Sunburn, page 10
Patience stared. Why did she feel she was already worshipping the sun? “Um, okay.”
“You’ll love it, I promise. The beach at Tulum is one of the most picturesque in the world.” He looked at the meal. “Now, can I butter your toast?”
She gazed at him, dazed by his sunny beauty. “Thanks.”
You can butter my toast any time you want.
* * * *
They spent the morning wandering the Mayan ruins at Tulum. Rather than take one of the overcrowded tours, Apollo gave her a personal tour and told her about the Mayan history. She seemed fascinated, smiling and nodding at his stories, making comments that proved how hard she’d been listening. She seemed a little spooked once or twice, but that was only because she’d clued in on the fact he was around while all that history was occurring.
Okay, maybe being with someone like him could be daunting. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so hard on all those women from his past. Still…
Around lunchtime, he led her toward the beach area. Tulum was built on a palm-tree dotted cliff overlooking a small but pristine beach area. To get to the actual beach one descended a rickety set of old, wooden stairs. The stairs had been there for years themselves, withstanding the saltwater mists and tropical storms, and most tourists approached them with a wary eye and tentative step. Patience was no different.
She gasped upon seeing the beach for the first time. “It’s incredible,” she said on a sigh. And then she looked at the steps, her brows arched. “But we have to walk down those steps? They look ready to collapse.”
“Come on,” he teased, grabbing her hand. “Thousands of visitors come here each year. If the steps can hold them, they can hold us too.” He pulled her close, slid his left arm around her waist, and held her other hand in his.
As he gripped her body, he experienced a pang of warning. You’re getting too close. What was that sex show you gave her in the shower anyway? It was fit for the red-light district in Amsterdam. Just find the fucking demon and stop fantasizing about what it would feel like to bury yourself to the hilt in her soft body!
But she felt so good. And even though he’d hated himself for masturbating in front of her, the urge to fuck her had been so great, he’d had to do something to alleviate the burn.
And she’d liked it. He could tell. She hadn’t been able to drag her gaze away from him. Patience O’Connor might like to play the prim professional woman, but he suspected there was a sexual lioness underneath all that austerity.
Maybe it was time to explore her other side, prophecies and demons and past betrayals be damned.
They reached the bottom of the staircase with a final creak and Patience let out the breath she’d been holding. He turned her to face him. “See? Told you I’d keep you safe.” Of course, with his powers, he could have flown with her to the bottom, but the stairs were part of the Tulum experience. Plus any excess flying would have freaked out the tourists.
“I think I might have peed my pants on those stairs.”
Grinning, he ran a finger over her furrowed brow. “You can stop frowning now. Hey,” he said, noticing a long scar on her forehead right under her hairline. He hadn’t seen it before. “That’s a nasty scar. How’d you get it? In the car accident with your mom?”
Was this why she was always touching her hair?
Her face paled and became a blank slate as she turned to a nearby palm tree and fingered one of its broad leaves. She then looked off into the distance. “Let’s hit the beach.”
He watched as she walked away, true turmoil in his gut. She might be disguising her emotions, but he’d seen the brief look of despair in her eyes.
And there had been another emotion in her eyes too. Fleeting, remembered terror.
Someone had hurt her. Not some evasive wraith from Hades. A flesh-and-blood person had done something bad to Patience. He’d left his mark, and it was hurting her still.
Hell, it was hurting him.
Apollo was surprised at how badly he wanted to punch something. In fact, if he was being honest with himself, he wanted to uproot the fucking palm trees. By Poseidon’s barnacle-infested ass, who was this bastard who hurt her?
He followed her down the beach, intending to get to the bottom of the matter. Then he’d find the little shit and return the favor.
He caught up. “Patience, wait.”
She was intent on avoiding the subject and avoiding his gaze. She pulled their towels out of her beach bag and indicated a spot on the sand. “Is this a good spot?”
Apollo looked around. There were tourists everywhere, and he really wanted to be alone with her so she’d feel comfortable talking. Damn.
What to do?
He was inspired by a sudden idea. Glancing at the sky, he summoned a terrible, black rain cloud. It soared into view with a crack of thunder and the whole beach darkened with the impending storm. Instantly, the tourists headed for the hills, leaving the beach deserted except for them.
“Oh no,” Patience cried. “We’d better head back.”
He held her elbow. “Wait a minute.” As he spoke, the rain cloud settled right over the stairs to the beach, discouraging any other tourists. And at the same moment, the sky cleared over him and Patience, leaving the beach as welcoming and sunny as ever.
Her eyes grew wide. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
He grinned. “What’s the use of having special powers if you can’t play with them?”
“It’s not fair to those people,” she argued.
Fuck fair. “Don’t worry. I’ll reverse the spell shortly.” He laid out their towels and urged her to sit. “Now, tell me how you got the scar. I want to know, Patience.”
She sat and gathered her legs into her chest and held them there. She was so pretty in that moment. Tangerine-colored toenails on ten wiggling toes. Her dark waves caught up in a high ponytail. That deadly orange bikini under her shorts and T-shirt. The bright straps peeked out under her shirt.
If only she didn’t look so sad.
Staring ahead, she spoke. “I was engaged two years ago. Thought I’d found my soul mate. Foster was sweet and protective and so handsome. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.” She looked at him, her mouth twisted into a lopsided grin. “He was in sales, but with the recession he lost his job. He’d never been fired before. He took it really hard, didn’t know what to do with himself. He hung out in bars a lot, drinking. And because I was doing okay, he didn’t really get up off his backside to look for a new job. He discovered he was happy being a couch dweller, and I indulged him for a while because I thought he was just going through a rough patch.”
“I take it the rough patch lasted a little too long.”
“You could say that,” she concurred. “I thought if I just encouraged him a little more, just pushed him in the right direction, that he’d bounce back. But he drank even more. For me, with my background, that should have been enough to send me packing. It should have been a big, honking red flag. But foolishly, I stayed, thinking it was wrong of me to bail on him in his hour of need. Just as I thought I could fix my mother, I thought I could fix Foster.”
“I take it he didn’t want your help.”
She shook her head. “One day I came home from work and had just had it. The house was a mess. He was a mess. I guess I nagged him. He was drunker than I’d ever seen him and he lashed out.”
She swallowed, her delicate Adam’s apple moving up and down in her throat.
“He started screaming at me, saying it was all my fault. And then his arms started flying. I didn’t even see it coming. He’d never shown any violent tendencies. He punched me a few times and then pushed me really hard. I fell against the glass coffee table. Foster panicked and ran, and left me there with a huge gash in my head. I remember there was blood everywhere…” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Doris and Angie found me and took me to the hospital.” She touched the scar. “This is my final parting gift from Foster.”
Apollo seethed. He wanted to cry. Most of all, he wanted to find Foster and show him some old-fashioned retribution. It had been some time since he’d taken out his golden arrows of destruction, and he couldn’t think of a better target. “I’m sorry for what he did to you.”
She finally let a tear escape. “Yeah, me too. I should have known better. I should have seen it coming. God, do you know how many times I watched my mom being hit by bastards she dragged home? How many times I sat there, as a child, unable to help? I should have seen the signals.”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself for what those shitheads did to your mom, and don’t even try blaming yourself for Foster’s idiocy. He did this.”
She touched her hair and raked it over that part of her brow, hiding the scar. “It’s why I wear bangs. So I don’t have to stare at that fucking scar. I hate it. I wish I didn’t have to see it every day.”
He touched her hair, wanting so much to make it all better. He tipped up her chin. “Would you like me to get rid of it for you?”
She gazed at him, dumbstruck. “You can do that?”
“Only if you want me to. I would never change anything about you, but if it makes you unhappy, I can make it go away. I am the god of healing. An expert first aider, remember? It’s kind of my specialty.”
More tears gathered in her eyes. She nodded slowly and whispered, “Please make it go away.”
He smiled and got on his knees in front of her. He brought his lips to the scar, grazing them across it as he murmured the ancient spell, “Ilios, Ilios, Ilios.”
He removed his lips from her brow, and the spell went to work. The puckered blemish wavered on her head, and then it faded. Within seconds, the skin there was as unmarred as the rest of her face.
Patience touched the area, frowning. “I can feel my head burning.” She rummaged in the beach bag and brought out a cosmetic compact. With shaking hands, she opened the tortoiseshell case and stared into the tiny mirror. When she saw his magic had worked, her jaw dropped.
“Good as new,” he murmured, more satisfied than he’d felt in centuries.
She looked up, eyes brimming over with happy tears, and launched herself at him. “Thank you so much!”
They tumbled back onto the beach towels, Patience landing right on top. She buried her face in his neck, whispering her thanks over and over. Apollo ran his hands all over her shapely back, letting them rest just above her ass. And then, plagued by sweet temptation, he let his hands slide down to her bottom and squeezed her lush flesh.
Patience grew rigid in his arms, but only for a tense second. And then he felt a warm wetness on his neck.
It was her tongue, doling out caresses. His dick grew painfully hard at the realization.
Overwhelmed by mad desire and another deep emotion that churned in his gut, he put some space between them and made her look at him. Her eyes were dark and distracted. Her full lips were moist with her saliva, and he had a strong hunch her other lips would be wet too. She was entirely kissable, and his keen desire was mirrored in her stunning eyes.
“I want you, Patience,” he said, his voice coming out as a breath.
“God help me. I want you, too.”
And as he touched his mouth to hers, as he slid his eager tongue between her lips, Apollo didn’t care about demons anymore. Not her demon, and not his either.
* * * *
As soon as Patience heard the little voices in her head, the same bothersome voices that warned, “You shouldn’t do this,” she silenced them.
I know I shouldn’t do this. And I do not care. I need to feel him all over me, even if it’s just this once.
With that thought bolstering her, she let him roll her over. Apollo loomed above her, a wall of muscle and strength that should have been intimidating, and yet he didn’t frighten her the way some large men did. After the experience with Foster, she’d flinched while in the presence of so many big men, becoming the jumpy thing she now was. Apollo was different. As massive as he was, he was all gentleness and sexiness and heart-breaking hunger at the same time. He made her heart flutter. He made her fingers itch with the need to touch him. He made her sigh and gasp and languish, and he’d barely touched her yet.
Still, he was a god. A freaking divinity! He’d been around forever and could make things happen with the snap of a finger. If she should be afraid of any man, Apollo should be the one.
As his tongue plunged into her mouth once again, he cupped her breasts in his hands. Patience not only saw those little suns, she saw stars the pleasure was so intense. He grasped at her nipple through her Tee and bikini top, making her ache for the feel of his hands on her skin. Over her clothing, he raked his fingernails over her nipple, and she wanted to scream it felt so good.
Oh God, she was so wet. Surely he could tell as he ground his body against hers.
But this was Apollo! She’d read the stories. She remembered those old tales about him pursuing women so hard they went to tragic lengths to escape. Didn’t one even turn herself into a shrub? And there were countless myths about him and his twin Artemis meting out severe punishments with their deadly arrows. In fact, she recalled several stories in which his behavior was downright malevolent.
What was she supposed to do? She could not end up with another Foster. She couldn’t fall for another man who spoke with his fists … or golden arrows.
He must have sensed her distraction because he pulled away and caressed her cheek. His scintillating eyes bore into hers. “He hurt you so badly,” he murmured. “I want to take your pain away, Patience. I want to make you feel good.”
He didn’t sound like a malevolent entity.
There, on Tulum beach under the shade of a palm tree, Apollo the god stood. As he gazed at her, he spoke a word she didn’t understand. Even as he stood motionless, his clothing flew from his body and landed a few feet away.
Heavens, he was naked again! “Who taught you how to do that?” she whispered.
With a sly grin, he spoke the same mysterious word again. Patience felt rather than saw her clothing disappear as well, seeing it land with his clothing out of her peripheral vision. She looked down at herself. He hadn’t taken off all her clothes. She still had her bikini on.
He saw her confusion. “Oh, rest assured,” he murmured, leaning back over her. “It’s coming off too. But I’m fond of this tiny bikini. I wanna play with it a little bit.”
A hot rush of sensation surged through her core, and ignited by his saucy words, Patience couldn’t stop trembling. Apollo smiled at her reaction.
“I hate this bikini,” she admitted, dazed, as he dragged his delicious tongue up the side of her neck. “Doris and Angie coerced me into buying it. I think they switched hangers and brought me one a size too small. Someone with my body shouldn’t wear it.”
He stopped kissing her and looked at her with impatience. And then his face changed, and his eyes crinkled with disappointment. “Who in your life didn’t bother to tell you how perfect you are?”
Cripes, he’d make her cry again if he kept talking like that. No one in her family had ever come out and said she was fat. Her mother was always too inebriated to notice her waist size. But Patience wasn’t stupid. She relied on food for comfort. Her doctor had shaken his head at her physicals after weighing her. Men gawked at Angie and Doris, while looking past Patience as if she were invisible. It had never bothered her too much … until she was in the presence of a blond god who looked as if he should be frolicking with lithe nymphs instead of a dumpy, mortal travel blogger.
“I’m not perfect, Apollo. It’s okay. I don’t need to be.”
He sat up and pulled her up so she was sitting with him. “You are absolutely perfect. My kind of perfect.” He looked her up and down, his appetite etched clearly into the tight lines of his face.
And then, making her pulse quicken to a frightening degree, he pulled her onto his lap and made her straddle him. She gasped at the feel of his hard cock as it nestled between her legs. Throbbing, seeking entrance. He pushed aside her two bikini cups and uttered an oath upon seeing her breasts for the first time. Then he dropped his head to her breast and sucked her nipple into his mouth.
“Oh,” Patience cried, as her eyes rolled back. Had the beach just fallen out from under them?
As he suckled, moving with infinite leisure between her two nipples, he palmed her breasts, squeezing and luxuriating in their weight. She almost fainted under the soft, greedy pressure from his warm fingers. After teasing her for several minutes, he raised his head. She was floored by the bewildered look in his eyes and by the moistness of his lips.
No one had ever looked at her like that.
“See?” he whispered. “Perfect breasts.”
His eyes flashed a blue as mysterious as the waves before them. Azure hunger. He laid her on the beach towels and his hands roamed her body. His ragged breaths were as unsteady as her own. She wasn’t sure she could take much more of this. She’d die here under his ministrations and her body would be washed out to sea!
Still playing with her breasts, rolling them gently and then giving them a sharp tweak, Apollo moved lower on her body. His tongue roved, flicking at her ribs, nestling in her belly button. He stopped for a moment to look at her stomach, and Patience cringed. It was her worst feature, and she often felt self-conscious about the little bulge.
But Apollo seemed smitten. He gazed at it, covered it in kisses, squeezed it, and buried his face in it. “See?” he growled, his voice more guttural now. “Perfect belly.”
Was the man mad? Of course, she’d seen sculptures of women from his time. They did tend to be a little heavier than modern women. Maybe he just liked them that way.
But as his fingers pulled with fervor on her bikini bottom strings, Patience stopped mulling over the matter. His breathing had altered once again, and he sounded like someone who’d just gone for a lengthy run. He couldn’t quite catch his breath. He yanked at the garment and freed her from it.
