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“Tomorrow?” Florence said to me with a wry smirk of her own.
I gave her a wink, took Apollo’s hand, and started leading him out of the dining hall. He made a great show of following me out, informing anyone who’d listen that he’d ‘follow this woman to the ends of the world’. People were clearly paying attention. They were supposed to pay attention. Apollo wanted them all to know he was taking his girlfriend to his bedroom. Or, rather, that his girlfriend was taking him to his bedroom.
It wasn’t until then that, after all the subtle changes I’d gone through the last few months, I realised peoplewerelooking at me differently. Not better or worse, just different. I felt like I was under more scrutiny, like the whole school was watching where this new behaviour between God and his intended was going.
I felt like I’d finally earned it. I felt like it was about damned time people saw more of the real me, not just the meek little princess going gormlessly to her fate. Valen brought it out in me. Apollo saw it and he wanted it. Florence had always said I was meant to be the goddess of Saint Benedicts, and I was finally starting to feel like it.
† † † †
I didn’t leave Apollo’s room until after midnight. The hallways were dark, only the low lighting of after hours to light the way of those students who were out of bed past lights out.
And I felt good. Not just in the physically satisfied after blissful orgasms kind of good, but good and free and light. I was very aware that the freedom I now felt with Apollo was a very different freedom to the one Valen gave me, but it was no less because of it. I felt optimistic about my future for the first time in five years. I felt like I might not lose all that made Apollo good and mine. Life was looking good.
As I skipped down the cheeky service stairs, I ran into a body I recognised well. He wasn’t going to stop, clearly.
“Hi,” I said as he made to pass me.
He paused, a frown crossing his face as he looked me over in the near dark. “Uh, hi.”
My fingers played with his cross at my neck as we just stood there and looked at each other in silence.
The way my heart beat in my chest, I knew he’d never really be out of my system. How could he be? Valen Kincaid was over six foot of brooding tall, dark, delicious and dangerous. Danger that was made all the more appealing by the knowledge that he would never be a danger to me. Not the way he was to others. Had I not put a stop to whatever was happening between us, he certainly would have been a danger to my heart, but never to my life.
“Do we talk now?” he asked, his eyebrow rising.
I licked my lip uncertainly. “Do we not?”
He shrugged. “We didn’t before.”
“So, we’re just going to spend the rest of our lives in forced proximity, hating each other like always?”
“What do you suggest, princess?” he asked, but the moniker had lost most of its contempt.
“I thought we could be civil. For Apollo at least.”
He scoffed as he looked away from me, sucked on his teeth, then looked back to me. He took a step toward me, the nearness of his body causing mine to hum. I could feel how close he was, how very nearly he was touching me, but just...not.
“You want civility, princess?” he asked. “How civil does this feel?” His voice was a purr that made my nipples tighten and my clit tingle.
“Perfectly civil,” I answered. Lies. But I could do this. “We fucked each other out of our systems, remember?”
His lip rose in a snarl, then he breathed out deeply and kicked his head to the stairs behind me. “I suppose God’s finally laid claim to what’s his.”
I knew what kind of claim he was insinuating.
I swallowed hard. “No, actually. He hasn’t.”
The boy was happy to stick his face between my legs until I was moaning his name in pleasure, but I couldn’t touch him.
Valen looked surprised for just a moment. “Well, don’t let me get in your way.”
“I won’t. I’m not.”
“When he finally does want to claim you, you should let him.”
“I will.”
“Good. Because we’ve fucked each other out of our systems and everything’s fine.”
