Page 11

Chapter 11

Kobe

Restless like some inexperienced teenager, I wait by the statue in the park outside the shopping street, where Apollo’s message told me to. It is a busy spot with plenty of people visiting the many restaurants, shops, and bars in the area.

I check my phone again, making sure I have the right time and place. My fingers tingle. It’s been a while since I went on a date. Still, I don’t recall ever being this nervous.

A date… Is this even a date?

I’m afraid I still don’t quite understand what this thing is. Does Apollo just want to screw around with me? For how long? Are we going to chat first like normal people? Or is his curious interest in me purely physical?

I’m not sure what to think. Arguably, I’m what most of those guys I work with would consider old-fashioned. I’ve had my share of spontaneous one-night stands, but I’d rather get to know someone before engaging in a more intimate way. Apollo and I are basically strangers. Maybe that’s why my mouth is dry and my hands are so shaky.

And yet I agreed to this. Apollo is definitely an…undeniably enticing person. Even I couldn’t refuse his offer.

Still, I’d like to find out a little more about him before doing anything. Besides what he told me in my apartment, I know close to nothing about him. What music does he listen to? What does he do in his free time? Is he scared of spiders? Does he like the sea at night as much as I do?

Most importantly…is Jasper really fine with this?

The thought keeps popping up and worsening the knot in my stomach each time it does. I’ve been around Jasper plenty in the weeks since Apollo promised he’d tell him. I suppose there were a few lingering looks, maybe even a little more sharpness from him, but nothing too apparent. It’s hard to say with Jasper’s neurotic moods. Is he simply that good at keeping work and his personal life separate?

Or maybe he’s actually the first secure alpha I’ve ever met who wouldn’t mind others playing with what’s his .

Thinking that might be as prejudiced as Jasper’s view of all omegas seems to be. Maybe I should give it to him and be glad he’s not making my life more difficult.

“You came early,” I hear next to me.

I turn sharply, expecting Apollo. Instead, a young woman stands there, wearing high heels with a fluffy cropped jacket and a short black dress underneath. I open my mouth, wanting to tell her she’s mistaken me for someone else when, behind the long raven hair and heavy makeup, familiar grayish-blue eyes peer at me.

My brows shoot up. “Apollo?!”

He smiles and I fully see it. Him .

I blink, frozen in shock. At first sight, I never would have known. Mostly because of how unmistakably feminine he appears. I know little about makeup, but he seems to wear the full package—pinkish blush on his cheeks, highlights and contouring on his nose and cheekbones that change their shape slightly, and extravagant, sparkly eyeshadow. The silver and shimmering blues make his eyes pop. They look like two shining moons reflecting on the surface of a still, dark lake.

“That’d be me. Now…shall we go?” Apollo asks, raising his brows that are darker and thicker than usual, too. He straightens his hand out to me, a simple leather handbag swinging off his shoulder as he does. “There’s a bar around the corner with a nice rooftop garden we can sit in and have a drink. If that’s what you want.”

Some hesitance peaks out in his words, so I quickly accept and follow his lead, holding him arm in arm.

A strange sense of excitement rushes through me as we walk. It’s almost like I’m doing something forbidden. Is it the thought of only me knowing who Apollo really is? That he isn’t just a gorgeous young woman?

Maybe . Either way, it tickles some unknown, deep part of me.

“Do you do this often?” I ask softly while staring ahead. I try not to leave any space for judgment in my voice. That’s not what I want him to think. I’m just surprised. Who wouldn’t be? He mentioned nothing about it.

“Cross-dress? Sometimes, when I go out alone,” he says in a light, breezy tone. Unable to hold off any longer, I curiously glance up and down at him. He really has the most impressive, slender, feminine legs. Smooth and long. I never noticed that before.

Apollo notices my gaze and smirks.

“It’s hard to be recognized by the clients being out with their wives and families when I’m like this. Those kinds of encounters can get weird outside of work. But I enjoy playing dress up either way, from time to time. Makes me feel confident. Free. Like I can be whoever I want.”

I make an understanding hum before darting my eyes away again. “It-it does suit you,” I mutter, unsure if he can even hear me. He says nothing in response.

Shortly, we walk into a small grunge bar called Hotshot, hidden between a comic store and a sushi restaurant on the main street leading to more stores. It seems to be a familiar territory for him. He confidently holds my hand, pulling me behind him like a dog on a leash, before ordering us drinks at the bar. Then he takes us up the stairs onto the rooftop terrace.

I can’t help but wonder if he’s been here with other people. People like me, perhaps—one-night stands with strangers he found intriguing .

The space has a cozy, pleasant atmosphere to it. String lights run along the sides of the wooden patio roof with benches underneath. There are proper tables with people sitting down, smoking and chatting near the stairs and a few more lounge style seating on the other side.

With the backdrop of lofi music, we settle down in the corner, surrounded by large potted plants and a bunch of fake candles.

Apollo sits across from me, legs crossed, and leans in with a mojito in his hand, smiling mysteriously. Resting my glass of whiskey in my hands over my lap, I can’t help but gawk at him some more. He looks so ethereal, like a person from some magazine or a movie, with the long strands of that black wig falling down his shoulders and his pale, smooth legs on display. The short dress is pushed high up to his thighs.

“Sorry,” I say once I notice his smile has widened. He’s clearly amused by the effect he has on me. “You look really good. Like…an art piece, or something. You must’ve put a lot of effort in.”

Tilting his head, his expression changes to a playful smirk. “Which way do you prefer me? As a man, or a woman?” he asks, running his tongue over his upper lip without breaking eye contact.

I’m starting to regret coming here, seeing that I should’ve realized how striking the difference between his game and mine would be. Apollo seduces people for living. Flirting is his second language. Meanwhile, I… I tighten the drink in my hands, swallowing hardly while yelling at myself to not fall for it so easily.

“It’s you either way, no matter the presentation. I appreciate both,” I say, looking him up and down again before settling on his face. Apollo appears pleased by the answer, leaning back into his seat with a spark in his eyes. He presses his legs together so that his dress doesn’t reveal more than he wants to and I can’t stop myself from wondering what kind of underwear he’s wearing.

“Jasper isn’t a fan. He says it’s an obscene, ridiculous thing to do for a grown man; pretending to be something you know you aren’t,” he notes while glancing around and sips his drink.

I draw my brows together. Obscene?

Jasper runs a high-end brothel. He toys with people’s lives on the daily. Why the hell would this make him uncomfortable? Besides, Apollo looks gorgeous, whether one can appreciate him simply from the aesthetic point of view or in any deeper way.

“Have you ever been with a woman?” he asks while I’m thinking about the best response to what he said before.

We’re doing that awkward speedrun info dump thing, huh? I guess it’s better than knowing nothing about each other.

“I have. Never led to anything long-term, though. I think I…prefer being with men, really,” I say. How does one explain something like this? “What about you?”

His shoulders tense up a little. Pursing his lips, still slick and sparkly with whatever lipstick or gloss he’s wearing, Apollo makes an uneasy grimace. “Women are…intimidating to me in that way. And they do mostly miss the bits I enjoy,” he adds with a smirk, like he wants to quickly cover the hint of the genuine vulnerability he let slip out. “They just don’t have that indefinable thing to them. That something in their aura.”

“I get what you mean.”

Apollo smiles, raising his drink for us to take a sip over that agreement.

The whiskey still burns down my throat as the question I’ve been wanting to ask fights its way out, and I relent. “I’m afraid that I still don’t really understand what made you ask me out. I find myself pretty bland. What was it that makes me so…intriguing?” I ask hesitantly, running my finger around the rim of the glass.

He opens his mouth only to remain silent for a moment, pensively looking somewhere behind me.

Narrowing his eyes, Apollo slowly turns his gaze back. “I guess I… I felt drawn in and safe when you were always so careful and caring about me. Without it seeming like you’re doing it for some ulterior reason. You looked rather attractive doing it, too,” he notes with a devilish smirk, making my pulse drum against my skin. “That isn’t a feeling I usually get, hence…you made an impression.”

The end of his explanation gets to me a little. There’s that hint of melancholia that seems to always be hidden somewhere deep inside him. In his looks and his aura .

“It seemed like you needed someone. I couldn’t just ignore that,” I say, smiling to myself faintly. I don’t see myself as some hero. To the contrary—being a person who can’t stand seeing others suffer and doing the job I do makes me a fool and a hypocrite.

Apollo stares at me from across the table. Those big, sparkly eyes study mine like he’s trying to get a glimpse of my soul. I don’t know what the emotion on his face is. But the scent of his pheromones hits my nose, making me blink in surprise.

We both know there’s more to them than attraction and seduction and reproduction. They’re part of everything that makes people like us… us . Pheromones tie into our health, to emotions, stress, and various processes of our daily lives and bodies. While it’s mostly subconscious and too biological to even grasp, I sense that this wave of his scent is that—something much more significant.

To show him I can take a lead and have some guts too, I voice a perhaps excessively forward thought. “I know I might risk offending you when I ask this, but…you don’t really like doing this job, do you?”

He blinks slowly. It is the sort of glazed over, distant blink when he does. “The endless line of clients begging to have a night with me seems to believe I do well enough,” he says, voice suddenly drained of emotion.

The clients don’t care to look whether or not he wants to be there with them. All they care about is their own pleasure. Their fantasy playing out in reality.

“It’s just that a lot of the times I catch a glimpse of you working, you seem as if you aren’t really there . You’re beautiful, like some erotic painting, but not fully present. Maybe…maybe I’m wrong about that,” I murmur.

It was something I needed to say, mostly for my own conscience. Now I realize how far from an ideal foreplay topic it is.

I sit in the silence, afraid to look up and meet his gaze.

Apollo snorts and shifts in his seat. “What about you? Do you work as a driver for a gangster because you love it? Was this your dream job?”

I try not to take the vitriol in his words to heart. I brought this on myself.

“No,” I say softly. Being brave and meeting his eyes again, I see him leaning against the low backrest, legs crossed, glass pressed against his lips. He seems annoyed, but not exactly in a date-ruining way. At least I don’t think so. Not yet. “I don’t plan on doing this for the rest of my life.”

Apollo makes a bitter grimace. “ Right … Everyone keeps telling themselves that at the beginning. And with every passing year. And a decade. Until they finally accept that there’s nothing else for them. Sorry to burst your bubble, handsome, but the place we’re at isn’t something that ends up being some small, fleeting season of our lives.”

“I’m sure there would be plenty options and opportunities for you if you decided to do something else,” I bite back with kindness. Apollo frowns.

“I’m not good at much besides this,” he grumbles, sounding almost embarrassed.

I hate making him feel like this, so I lean in, resting my elbows against my knees. “You seem pretty good at makeup. I mean…whatever you did with the eyeshadow must’ve taken ages. A shame to waste that time and effort on me.”

Apollo looks up, a spark of something nice and light coming back from within. Is this a normal look he gives people when they flatter him, or is he trying to seduce me again? Either way, his gaze is intoxicating. Effortlessly charming. Fuck , I just want to lose myself in it. No wonder he does so well.

“I didn’t do it for you. I put it on because it’s flattering and I wanted to look nice. But…I appreciate the compliment,” he says with a somewhat smug expression.

The atmosphere is finally shifting in a more positive direction, so I lean into it, not wanting to test my luck anymore. “If it makes you feel any better, there isn’t anything else I’m good at, either. And…listening to orders and driving around isn’t much of a skill in itself.”

Apollo clearly enjoys hearing me be self-deprecating. He leans in too, cutting the distance between us until there’s nothing but the coffee table worth in the middle separating us. His mesmerizing eyes dart up from my lips.

“Are you sure that’s all you can do? Surely,” he pauses and reaches out, squeezing my bicep over the jacket, “you can hold your own in a fight, otherwise you never would’ve made it in this line of work. You were pretty confident aiming that gun at me, too.”

I chuckle. If only he knew I wasn’t confident at all. I was terrified at the power in my hands. Power is a responsibility. A burden.

“I do what I can to make it by. I’m hardly a mercenary.”

Apollo tilts his head, narrowing his eyes seductively. He knows damn well what works.

“Then…cheers to being lost in life, useless, and somehow making it,” he says, theatrically raising his nearly finished cocktail in the air.

“Cheers,” I say. We ding our glasses and drink before returning to the same position, staring closely at each other.

Apollo places his glass on the table, and the moment he does, my heart starts pumping like crazy. Something about his gaze and the way he moves tells me exactly where this is going.

“Now,” he whispers, gently brushing his finger against the exposed skin of my hand. “There’s a lovely little discreet hotel not far away. How about I demonstrate how present I can really be when I want to?”

Every muscle inside my body constricts.

Good lord. I’m actually doing this.

“I’d love you to show me.”