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“Can I helpyou?” she countered.
I leant towards her conspiratorially. “Walk away now,” I told her gently. “And you might retainsomedignity.”
“You have your place, and we have ours,” she seemed to be reminding me.
I smiled at her pleasantly. “Yes. My place is with my fiancé and yours is to stay as far away from him as possible.”
She had the balls to be affronted. “Who do you think you are to tell us what to do?”
“Do not test me,” I said to her, my voice quiet fury. “I am your goddess, and you will bow to me.”
There was a flicker of respect in her eyes, then she remembered everything I was taking away from her with my authority, and she glared at me. But she seemed to know a losing battle when she was faced with one. She turned on her heel, a parting glance to Apollo as though trying to make anyone watching believe she didn’t think he was all that.
In answer, Apollo didn’t watch her walk away, he pulled me to him and kissed me hard. His hand found the bottom of my skirt and I very nearly forgot that we were in the middle of the dining hall in front of most of the school and I was about to let him stick his hand in my pants.
I pulled away from him, both of us breathing hard. “Behave,” I warned him.
“For now,” he agreed.
As we sat down, I realised that Marco and Valen were both gone. I didn’t see Valen again except in the very vaguest passing in the corridor or in class until Apollo had bundled me into his car with the promise of a very wicked night out.
I told myself my heart didn’t flutter at the sight of Valen getting into the front seat. Since he’d come back for the New Year’s Eve party, he’d continued sporting the stubble on his jaw. It made him seem so much older, more dangerous, sexier. He looked like the man I’d always pictured him being in ten – twenty – years’ time. The things he’d be able to do a woman by then…
I forced my focus to Apollo and kept it on him until we got toLa Freeze.
“Miss Vanguard,” Valen said smoothly as he opened my car door, the picture of hostile professionalism.
I nodded and took the proffered hand the way I was supposed to. “Valk.” I climbed out of the car and released his hand as quickly as required. No slower. No faster. I would not give Valen the satisfaction of a single doubt in his mind that he’d affected me.
Then it was back to ignoring each other again as Apollo reached for me. I took his hand happily, quite content with turning my back on Valen.
Apollo took me inside where he’d hired out the whole of the ice creamery and made sure they stocked a heavy supply of rainbow.
“An ice cream date?” I laughed.
He shrugged. “We won’t be able to go mattress surfing, but I calculated the shop should be long enough for sock sliding.”
“You’re lucky I wore stockings,” I told him.
He pulled me to him hard. “Just so long as they don’t hamper my access later.”
I smirked at him. “Oh, trust me. They won’t.”
Valen was noticeably outside for the whole date. Not that I cared because I beat Apollo at sock sliding after he ran into a table and fell over complaining he’d broken his pelvis.
Chapter Sixteen
As nice as it was that Apollo and I were living the dream, a girl did need an escape to breathe without the whole world of Saint Benedicts watching her every move.
And I was quite lucky that I had a friend like Florence to help with that escape.
She snuck me out of Saint Benedicts and down to the next town over from Bieityn, where there was a club that we could get lost in. Not just figuratively to forget our – my – problems, but where there was very little risk of someone recognising us.
We had a few too many shots. Our dresses were just a little too short and a little too low. We danced like absolutely no one was watching. And we had a fantastic time.
No one bothered us. No one looked twice at us beyond appreciating our very fine figures and carefree attitudes. We let a couple of guys buy us drinks, but they didn’t try anything else on.
“Do you think they knew they had no chance?” Florence yelled at me, aiming to be heard over the thumping music.
