Page 84 of Resilience

For a moment, he almost felt frustrated; he wanted so badly to talk to her, to tell her how she made him feel, what she was doing to him, how much he loved it, loved her, but he didn’t want to take his hands away from her, and her eyes were closed, anyway. But then he realized that he could convey everything to her, in the ways he always had. Communication was more than words, no matter how those words were shared.

Sam sat up and clasped her face in his hands. Surprise stopped her, and she opened her eyes wide, asking. He answered by kissing her like he’d never kissed anyone before. More deeply, more passionately. Trying to tell her everything.

In the way she kissed him back, he knew she understood.

Mere seconds later, Athena began to make the same, tiny, unfocused grunts she’d made last night, signaling the cresting wave of her orgasm. Sam dropped one hand from her face and slipped it between her legs, reveling in the sleek slip of his fingers over her clit. God, she was so wet. For him. For them.

As she came, she threw her arms around him, grinding on him with her entire body, burying her face against his neck—the good side, this time—and those strange, beautiful grunts rolled from her until she went still and silent, her every muscle quivering inside her motionless body.

He felt each rolling throb of her pussy, and it drove him straight off the cliff. While she was still clenched around him, Sam rocked his hips up, soaring as deeply into her as he could get, and exploded. He came so hard he saw stars.

When it was over, they stayed exactly as they were, sitting up in bed, wound together like a sweaty braid. Sam felt sated. Filled all the way to the top. Complete.

After a long spell of stillness, he realized that Athena had fallen asleep. Just as they were. Still connected, still as tightly entwined as it was possible to be.

He lay back and left her exactly where she was. Eventually he joined her in dreamless sleep.

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~oOo~

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When Sam next woke, a pale wash of fresh morning light brightened the room. Athena had rolled off him and lay in a curl at his side, her head tucked against his ribs and her hands folded under her chin. He had just long enough to smile at the sweet peace of it before the door swung open, and that peace broke.

Athena’s father stood in the doorway, and he did not look amused.

Sam had locked that door! But then he remembered that Athena had gone to the bathroom after their first time. She must not have locked the door on her return.

Sam’s first impulse was to yank on the disordered covers and make sure Athena’s naked body was under them—and then that his own private parts were concealed as well.

“We need to talk,” Apollo said, his voice brusque. “My office. Now. Don’t wake her.” He stepped back and closed the door.

Sam lay there, his heart pounding, and tried to understand what had just happened. Apollo knew he and Athena were together. He knew neither of them was a virgin, and he now knew about what Hunter had done.

Maybe that was why he was pissed—did he think Sam had pushed Athena to have sex after being raped? Did he think, as Sam initially had, that she wouldn’t have wanted it herself?

If that was true, then the real question was would Apollo give Sam a chance to explain before he gutted him like a trout?

Every second he delayed would probably make Apollo think Sam felt guilty, which would make him less inclined to hear an explanation before the gutting occurred. Moving carefully, arranging each shift of his body so it didn’t disturb Athena, he eased from the bed and rearranged his pillow so she was curled against that instead. She squirmed a little but didn’t wake.

Of course, now there was a new problem: the morning after their first night together—first sexual night, anyway—Athena would wake up alone.

Yeah, that was not cool. He needed to leave a note or something. He didn’t keep a pen or paper on him because he used his phone for shit like that—well, he could text her.

Her phone was on the dresser beside his. Pulling his kutte over it to obscure the bright flash of light it made in lieu of an audible alert, he grabbed his phone and texted: Downstairs with your dad. He came up and wanted to talk STAT. He added the appropriate “holy shit!” face emoji and almost called it good—but then he added Last night was perfect. I love you.

Hopefully that wasn’t the last time he’d be able to say that to her.

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~oOo~

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Apollo’s office was seriously weird. It was a small, windowless box, a former pantry, maybe, or a walk-in closet, or maybe just a room built out as an afterthought. At first glance, it looked like a rat’s nest, with most of the space taken up by full walls of industrial shelves, packed top to bottom with tech gear, and the parts for the gear, coils of cables of different sizes and uses, crates of batteries, and so on. But it was all organized with a truly insane degree of specificity.

Apollo’s desk took up the rest of the space. The desk itself was an average metal thing, probably a hand-me-down from somewhere, but his chair was a custom job. It most resembled the gaming chairs Sam and Mason had gotten for Christmas one year when they were kids, but this was bigger, on rollers like a desk chair, and upholstered in orange leather with white accents and black trim.

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