She shivered.
He kissed along her jaw, up to her ear, where he dropped hot, angry whispers.“You’ll wake up weeks or months or years from now and realize you once took leave of your senses so entirely you trusted your body to a soulless, violent man.”
She cupped his face and dragged him back to her lips.Their mouths met hot and hard and desperate.Exhilarating and electric.Perfect.
She peeled his jacket off, and he shucked it to the floor then crawled up onto the bed, his body covering hers as she fell backward.They never broke the kiss, and as his hands continued learning her—one at her jaw the other on her breast—she began to explore him.Lean and hard where she was round and soft, his skin warm and golden where she was pale.He caged her.He stoked her heart into madness.He stole the air from her very lungs.His hands branded her.His lips on her neck scalded her.
He yanked at her bodice.
Nothing gentle for them.
This an argument written on their bodies.A duel in the heat that burned between them.
By the time he’d released her breast, his mouth had meandered downward.His knee had snuck between her legs, lifting her skirts so they bunched around her belly.When his mouth closed over her nipple, she nearly screamed.He’d anticipated it, mouth flying back up to hers, swallowing her gasp as his fingers rolled her nipple to a peak.
“Oh God,” she breathed.“Apollo.”
His only answer to wedge his muscular thigh against the apex of her legs where sensation gathered, where her muscles clenched, wanting more.She rolled against him, moaning, and this time, when his tongue found her pebbled nipple, she was prepared.No scream.No need to silence her.
Only closed-eyed surrender to the pleasure of this man’s embrace.Only the desire to return the pleasure he gave.She tugged at his shirt until it was free from his trousers, and then she slipped her hand beneath, pressed it flat against his warm, hard chest, brushing against his nipple, hoping to feel his heartbeat.
He whimpered, the little sound rippling through him.
Then he jolted away from her, feet hitting the floor at the end of the bed with a most unseductivethunk.He backed toward the door.
“No more,” he said, and then he left.
She collapsed against the pillows, and, trembling, she slipped her hand between her legs.She was wet there, where his leg had rubbed against her sex.Her breasts ached, and she felt close to shattering.
When she’d been close to marrying Stone, her mother had told her all about what happened between a husband and wife.She’d said if the man knew what he was doing, the pleasure would be exquisite.
Sybil had a hint Apollo knew what he was doing.
“Ouch.”She grappled in her skirt pocket, but the coal or whatever it was burned her fingers, flirted with her skin.With a yelp, she jumped to her feet and scurried away from the bed.
Something glowed on the floor beside it.She knelt, leaned close.
Apollo’s gold.Yellow hot.
Another skirt ruined.
Apollo was probably right.If they started, they’d burn each other up.Better to never begin.
14
A BLACKSMITH’S UNDERSTANDING OF FEMALE ANATOMY
Apollo sat in the sun.The glass above him magnified the sun’s heat and poured it over his bare shoulders like molten gold.These damn hills were so foggy that anytime the clouds broke over the last four days, he headed here—this barren glass room, this former conservatory.It was attached to the back of Foggy Hill House, and Sybil never came here.She preferred quiet dark corners or blazing firesides.She preferred avoiding him.
Perfect.Just what he preferred, as well.Or he would if she was a sensible woman who wasn’t constantly doing herself harm.
Irritation ruffled like bird feathers, but a bolt of sun soothed him.He had forgotten how much he loved the sun.Sybil had asked him what gods he believed in.The truth?This the closest he came to religious fervor.
When he felt as if the sun crept along every inch of his skin—covered and uncovered—he stood and returned to his work.He should be fireside with Sybil, working on coaxing the flame, on shaping the metal.The last four days he’d shaped copper and silver into spheres, cubes, cones, and a variety of other mind-numbing shapes.The apprentices would be surprised when he returned with more skills than they’d ever thought him capable of.He needed more, though.If he would ever be anything other than an apprentice.
But if he spent any more time near her, he’d look at her lips for the one hundred and sixty-fifth time that day and immediately get a cockstand so hard, he’d be able to shape a horseshoe with it.No hammer necessary.
Tidying the conservatory offered a respite.His grandfather had called them magnifying rooms and had included one in every residence he owned.Go there, he used to tell Apollo,when the talent drains you.It’s like sipping up pure nectar, even at night.His grandmother’s journal had mentioned the rooms as well, but not as centers of power, not as something to be used.
