Chapter 39 A Kiss of Death
(Adelaide & Apollo)
Apollo turned toward the door. His hand landed on the iron latch, but his feet didn’t move. The mark pulsed-once, twice-dragging his breath out of him like a hook lodged under his ribs.
Behind him, her breath caught.
His resolve fractured. He squeezed his eyes shut and whispered, voice raw: “Say my name again.”
Adelaide froze, fingers knotting tighter in the fur around her body.
“What…?” Her voice broke, then steeled, shaking with fury and something else she refused to name. “No.”
He didn’t turn. His shoulders rose and fell with a slow, dangerous breath.
“Say it.”
“I’m not—” She swallowed hard. “I’m not giving you that.”
“You already did,” he said quietly. “And you will again.”
“Never.” Her chin lifted, even though he wasn’t looking at her. “I will never give you that.”
The mark along his arm flared, searing through his skin. He inhaled sharply.
“You will,” he said. “Either willingly…” He tilted his head slightly, voice dark silk edged with steel.
“…or I’ll make you scream it while you’re begging me for mercy you won’t get.”
Her heartbeat slammed. He felt every terrified, furious throb as clearly as his own pulse.
“You think threats scare me?” she snapped, but her voice trembled.
Apollo’s fingers curled around the iron latch hard enough to dent it. “I don’t need to scare you,” he murmured. “I need to hear you.”
She shook her head violently. “You don’t own my voice. You don’t own me.”
His laugh was a quiet, broken thing—bitter and unbearably hungry. “Little Flame…” He finally looked over his shoulder. His eyes were molten. Wild. Fractured down the center.
“I could make you say it. Force it from you while you’re raw and bloody, beneath me,” he said calmly. “I could take the word from your throat like a confession torn from bone.”
Fear flashed through her—bright and sharp. But layered beneath it was heat. He felt that too. He hated that he felt that too.
“Stop it,” she whispered, voice shaking. “Stop talking to me like that.”
“I don’t know how,” he said simply—and the honesty in it punched the air out of her lungs.
The mark on her neck throbbed in answer. His own mark flared so hot he almost staggered.
Her name ghosted across his senses. Her pulse tangled with his. Her heartbeat stuttered. He felt it.
“Apollo,” she whispered—reluctant, trembling, furious.
For a single, suspended heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then—
A sound tore out of him. Not a growl. Not a breath. A raw, visceral groan, ripped from somewhere deep in his chest—half pain, half pleasure, half animal hunger. It cracked through the chamber, bouncing off the obsidian walls like a prayer that had forgotten how to be holy.
He braced a hand on the doorframe as if the floor had dropped out beneath him.
Adelaide’s breath caught.
And in the charged, breathless silence that followed, the truth curled between them like smoke: He wasn’t asking for her obedience. He wasn’t demanding her submission. He was admitting a need.
His eyes snapped shut. His fingers curled into claws. The mark on his arm ignited in a violent pulse of red light, answering hers like a second heartbeat.
“Adele…” he tried to speak her name, but the sound broke. His control snapped. All at once. He moved with the speed of a storm breaking.
In a flash, he crossed the space between them, heat rolling off him in waves so intense it stole the air from her lungs. The torches along the walls flared, their flames straining sideways as if dragged in his wake.
Her gasp barely left her throat before his hands seized her waist, dragging her up against him with a force that rattled the room. He lifted her—fur falling from her shoulders—and slammed her back against the stone wall, his body caging hers completely.
The impact knocked the breath from her chest. Her fingers clawed at his arms, his shoulders, anything she could reach. His skin was scorching under her palms, the muscles beneath it coiled like tempered steel.
“Ap—!” she managed, but the rest was swallowed.
He wasn’t listening. His restraint was gone. His mouth crashed against hers with brutal, starving force—hot and fierce and claiming—devouring the name she had given him, the name she’d spoken like a curse and a prayer at once.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was possession. Fury. Desperation. Recognition. His lips moved against hers with the certainty of someone taking back something stolen, each clash of mouths an argument he refused to lose.
Her legs trembled where they pressed against his hips. His hands pinned her—one at her waist, fingers digging into bare skin; the other braced against the wall beside her head, claws gouging stone as he fought not to tear the world apart.
She tried to breathe. He didn’t let her. He kissed her again—harder, deeper, as if the sound of his name on her tongue had detonated something inside him he could never cage again. Heat flooded her veins, colliding with terror in a chaotic rush that left her dizzy, the world narrowing to the iron grip of his hands and the relentless press of his mouth.
Heat roared through her body. Her mind splintered into panic and something she refused to name. His mouth trailed fire down her jaw, across her throat, stopping for a trembling second over the bite he’d left hours earlier.
“Adelaide,” he growled against her skin—broken, starving, reverent and furious all at once.
Her knees buckled. Her fingers tangled in his hair without meaning to. “Apollo—stop—” she gasped.
He froze. Every muscle in his body went rigid. His breath poured against her neck, hot and shaking. The mark at her throat throbbed, an answering ache shivering through his own, the shared magic twisting between them like a tightened cord.
Then, with a guttural sound of pain, he tore himself away from her—his hands ripping from her skin like it physically hurt him to let go.
He stumbled back a step, chest heaving, eyes wild, lips stained with her breath. His pupils were blown wide, the ember-light in them fractured, like cracks through molten glass.
Firelight flickered in the room.
Neither of them moved.
He staggered back a step as the mark flared violently, answering hers.
Then he ripped open the door before the thread of control he managed to regain snapped once again.
He didn’t look back at her. He couldn’t.
He stepped into the hall— And slammed the door shut behind him so hard the torches flickered. The echo shook dust from the ceiling, and the flames along the walls guttered, then steadied—as if Hell itself had just flinched.