Chapter 134 Between Cross & Water
(Apollo & Adelaide)
Heat shot through her, unbidden, pooling low and hot. She drew a breath, her thighs pressing together under the water instinctively, the movement sending a slow wash of warmth over skin still sensitive from him. From where he touched her.
“They’re not gentle,” he added.
For the first time since entering the bath, she let a small, tired smile tug at her mouth. “I’ve survived at least three of your beasts.”
“You survived,” he said softly. “Not thrived.”
Her chest squeezed. Something like embarrassment and pride tangled inside her. She wanted to snap that survival was enough. That breathing after him was victory. But another traitorous part of her wondered what thriving with him would look like.
“And you are not ready,” he murmured, voice dropping low, “for all of them.”
A shiver rippled through the water around her.
She didn’t know if it was fear. Or want. Or both. Both twisted inside her now, tangled so tightly she could no longer separate where dread ended, and desire began. Their coexistence left her trembling, unsettled by how quickly one feeling flowed into the other.
“Are you doing it on purpose?” she whispered. “Showing me this side of you?”
“No,” he said.
But after a breath, he added quietly: “I don’t know how not to.”
The admission punched the air from her lungs. The Devil, King of Hell, ruler of demons and monsters and torment and fire, confessing that he didn’t know how to be anything but honest with her in this shape—it felt like the world tilting sideways.
Apollo pulled her closer—not roughly, not hungrily, but with a slow, steady pull that lowered her head onto his shoulder. The heat of his skin seared through her cheek, and under her palms she felt the steady thrum of magic, banked and quiet. The beat of it matched the slow drag of his breaths, a rhythm that could have been soothing if it hadn’t belonged to him.
She didn’t speak for a long time. The water lapped softly at their bodies. Steam curled in lazy spirals above them. Apollo’s hand drifted up and down her back, slow passes that soothed muscles she hadn’t realised were still trembling. Every stroke leeched tension from her shoulders, pulling tight knots of pain into the open where the heat could dissolve them.
She thought of Liam. Of Lyra. Of home. She thought of the cross. The ropes. The cold. The agony. Her mind flinched away from the phantom bite of rough wood against her back, from the weight in her shoulders, from the way her fingers had gone numb.
And then— She thought of his mouth on hers. His tenderness in the water. The safety of this heat. This moment. Her emotions surged, hate and desire twisting until her chest ached. It felt like being split in two—one half reaching for him, the other dragged backward, desperately clawing for a world that no longer belonged to her. The overlap left her raw, caught between past pain and the unfamiliar pull of the present.
“I don’t want to be here,” she whispered at last.
Apollo went still. Even the water seemed to pause, the faint current holding its breath around them.
“But,” she added, breath shaking, “I don’t… hate you the way I did.”
He didn’t speak. His thumb traced a long, slow line down her spine.
“Good,” he said finally, voice quiet enough that the steam nearly swallowed it. “I can work with that.”
Her laugh was soft, startled, and tired. She lifted her head to look at him again, and for a moment—just a moment—she let herself see him.
Fully human in shape. Strong jaw. High cheekbones. Wet hair slicked back. Golden eyes softened by something she didn’t have a name for. Beautiful in a way that made her stomach twist. The kind of beauty that would have made girls stare in a village street corner, that didn’t belong in flames and iron and bone.
She remembered being terrified of this face the first time she’d seen it.
Now… she didn’t know what she felt. Attraction, definitely. Confusion. Warmth. Resentment. Curiosity. And something stronger she refused to name. Something that made her fingers itch to trace the line of his throat and her common sense scream at her to run.
He reached up again, brushing another strand of hair away, fingertips tracing her cheek with feather-light touches.
“You’re staring, Little Flame,” he murmured.
“So are you,” she countered.
His mouth curved. “I have reason.”
“So do I,” she said quietly.
Something flickered across his face. Not arrogance. Not lust. Something that looked dangerously close to wonder. As if he couldn’t quite believe she’d chosen to stay this close to him when she could have shifted away in the water.
The kiss that followed was softer than the first. And deeper than the second.
By the time they pulled apart, she was trembling—not from fear, but from the weight of what she was beginning to feel. Each new breath felt like a secret, pulled into her lungs and held there because speaking it aloud would change everything.
Her thoughts drifted, hazy but sharp-edged underneath. Pieces of the night replayed themselves whether she wanted them to or not. Her toes curled against the stone. The way he’d filled her—twice, gods, twice. The sound she’d made when he pushed deeper. His growl against her shoulder. How she’d shattered around him like her body had been waiting for that exact moment to break open.
And then… This.
Heat and water. His steady heartbeat under her cheek. His fingers brushing through her hair, untangling strands with surprising gentleness. His thumb tracing small, absent circles on her skin.
She realised she didn’t know when she stopped hating him. When that hate turned to passion. She hated what he’d done. She hated what he’d taken. She hated that he’d dragged her from her home, from her sister, from her life. She hated Hell. She hated the stone and the shadows and the constant threat humming under every breath she took down here.
But him?
It wasn’t hate anymore. Somewhere between the cross and the bathhouse, something had changed. She’d given him her mouth because she’d had no choice… but she’d touched him by the end. Held him. Pulled him deeper.
She’d taken him between her legs because she had no freedom… and yet she’d begged for more.
And in the bath, when he washed her bruises and whispered her name like something sacred, she hadn’t recoiled. She’d leaned in.
Gods. Gods above and below, she liked him. Wanted him. Wanted his heat and his hands and his impossible, terrifying tenderness.
And she hated that even more than she hated Hell. Because if she liked him, if she wanted him, then staying away from him wasn’t survival anymore—it was self-denial. And she didn’t know how to live with that.