Page 34 of Toy No More

“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 hisaura.

“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 reallythere. 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 thisyourdream 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 itforyou. 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.

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