She was tethered down.
Chained, but… not panicking.The vines were gentle, like Apollo.Insistent like Apollo, too.They held her, almost like a lover.They seemed to go where she wanted him to touch her, and it was like he possessed twice the number of arms and fingers, double the means of pleasing her.Leafy tendrils stroked behind her ear and knees.Palms brushed against her cheek.The soft petals of flowers curled across her nipples.
All while Apollo gripped her hips with delicious strength.And tasted.
With wonderful tongue and gentle teeth, he tasted.
And she was quickly unraveling, the warm pleasure of his feast fed her, too, making her too heavy to stand, too greedy to remain immobile beneath his attentions.Thank Hestia for the vines, their touch so like Apollo’s—gentle and generous.
He anointed her other breast with honey and licked and nibbled and drove her wild.Need spiraled lower as his tongue spiraled around her nipple, and she moaned his name.That was what she saw in the high blue beyond the glass.Him.
He cursed and ground his erection against her, hiding his face in her breasts for several ragged breaths before dropping to his knees and sliding his naughty hands beneath her skirts.When he found her sex, his warm fingers were sticky with honey, and when he grinned like a wicked beast and disappeared beneath folds of linen, she almost came.Simply from knowing what he meant to do.
“God, I love how you taste,” he said, voice muffled.
His licks and kisses turned her into honey—soft and malleable and impossibly sweet.He dragged a finger through her sex, and she almost fell apart, then he replaced his finger with his tongue.
She cried out, her every muscle clenching, pleasure rocketing through her.His tongue found her pulsing bud, flicked across it, and her climax ripped through her.She melted down the wall.The vines and branches shrank away from her with a shivering that sounded almost like a sigh, and Apollo caught her before she fully collapsed.He gathered her into his lap as he sat against the wall.Satisfied smile.Finger stroking her neck.
“That was… fascinating,” she said when she had the strength to speak.“All those vines.”
“Those what?”
“The vines.You were controlling them.How did you do that?”
“I was not.”He stiffened, and not in the fun way.
She patted his arm.“You do not understand what is happening yet, but you will.We’ll figure it out.”
“There’s nothing to understand.”He stood, almost dumping her out of his lap.
She stood, too, smoothing her skirts and choosing not to take offense.Whatever had happened with the vines had not been a conscious decision, apparently.It had unnerved him.
“You cannot simply ignore it,” she said softly.“It’s important to figure it out.It is like my device.I can make a thousand protypes in a thousand different specifications, but it does not mean that I understand the mechanics behind the machine, the temperatures of heat necessary, the physics.”She sighed.“The magic.I cannot even understand it theoretically.But I must understand it if I wish to master it.So must you.”
“There’s nothing to master.Men do not control plants.”
“You do.”
“I’ve never done anything like that before.Why would I start now.”He began dressing, stuffing arms into shirtsleeves and slinging on his waistcoat.
“It is like what you were saying earlier.A seed becomes something else entirely under the right set of circumstances.”
“Soil, light, water.Not secretive affairs with women whose brothers could kill me.Besides, I’m not a seed.”
She lifted a shoulder, dropped it, some bright light just out of reach beyond the fog.“But… a seed is not a seed either.Not really.”
“You’ve gone mad.I’ve heard true alchemy can do that to even the stoutest minds.”
“No, not mad.”In fact… clarity was dawning slowly, unraveling like a soft spring morning.“A seed is meant to be a flower, even when it is not.Like me.I am a woman meant for marriage and children and caring for the home.But I run about in trousers and a corset, trying to do something I’m told I cannot.That is who I really am, the seed, and the thing that society expects of me is the gold.I am lead, and I cannot help but be lead.”
No, something wrong about that, something twisted.
Apollo chuckled and kissed the top of her head.“I think you’ve got it the other way around.Youare the gold, and they simply cannot see it.”
She gasped.The sun was bright now, the truth clear.She ran for the forge.
19
