She was going to hate him for this.
Let her.
He swung an arm around her waist and yanked her out of the flames.
She cried out, lurched forward, but he kept tight hold, even as she kicked her legs and thrashed against him.
“I’m not done!I could feel something!Something!But it would never come.Itwillcome.It will!”She pounded small, furious fists against his shoulders.“Release me!Let me go!”
“I’m not going to let you burn up.”
“I want to!I won’t!”
He tossed her over his shoulder, and she shrieked and writhed like a wild cat as he carried her out of the forge.Mrs.Collins caught them in the entry hall.
“The heat got to her brain,” Apollo said.“She needs to cool off.”
Mrs.Collins backed wearily into another room, and still Sybil fought him.
All the way across the lawn she fought him and all the way through a small wood and down a hill.Still she fought as he approached the lapping edge of a small man-made lake.He waded out into it, and when she felt the cold water brush against her toes, she froze, quieted.When he was hip deep in the water, she’d stopped fighting entirely, and he slid her down the front of his body until she stood, waist deep in the water as well.
“Breathe,” he instructed.
She did, taking great big gulps.Around her, the water sizzled and bubbled then quieted, too.She ducked all the way under, and at the count of five, when he was about to duck under and bring her back up, she bobbed to the surface, coiffure destroyed, hair streaming soaking wet down her back, shirt plastered to her corset-lifted breasts.Those breasts rose and fell with ragged breaths, and she hid her face behind her palms.
She needed time.
So he returned to shore, removed all his clothing but his smalls and swam out into the depths of the lake, crossing from one side to the other with smooth strokes over and over again, keeping a careful eye on her.
When she leaned backward in the water and raised her feet to float, his chest relaxed its vise grip on his heart.The sun gathered power, banishing the fog, and when she finally trudged back to the shore and sat in the grass, it was a bright, hot day, and he joined her.
He didn’t miss the flicker of appreciation in her gaze as she watched him slog up the small incline to the grass.He sat next to her, nearly naked, bending his knees, and propping his forearms on them.
“Do you want to… I don’t know…” He ran a hand through his hair, wringing droplets of water down his back.“Tell me what happened?”He winced.He sounded so ridiculous, asking her to trust him.Of course she wouldn’t.Why would he even want her to?
She swallowed and laid back in the grass with closed eyes.The sun caressed her face, light draping across its angles and blooming berries in her cheeks.“I’m not sure.Everything.Nothing.I thought the silver called to me, first, but when I tried to pick it up, I… couldn’t make myself.And then I thought the lead… but the same thing happened.And it happened to all of them.Again and again.It was like I wanted every one of them, but they did not want me.Perhaps I was trying to force it.The metal does not like that.”Her last words were so soft the wind carried them away.
“Sounds like potential to me.”
“Potential sounds better than rejection, I suppose.Perhaps everyone is right.”
“I do not know what you’re about to say, but I still don’t think you should say it.Everybody is most oftenwrong.”
“Women shouldn’t?—”
He groaned and kissed her.
“Be—”
Another kiss.
“Alchemists.”
“Sybils can be whatever the hell they want.”Then he kissed her so she couldn’t reply, so she didn’t have the brain to do so.And he knew he’d found success when her hands found him, cupping his cheeks, sliding down his shoulders, exploring the skin stretched taut over his ribs.
The sun was keeping the fog back, and their chests were heaving with desire, and the grass was so soft.As soft as his willpower.
“Sybil,” he breathed, nudging his nose against hers while they gulped for air.
