could feel it.Feelher.
Wanted more.
He removed one hand from the flame and undid the buttons of his fall.He was hard and needy.He’d never felt so hard before.Throbbing.He took his cock in hand and stroked it once.Then he stroked it again, imagining a strong hand replacing his own, taking to pleasuring him as diligently as she seemed to take up everything else.Except a few things here or there, little pockets of the world where she embraced convention.Fascinating contradictions.
He moved his hand faster, lightning gathering with each new image of Sybil that flashed across his mind, with each flicker of the growing flame against his palm.
His body had become the flame, the candle, and Sybil the oxygen.He might burn away entirely.
A knock on his door.
“Fuck,” he hissed, freezing.
“Hesperus,” a voice whispered through the wood.“Something odd has happened.”
Sybil.The real Sybil.The flame died down to its usual height, and he wished his cock would, but it seemed hopeful that the real woman had come to finish the job the imagined one had started.
“Just a moment.”His voice was ragged.He shoved himself back into his trousers, still hard.“Down, you delusional rabbit.”
“What?”
“Nothing!”
“Apollo.”His real name whispered so low she could barely hear it.“Is something wrong?”
Yes.
“It’s only…” She sounded worried, damn it.“The gold,your gold.It started to grow hot.”
He stuffed his shirt into his waistband and threw open the door.“What do you mean?”
She held one of the bowls that had held their dinner.Inside, singeing the wood, was his gold in its flat, almost woman shape, glowing hot.
“Hell.”He reached for it, changed his mind and kept his hands to himself.“What’d you do to it?”
