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“Do you suppose it knows that I’m staying in the North, and that’s why it’s glowing?”

“I think that for the first time in your life, you’re letting yourself feel without fear or judgment, and it has awakened your magic,” he rasped before dipping into the curve of my neck to leave a kiss here and here and there. “May I please fuck you now?”

“Such a gentleman,” I mocked.

He grabbed the back of my knees and dragged me lower on the bed. “Do you want me to be a gentleman, or do you want me to make you come on my cock?”

I felt my whole body clench at his words. “The second one, please.”

The barest of smiles emerged on his lips. “Why do I love it when you beg me like that?”

“Because you’re despicable,” I hissed.

He lowered his mouth to my inner thigh and sucked on the tender skin hard enough to mark me. “What was that for?” I cried.

“Because you like it when I’m despicable,” he taunted, slipping off his linen shorts.

A little desperate sound left me as I finally saw him fully unclothed. He was almost too much to take in: his body of stone, his wild feral stare, his lips like summer—hot and irresistible.

“Are you okay, darling?”

I swallowed, watching wide-eyed as he shamelessly stroked himself against my core. “Just… a little nervous.”

He stopped and hooked two fingers under my chin. Our eyes locked together. “We can stop now if you want. There’s no rush.”

“Please don’t stop,” I whispered.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Just go slow.”

“However you want it,” Apollo promised. “And if you change your mind or something makes you feel uncomfortable, you tell me, and we stop then. Okay?”

I didn’t know why, but I almost felt like crying. I could not remember a time in which I’d felt more assured than right here, with his strong arms wrapped around my body.

He slanted down and kissed me on the lips, deeply, leisurely, until all of my worries and fears waned and want started rising in my blood again. I locked my legs behind his back and nudged his pelvis down on mine, needing the friction.

Apollo groaned. “You’re killing me, darling.”

I slipped my hand between our bodies and wrapped my fingers around him. I couldn’t really stroke him in this position, but it didn’t seem to matter. My touch was enough to make him cave into the curve of my neck, grunting and panting. “Fuck, Nepheli.”

“I need you inside me now,” I sighed in his ear.

He shifted his weight so he could look at me better. “Yes?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding.

He did go slow. He teased me for a while, rubbing himself on me until I was so wet and needy that I felt boneless, liquid. And then patiently, breathlessly, he pushed inside me. We gasped at the same time, staring almost in disbelief at each other as though we didn’t know our bodies could connect like that.

The veins on his neck and forehead throbbed as he forced himself into stillness, throwing his weight on his palms, waiting for me to adjust. “You feel okay?” he panted, his lips trembling.

“I feel perfect,” I breathed out as my muscles slowly unclenched and relaxed around him, the sense of fullness shifting from overwhelming to pleasurable. “I feel right.”

He dropped his forehead on mine. “I feel right, too. Ifeel. You make me feel. You.”

Little by little, he let himself go. His hands found the depths of my back and sculpted a perfect arch for him to thrust easier, harder, faster inside me. I could feel the strength of his whole body in each push, in his hands that held me down, moved me up, made me new. The room exploded into sound. Pants and plunges, sighs and incoherent pleas—all the noises bodies made in their most ecstatic state.

My pulse quickened and then lowered to a hum of electricity, buzzing every time he collapsed into me. His hands on my thighs. My calves on his shoulders. His skin everywhere.