Chapter 88 Five Days of Waiting
(Apollo & Adelaide)
Apollo’s body shifted.
His monstrous form melted—horns drawing inward, wings folding and dissolving into smoke, claws retracting, the molten cracks in his skin sealing shut. A spiral of red-gold sparks twisted around him, dissipating into the air like molten petals. His shoulders shrank, still powerful but unmistakably humanoid. The ridges along his spine softened. His face—still too beautiful, still too dangerous—smoothed into the version of him she’d first seen in the clearing, the one who’d stepped from shadow like temptation carved into a man.
The dangerous beauty of him struck her like a blow. Human-shaped, yes—but too refined, too luminous, too unreal, as if sculpted by a god who had forgotten mercy halfway through the design. This form wasn’t safer. It was worse. A lure sharpened by centuries of intention.
He exhaled sharply as the last of the transformation settled over him. “Finally,” he breathed, voice a hungry rasp. “You make it easier to be myself.”
Her body stiffened. “Put me down,” she whispered.
He didn’t. Of course he didn’t.
Instead, he buried his face against the curve of her throat.
A low, guttural sound left him—half-growl, half-shudder—as he dragged his nose along her skin. Inhaling her. Savouring her. His hands tightened around her, lifting her higher, fitting her against him in a way that made her stomach twist and her breath falter.
“Apollo—”
He kissed her. Not gently. Not cruelly. Hungrily.
A tremor of heat spiralled through the room, rattling the chains embedded in the walls.
His lips traced the line of her throat, hot and open-mouthed. His teeth grazed the tender place beneath her ear. He breathed her in like she was the first clean air he’d tasted in centuries.
Her back arched despite herself, body responding to heat and instinct and that cursed bond.
His mouth travelled down her collarbone in slow, greedy drags. He sucked a bruise into her shoulder, then licked the mark like claiming it twice. His hands explored every part of her—her spine, her ribs, her thighs—mapping her with the intensity of a man starved.
She could feel it. Him. Hard. Impossibly so. Pressed between her legs through the thin scrap of fabric he still wore. No monstrous size. No jagged edges. Just a man—dangerous, furious, breathtakingly aroused—holding her like he’d been waiting for this since the moment she’d screamed his name in the forest.
“This,” he murmured against her skin, voice cracking with need, “is why I couldn’t touch you in that form. I would have torn you apart.”
His hands shifted to her hips, dragging her closer, grinding her gently against his arousal.
She gasped.
He shuddered. “But like this… like this I can finally take you.”
Her fingers curled into the rope still binding her wrist. Something to hold. Something to ground herself in the reality of the moment.
He bent, pressing his forehead to her sternum, breathing raggedly. “You don’t understand what you’ve done,” he growled. “Five days wanting you. Five days, unable to touch you without risking your bones. Five days of your body calling for me in your sleep.”
“Stop,” she whispered.
“No.” It wasn’t defiance. It was a confession.
He lifted his head. His eyes—gold, bright, consuming—met hers.
“You talked,” he said, voice gone velvet-dark. “And I reward obedience.”
His hands slid under her thighs, lifting her in a smooth, powerful motion that left her breathless. Her legs tightened around his waist in instinctive balance, dragging her soft core against the hard heat of him.
“Apollo—please—don’t—”
“That’s the wrong kind of begging,” he murmured.
With her wrapped around him—legs trembling, arms tugging helplessly against the unbroken binds—Apollo pressed her back against the cross, and kept her exactly where she’d been pinned for hours.
Her breath shattered in her lungs. “Apollo—” she whispered, voice small, raw. “I’m scared.”
He paused only long enough to kiss the corner of her trembling mouth—a fleeting, devastating brush of warmth.
“Good,” he murmured.
The chamber dimmed around them, the torches guttering as if starved for air, shadows racing up the walls like creatures fleeing from what was about to happen.
He tightened his grip on her thighs, lifting her higher along the wooden X, her wrists still bound above her head. The ropes smoked faintly where her arms strained, glowing with embers that pulsed to the rhythm of her heartbeat.
Slowly—reverently—he settled her back against the cross like she was a sacred ritual. A sacrificial flame offering. His offering.
Her hair spilled over the wood, dark silk clinging to sweat-slick skin. Her chest rose and fell in sharp, frantic bursts. Her legs instinctively clung to his hips because she had nowhere else to anchor herself—no balance, no freedom, no escape.
He looked at her like she was molten gold poured into the shape of a woman—something rare, impossible, burning.
“Let me feel it,” he whispered, voice thick with hunger and something far too close to reverence, “what you’ve been denying yourself.”
Her eyes widened. “Apollo—please—”
“Shh.” His breath skimmed her collarbone like heat from a forge. “I’ll take care of you.”
He dragged his mouth down her throat. Over her chest. To the pulsating mark on her neck.
Every kiss was hotter than the last. Every breath was a spark against her skin. Every touch a promise and a threat.
Her body bowed helplessly against the restraints as he descended.
Her wrists strained against the smoke-forged binds, shoulders trembling, chest rising in sharp, shocked pulls of breath. The wood behind her creaked, protesting the violent arch of her back. Every nerve screamed with anticipation—raw, electric, unbearable.