Page 89 of The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities

“You’re right,” he said, climbing on top of me. His hands framed my face as his knee parted my legs. I stopped breathing. “I am a very selfish man. I do not care about love. I really don’t. But I do care about devotion.” He took my face in his hand and brought his mouth a breath away from mine. “So tell me, Nepheli, my darling, are these lips mine to kiss?”

“Yes,” I panted.

He kissed me, his tongue as possessive in my mouth as his hands were on my body. With a hard tug on the plunging neckline of my corset, he exposed my breasts to the warm room. My head fell back into the bed with a moan as he brought his mouth over one while squeezing in his rough hand the other, his tongue and thump teasing my nipples until I was arching desperately into him for more.

“How about these, Nepheli?” he finally asked, staring up at me with drowsy, dark eyes. “Are these mine?”

I muttered something incoherent, and as punishment, he nipped at my nipple, dragging a whimper out of me. He soothed the sting with his tongue, tracing a few gentle circles before laying it flat on the tender spot. “I didn’t hear you, darling. Say it loud and clear for me.”

“Yes,” I gasped. “Yours.”

His hands traveled to the hem of my camisole. He pushed it up to my hipbones and put one hand on each of my knees to pry them further open. My undergarment was embarrassingly wet, and he made a low, satisfied sound as he touched me over it with the very tips of his fingers before pulling it aside and pressing down with his whole palm. He plunged a finger inside me, hard and fast, and white spots flecked my vision. “And this, Nepheli?” he demanded, breathless this time. “Is this mine too?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly, he closed my waist in his hands and dragged me into the middle of the bed. He stood to work himself off his trousers but not his undershorts. And this piece of linen I knew was going to be my undoing because it did absolutely nothing to cover him, and the mere sight of his hardness through the fabric made my whole body pulse with anticipation.

“And you, Apollo?” I asked as he climbed back on the bed and came to hover over me. “Are you mine?”

“Body and soul,” he promised. “And if I had a heart, have no doubt, my darling, it would have been yours too.”

A wave of dreaminess washed over me—a sense of floating above the clouds. In a feverish haze, I passed my fingers over his body. His refined collarbone. His sculpted chest. His chiseled abdomen. His pronounced hipbones. I hesitated at the waistband of his shorts, then looked up, directly at him. His eyes were closed in pleasure, and his lips parted on a shallow breath. I let my hand slip in and wrapped my fist around him. “Prove it,” I said.

Without warning, he flipped me onto my stomach, and I gasped against the pillow. He started tugging at the laces of my corset, and with each pull and each unraveling ribbon, he unraveled me too. The garments were peeled off my body carefully, in outspoken devotion. But when I was left utterly bare with his chest pressed against my back and his mouth kissing on my shoulder, he was not so reverent anymore. He was wild and starving, and did not know what to taste first.

I realized then that need, although not lovely, was a kind of devotion too.

He turned me over again, and I watched him marvel at the sight of my naked body. His eyes touched me everywhere. I kept as still as I could, feeling surrendered to him. As if to say,This is me. This is how I was made. This is what is now yours.

“You’re so beautiful,” he sighed, smoothing back some curls from my face. “Looking at you always makes me want to wish for impossible things. I want to bestow my most unutterable hopes on you.”

I could not speak. I was aflame, warmth rushing through my body in waves of emotion and hope and magic. And then, I didn’t want to speak at all because he gripped my thighs, brushed them wide open, and buried his face between them.

My back arched, my fingers found purchase on his shoulders and my mouth fell open to a sound I could not push out of me.

Finally, I understood why the gods wanted to be worshiped and not loved. It was an awing, flawed, freeing thing to be worshiped so indelicately. To be tasted like water and breathed in like air. To be the grace someone else was starving for. That was how he made me feel. Like something he would look for between the clouds and secretly pray on.

His tongue stroked and flicked and soothed. His fingers traced and plunged and curled until I was trembling, almost hurting from the pressure. Tightness built in my lower abdomen, and overwhelmed by the sensation, my body tugged up and away from him. With a low, almost inhuman grunt, he yanked me back down, wrapping a hand around my thigh to lock me against his face.

“Apollo!” I cried.

He didn’t stop. He went harder instead, and my orgasm came like a tide pulled by the moon. Violent and overflowing.

I was soaring and drifting off in some murky dreamscape, in awe that my body could feel like that.

“Nepheli,” I heard him call, but in my euphoria, I could hardly breathe, let alone answer. “Nepheli, darling, you’re glowing.”

My eyes fluttered open.

Iwasglowing. My whole body was silvery and sparkling, the light twinkling off my skin like sunbeams on a metal surface.

I looked at him, gaping in shock.

“I think your star likes my mouth,” Apollo teased, still panting a little, a halo of sweat gleaming along his forehead.

I laughed, giddy with happiness. “Apollo, I’mmagic!”

He tilted down and kissed my temple.“Yes, you are, darling.”

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