Sunburn (14 page)

He shouldn’t want more, Zeus help him. Despite their delicious interlude, he hadn’t forgotten the demon. The demon likely scouring the resort for her now.

What was he supposed to do? She should have died in that accident. And, even as a god, he wasn’t supposed to trifle with the circle of life. People died every day. Did he interfere in those cases? No. When Daphne and the others had gone to their deaths, had he stopped them? No, as much as it hurt to watch.

It had been time for them to go. Just as the die was already cast for Patience.

Could he run with her, staying a step ahead of the demon for the rest of her natural life? She wouldn’t want that. Besides, if he kept interfering, Uncle Hades would unleash a battalion of demons to come get both of them. Apollo could take the demons, and would relish dispatching every last one.

But he couldn’t defy Hades. Not for long. His uncle was one of the old ones, and his powers were infinitely stronger than Apollo’s. And if there was one thing Hades insisted upon, it was order and rules.

If Apollo didn’t let Patience die, Hades would come for her himself. And would probably confine his rebellious nephew in the underworld for a thousand years for his troubles.

Would he endure that for Patience?

He stared at her again. She mumbled in her sleep. And he knew why. She was dreaming of him. He just knew. His powers allowed him to see many things, including the dreams of others. And in knowing her dream, he was gripped by an affection so strong he was forgetting the age-old bitterness that had plagued him since Daphne.

He should get her back to Helios. He couldn’t keep the tourists away from the beach forever, as much as he wanted to linger there with her. Using his powers, he summoned their clothing and clothed them, without either of them moving a muscle. And then he woke her with a kiss.

The only way she should ever be awakened.

“Patience,” he murmured. “It’s time to go.”

She made an unintelligible noise and then turned and buried her face in his chest. Just that one little movement, so full of trust and bliss, fascinated and moved him. Even with other casual sexual partners, none had ever quite snuggled up to him like that. He’d always suspected most women understood there was something in him to be feared. There was, after all.

This was new. He liked it.

Running a hand over her hair, he spoke softly into her ear. “Patience. Wakey, wakey.”

There was a sharp intake of breath and her eyes popped open. She sat, giving herself a head rush. As she recovered, she looked at him, at the sandy towels. She looked at the clothing now on their bodies. Her gaze fell back on him again with a sheepish glance as she remembered what he’d done for her, and what they hadn’t done.

“Um, I, uh…”

“Come on, Patience. It’s time to head back.” He stood and held out his hand.

She took it and frowned. “Apollo, I’m sorry I fell asleep. I really did
not
want to fall asleep.”

“Don’t worry,” he teased. “I’ll find a way for you to make good on your debt.” He smiled.

She grabbed her beach bag and proceeded back up the rickety steps that led back up the cliff side to the ruins. Apollo followed, enjoying the sight of her unsteady gait.

I made her wobbly. Awesome.

He enjoyed it right up the entire staircase. Unfortunately, she was teetering so much she had to brace herself on the stair railing, another worn piece of wood. As she reached out, her beach bag fell out of her hand and plummeted through the slats in the staircase, landing back on the beach.

She rolled her eyes. “Clearly my arms still have no feeling in them.”

“I’ll get it,” he said, laughing. He ran down the staircase.

As he reached the bottom, he heard a dreadful cracking noise. He looked up toward Patience, only to see the steps under her had collapsed. She was now following her bag, pitching toward the beach at an alarming speed, arms and legs flailing.

“Patience,” he cried. In a flash, he was off, using his power of flight to race toward her. Just before she hit the ground, with an impact that would have killed her, he caught her and brought her gently back down to the beach.

Shit, shit,
shit
! How he hated this fucking demon.

Patience’s brown eyes were even darker, haunted, as he clutched her. “Apollo, maybe you should just leave me alone…”

“No!” His shouted response even startled him. “You’re a … guest at my resort. I will not have demons killing my guests,” he replied, almost choking on the word guest again.

Before she could argue, he flew with her to the ruin site. Foregoing the taxi they’d taken there, he decided instead on flying all the way home, unseen by mortal eyes. The ride gave Patience a little thrill, even though she looked despondent.

So help him, he’d find that fucker from Hades and tear him limb from ugly limb.

* * * *

As they headed back to his suite, Patience watched Apollo. He pounded the wooden pathways between the guest villas, staring down every person they encountered. His eyes burned into theirs as if trying to see into them. Everyone they passed received his harsh scrutiny: maids carrying towels, maintenance men, even families headed for the beach, lugging their floaties and shovels and water bottles.

He grasped her hand, pulling her along, but she could see his other hand was clenched.

This … situation upset him. More than she expected from a god who’d seen millions of people die.

Why?

Okay, they’d fooled around, and the aching beauty of the moment had surpassed every luscious sexual fantasy she’d ever had. Nothing in her life had been better than Apollo’s hands and lips and tongue on her skin.

She felt something for him. And the feeling was so primal and intense, she feared where it was going. Where
could
it go? Nowhere. They were too different.

But why would he be so worried? Surely the god of light and music had better prospects? Certainly one of those Muses were better suited to him. To say nothing of the fact they would live forever like him.

And yet he’d looked at her with such passion, had held her with such care. He’d made her feel so good it was surely a sin.

At the end of the week, she had to go home to cold, snowy Buffalo and leave the heat of Apollo’s embrace. What then? He couldn’t shelter her forever. He had a life in Mexico, and she had … a death awaiting her.

She was supposed to die. Should have already died.

Clenching her jaw, she made her decision. This thing with Apollo had to stop, for both their sakes. She couldn’t keep living under false hope, and he needed to move forward. He didn’t need the memory of a chubby tourist dragging him down.

She pulled her hands out of his and turned in the opposite direction.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

She turned to him. “Back to my room. This has to stop.”

The heat from his gaze was so strong, she felt blinded. She could swear his blue eyes were rimmed in gold she was so bathed in fire and light and fury. “No, Patience. I’m not letting you go to your death.”

She moved her hands in front of her face, blinking madly, swatting at those damned dancing suns. “I’ll go to my death if you don’t shut off the fireworks! Stop glaring.”

She heard him take a breath and the lightshow from his eyes disappeared. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget my own strength.”

Patience glared back. “You can’t save me, Apollo. Not forever. And you can’t make me stay in your villa. I want to go back to my room.”

He stepped toward her, incensed. “Don’t be ridiculous. We can fight this. You need to stay with me. If you leave, you’ll be dead within the hour.”

Dead within the hour?
Well, that just sucked. Still, it seemed cruel to prolong the inevitable.

He took another step toward her and reached for her hand again. In spite of her best intentions, she let him hold it. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes full of empathy now, and then his gaze dropped to her chest. He frowned and ran a finger over her collarbone. “Your skin. It’s burned.”

She looked down, feeling the tight itch of a sunburn for the first time since they’d fled Tulum. Sure enough, her front was an uncomfortable, rosy pink. “Hmm,” she murmured, and then looked at him. “I never did reapply my sunscreen at the beach. Maybe it isn’t a good thing to fall asleep in the heat of the sun.”

Apollo returned her gaze, understanding her meaning, and his eyes were full of sadness. Clearly, he thought himself a bad influence. His sorrowful expression proved it. Without a word, he leaned in and breathed on her chest, letting his warm breath travel all over her frame. It bathed her in deep heat, and for a moment, Patience thought she’d be fried to a crisp. However, within seconds she felt a wonderful cooling sensation. She looked at her raw skin. The sunburn had disappeared.

She stared back at him, feeling faint for wanting him so much. “You can’t keep coming to my rescue, you know.”

His celestial nostrils flared. “Wanna bet?”

* * * *

From his spot at the ping-pong table, the demon watched the god and the O’Connor woman. Sure, he’d known the blond bastard had been sniffing around his target, but this was insane. What sort of game did Apollo think he was playing? Did he have any idea who he was pissing off here?

His ping-pong partner, that French buffoon Gilles Trudeau, prepared to serve again. With a little smile and a nod, the demon returned the man’s serve. What he really wanted to do was bash the man’s head in with his paddle. All he did was talk about fucking and how he was running out of money.
Could you spot me fifty dollars, mon ami?
So far, in order to get close to Patience, he’d had to put up with French idiots, that ditzy redhead Angie, and Doris, her fiendish friend. Inconsequential airheads, all of them.

All he needed was to get Patience alone for five minutes, just five blessed minutes. He could finish the job and go home.

Besides, he’d had that disturbing message from his supervisor. The powers in Hades had seen the job wasn’t done yet and weren’t impressed. If he weren’t careful, he’d have the big man gunning for him.

He had to separate Apollo and the O’Connor cow, off her, and salvage what was left of his dastardly reputation.

Wiping the sweat on his brow, the demon returned another of Gilles’s serves. He hit the little ball so hard it bashed Gilles right in the eye. The man fell.

Ooh, that’s going to leave a mark.

As the Frenchman got off the ground, glaring with his one good eye, the demon shrugged.

All in a day’s work.

Chapter 11

Patience was sitting through the most awkward dinner of her life.

To make it worse, it was in the resort’s Japanese restaurant, the kind where they cook right at the table. Even though she wanted to mourn the impending loss of her own life, she was forced to clap and smile at the chef, who was perched before her.

She didn’t have a problem with Japanese, per se. She did, however, have a problem with her tablemates. She’d learned quickly it wasn’t a good idea to combine Apollo, Angie, Doris, Gilles, and Claude at the same table. But because she’d made herself scarce with Apollo lately, Doris and Angie had hung with the Frenchmen more.

Claude and Gilles had both showed up tipsy and kept putting the moves on her, clearly still eager to make her their “ham.” Doris seemed pissed at Apollo, which was odd because she’d encouraged Patience to sleep with him. Angie was flirting with the chef. And Apollo was glaring at all of them, still trying to root out the damned demon.

By the time the sashimi sampler arrived, the table was a cesspool of frustrated emotion.

Somehow Claude had insinuated himself next to her at the horseshoe-shaped table, with Apollo sitting sentry on her other side. Patience tried to be decorous as she picked at her spinach roll, but it was hard to be dainty while eating food that looked so phallic. She took a nibble.

Claude leaned into her, and she caught a whiff of piña colada. “Miss Patience, I love the way you wrap your lips around that roll.”

And then he stifled a burp.

Apollo sat up arrow-straight and turned his flashing eyes on the Frenchman. “Really?
Really?
” Patience laid a hand on his thigh to calm him and felt his enormous leg muscle clench.

Doris stared at him from the other end of the table. Her eyes were narrowed, twin beacons of blue, trained on Apollo. “You seem very protective for someone who just met Patience, what, yesterday?”

“I didn’t meet Patience yesterday.” Apollo returned her cynical gaze, obviously gauging whether or not the demon might have assumed the form of one of her female friends. “I’m just looking out for her.”

Gilles, parked on the other side of the table with Angie, and wearing a brand-new shiner, mumbled, “We could look after Patience, if she’d give us a chance. I could
look after
her quite well.” He turned to her and offered her a wet, drunken leer.

“Oh, sheesh,” she said under her breath.

“Come on, everyone,” Angie scolded. “We should be paying attention to our chef. He’s working very hard.” She batted her long lashes at the young chef. “Eduardo, I love how you made that pile of rice look like a heart. And how you made it beat for me with your spatula.”

The chef smiled back at Angie, lost in her green eyes. Smitten. “
Amiga
, wait until you try my yakitori.”

Angie gave him a promising smile worthy of the Marquis de Sade. “Wait’ll you try
my
yakitori.”

Doris chose that moment to rise from the table and walk over to Apollo, heedless of how Claude was checking out her ass. She leaned over and whispered to the god, her Czech accent more guttural with her apparent rage. “Patience has been hurt before. She needs a good fuck, but she doesn’t need all this intense bullsheet from a man she barely knows. We haven’t even seen her today before this! And I don’t care if you own this place. If you fuck with my friend, Mr. Big Shot, I will fuck with you. You got that, pretty boy?”

Apollo stared at the blonde hellion. Patience could tell he was trying not to smile. “Loud and clear, ma’am. I wouldn’t dream of hurting Patience.” And then he turned to Patience, his eyebrows arched in amusement. “Your friend has balls.”