“I do believe in you.”Her expression one of utter conviction.A fist to the face, that.
He closed his eyes and imagined laying her down on the bed at the inn as she looked at him with the open-sky blue of her gaze, brimming with trust and optimism and everything he didn’t deserve.
The heat was easier to reach this time.It flared to life within him, pulsed hot in his palm as he wrapped it around the bar.The rain hissed and sizzled as it hit his body, and some vague, distant part of his mind worried the mackintosh might melt right onto him.
“Focus,” she whispered, “stay focused.That’s it.Perfect.Look.The bar’s expanding.”
It certainly was.More than onebar, too.
Beneath his touch, the gate quivered.
He heard a click, Sybil cheered, and he opened his eyes.The bottom corner of the gate had pushed past the lock, was open.
“Quick, the top part,” Sybil said.
He moved his hands, began the work anew.But by the time he had the bar heated above, it had already cooled below.“Fuck.”
“Try again.”
He did.
After the third failure he said, “You’ll have to do it with me.We need to open both locks at once.
“I can’t.”She retreated into the hood of her mackintosh.“You know I can’t.”
With one hand, he lifted her chin, and with the other he grasped her hand and placed it on the bar next to the top lock.“Twice before today you’ve helped me find my heat.Now I’ll help you find yours.”The hand on her chin he slipped around her neck.She gasped, but he kept going.He wrapped his other hand around the lower part of the bar and squeezed her neck at the same time.“Stop thinking.Stop fretting.And start feeling, relishing,taking pleasure.”
Her breath hitched.
“Are you ready, princess?”
She nodded, the slightest trembling thing as they knelt in the mud together, rain slicing between them.Sybil leaned close, face uplifted, him bent over her, their hands on the bar of the gate, holding them steady, and the air between them thick with the foggy warmth of their own bodies.
His inner heat came in an instant.Too much, too quickly.It would burn him up.
Unless he shared it.
So he kissed her.
11
BOILING
Summer swept through Sybil’s body, a scalding wave that sizzled in the sun.The ignition point—Apollo’s lips slanted against her own.
A shock.She couldn’t breathe.Had forgotten how.But he was coaxing air into her and out of her, his kiss a life-giving force of firm lips and warm breath.When he exhaled, she inhaled, her lungs expanding with champagne bubbles that traveled south to her belly.
He dragged his lips across her cheek to whisper against her ear as he tightened his hold on her neck.“Turn off your brain, Sybil.”
“It’s like a… a mechanism,” she breathed.
“Your brain?”
“The kiss.”She placed her empty hand against his chest, right over his heart, each of her breaths a panting struggle.“It clicked right into place.But for what function?What purpose?”
“Pure pleasure.Stop thinking.”He crashed his mouth against hers.Another kiss.Harder, demanding.He parted her lips, slipped a seeking tongue inside.
Kisses were wild things, then, uncivilized and dangerous.
