Actually, it did.
I bit my lip.
He nodded, correctly reading my non-verbalized answer.
“I’m sorry things are awkward, dove,” he said gently. “But she is not under any misconceptions, I’m certain. She knows the ways of this culture. And it is highly probable she will find someone else to turn her attentions to. But this may happen again until she finds the man who…crushes on her as she does him.”
This was how it happened in my culture too.
Drat.
“Are we done with that topic?” he asked, knowing the answer from reading my face.
I gave him a different one, however. “Kind of.”
“What more is there?” he queried.
I thought about the Fleuridian prostitute and the fact that Apollo was most definitely a man and a man who liked to get him some.
“Have you, um…?” I trailed off.
“Never,” he stated.
It was my turn to blink. “Never?”
“Never…recently,” he amended.
There it was.
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled.
He drew me nearer, gentled his voice and explained.
“There are Heads of Houses who do these things. I am not one of them. I was married, my wife my one and only. After that—but I learned it before I was married, my dove—I found it uncomfortable to be around maids who knew me in this manner.”
“In other words, they all fell for you,” I deduced.
He nodded. “It’s difficult to sit at dinner when the woman serving it is giving you longing eyes and you have had your fill and don’t intend to drink more from that cup.”
I looked away, murmuring, “I bet.”
When I didn’t turn back, Apollo’s hand at my jaw brought me back. “Is there something else on your mind?”
I peered into his eyes, trying to decide whether or not to bring it up.
Then I brought it up.
“There was this woman who visited the house the night after you left me in Fleuridia.”
His brows shot together and not in a confused way but in an annoyed one.
“Celise came to the house while you were there?”
“Well…yeah.”
“She was not invited,” he stated.
“She seemed to…” I hesitated, “well, it appeared she…”
“I have had her,” he shared straight up. “Repeatedly. She visits me when I’m in Fleuridia.”
Oh boy.
He kept going. “She has great beauty and she’s very expensive because of it, that as well as her talent with her mouth.”
Okay. There was my answer. Too late.
I shouldn’t have brought it up.
“Uh, maybe we should stop talking about this,” I suggested.
“You do not have whores in your world?” he asked.
“Well, yeah, but it isn’t exactly bragged about, going to one.”
“Why not?”
I stared at him.
“It’s an honorable profession,” he declared.
I kept staring at him.
“And only the best practice it. There are those who offer their services for a tumble, of course, but they cost little coin. However, they make much more than,” he paused for emphasis, “a barmaid.”
Eek!
He kept talking. “But there are those who cater to those of us who can afford the more skilled of their set, and they are quite talented. Some are even famous. Celise is one of them.”
“That’s crazy,” I whispered.
“How so?” he asked.
“How not?” I asked back.
“This is not an answer to my question, poppy. Are whores not celebrated in your world?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Strange,” he muttered then focused on me. “There are men, and women, who holiday in Fleuridia just to visit Fleuridian whores. They are the best in the Northlands.”
“That’s…well, I guess I find that kind of shocking,” I told him.
“As I find it equally shocking providing such a service and being celebrated for your talent in doing it would be looked down upon in your world, as your reaction clearly states they are.”
He looked like he was disappointed in me.
“We’re not as free sexually as you are here, I’m getting,” I explained.
His eyes grew dark and I would know why when he inquired, “Do you feel guilt for what you do with me?”
“No,” I told him quickly.
“If our coupling would be looked down upon in your world, why not?”
“Because I enjoy it and I like you and I like spending time with you and being close to you. So much, if we were in my world, I wouldn’t care what people think.”
His eyes shot straight to tender and he said softly, “This is a good answer, my poppy.”
I felt the tenderness in his eyes sliding through my insides, however, I did feel it necessary to point out, “Just to say, the men who pay for it in my world, and the women who get paid, are what’s looked down on, Apollo. There’s more sexual freedom for those who are free to be…uh, sexually free.”
“Very odd,” he murmured and again focused more closely on me to say, “If Celise made you uncomfortable, my poppy, I apologize. She was not scheduled to meet me that night. However, she has favorite clients and I am one, so I’m not surprised.”
And I wasn’t surprised he was a favorite of the famous Celise whoever-she-was.
But I did wonder if he’d ever spanked her, drank adela tea with her or “explored” other things with her and I knew, for some reason, if he had, that would upset me.
A lot.
“Now, are we done with this topic?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered, not about to get into how much he explored the beautiful Celise.
His hands moved over my nightgown and he urged, “Then let’s move on to the other ones so I can get this charming but entirely in the way nightgown off you.”
I was suddenly not all that fired up about the other ones since they were harder but also because I wanted him to get my nightgown off of me.
Nevertheless, I persevered by stating, “What happened to bring us back to Karsvall, you’ve not mentioned it again.”
“No,” he confirmed readily. “This is because naught is happening. We’re waiting for men and missives to arrive but I don’t expect any of either until tomorrow.”
I loved it that he explained that to me but that wasn’t where I was going.
“Thank you for sharing that with me, baby,” I whispered and his hands stopped roaming so his arms could wrap around me again. “But that wasn’t why I mentioned it. I had a question.”
“And that question would be?”
“Well, the boys said frequently during dinner that night that we’re kind of at war.”
“Yes,” he stated.
“I’ve been thinking on it and that seems weird.”
“All of it is strange,” he agreed.
“No, I mean the part about being at war and that happening because someone attacked you and your family. I mean, a king somewhere, I would get. But why were you a target?”
His body went still.
Uh-oh.
“Apollo?” I called, even though he was right there. But his eyes had grown distant and I didn’t like that all that much.
He focused on me and I held my breath as he did this for a good long time without speaking.
I let out my breath when he broke his silence.
“There are two possible reasons for this,” he said.
“Okay,” I replied when he said no more.
“One is that I’m Queen Aurora’s strategist. I also served under King Atticus in this same position. This mostly included negotiations but there were skirmishes. Baldur was always conniving, he’d made some plays to wrest land from Lunwyn when he was the ruler of the now-gone Middleland. Most in Lunwyn don’t know about them because my men and I stopped them before they took hold.
”
“Oh,” I whispered, unsure about where this was going, though still thinking it was pretty cool badass Apollo and his badass boys nipped that shit in the bud.
“Frey is a raider,” Apollo continued. “He is not a soldier. Lahn is a warrior but his country in the Southlands is much different than those in the Northlands. His army is highly trained, highly skilled, large in number and thus unbeatable.”
“Right,” I mumbled, thinking this was good news.
“What I’m saying is, although Lahn is very intelligent, and strategy would factor into what he does, his warriors are so trained, they need little direction, and so mighty, they always best a challenge. They’re known for it. This leaves Tor, who is also a warrior and a strategist. However, against our foes, we must put all our best minds together and Queen Aurora called upon me to be involved from the beginning. This could have made me a target, as any ruler or high-ranking general would be.”
This made sense. It sucked, but it made sense.
“And the other possible reason?” I prompted
He held my eyes, hesitated, but still, he gave it to me. “It could be that you were the target.”
What?
And why?
I picked one question and breathed it out.
“What?”
“Baldur has reason to be angry with all the couples who were brought together over the worlds. And Minerva herself connived to keep Tor and Cora apart by splitting Tor’s soul and putting the other half in a woman from your world. This, we feel, is not a coincidence.”
Oh boy.
“And you and I are now a couple brought together over the worlds,” he concluded.
It felt good him saying we were a couple. We hadn’t been together long but the time we had been together was intense. So yes, definitely good.
It didn’t feel good me being a possible target of angry ex-rulers and she-gods, though.
“This doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy, Apollo,” I told him.
“It doesn’t me, either, poppy. But we can’t know why they do what they do. We can only guess. And the coincidence is not something we can ignore.”
“Does Baldur have reason to be angry with you?”
“Except for fighting in the war against the traitors who killed Atticus and imprisoned Aurora and Finnie, a war where his son was slain, not especially.”
Well at least that was good.
“And…um, does he have a reason to be angry with the other me?” I asked hesitantly and his arms gave me a squeeze.
“No. Although I have met him at a variety of state affairs, and at some of them Ilsa was on my arm. But their meetings would be brief and insignificant to a man like Baldur.”
I nodded.
That was good too.
Except for one thing.
“So, with the attack, it was probably directed at you,” I guessed.
It was his turn to nod. “I have been thinking on this, Maddie, as it doesn’t make sense. The only thing I can consider that does is that they fired their dart to make a statement. That being that they didn’t have to use the mightiest weapons in their arsenal to make their first strike. The men who attacked us in Vasterhague were skilled. I do not like to think, if you hadn’t intervened, how that would have ended.”
I knew my face said “I told you so” when his lips curled up and his eyes lit with humor so I decided not to say it out loud.
He kept going.
“Lees reports that the men here were equally skilled. Although, thankfully, no one was wounded, this was because my men are more skilled and also knew the lay of the land.” He paused before, his voice deeper and rougher, he stated, “And I do not like to think of what might have happened if that wasn’t the case.”
I shifted a hand to his neck. “Then don’t think about it, sweetheart.”
He held my eyes and again nodded.
“What I’m saying is, they took those attacks seriously. They did not send easily bested adversaries. They planned to succeed. And this would make quite the statement, that they could get to me, to you, to my children, invading my home and taking all of our lives without even using all the power at their command. It would be such a statement that it might strike fear. Frey, Lahn and Tor are not men who are easily cowed by fear or maybe ever cowed by it. But I think it’s safe to say, if their wives or families were in greater jeopardy than we originally thought, that would do it.”
The more he talked about these men, Frey, Lahn and Tor, the more I knew I would like them.
“Are we done with that topic?” he asked.
“Just one more thing,” I answered.
“Speak it,” he ordered and I grinned.
Then I queried, “Where’s Derrik? I’ve seen all the guys and not him since that night in the gardener’s shed.”
A shadow passed over his features before he replied, “He is away on assignment. A self-imposed assignment, but he is away on it.”
I didn’t get the feeling Apollo was happy about this.
“Self-imposed?” I asked.
“He was not commanded by me to take this assignment. I do not wish him on this assignment. He is under my command but he is still his own man. I had no choice but to let him go.”
I studied him closely.
“You’re worried,” I guessed softly.
“Indeed,” he agreed.
That meant I was now worried and I wanted to know more.
But I didn’t want to make Apollo tell me more when it was clear he didn’t like talking about it.
“Okay, then, let’s stop talking about that,” I offered.
“I would be obliged,” he accepted, his voice soft. “Now are we done with that topic?”
I nodded.
His hands started roaming.
“I have one more topic,” I reminded him.
“Speak of it quickly, I grow impatient,” he replied, his voice again low and rough but in a different way and this way I felt between my legs.
“Okay. Then, here it is. I made chocolate chip cookies,” I announced.
His hands stopped roaming and he blinked. “Pardon?”
“Well, they’re more like chocolate chunk since you don’t have chocolate chips here and I had to bash some chocolate to make chunks and some of the shards got in the dough so they’re kind of chocolate, chocolate chip coo—”
I was babbling
Apollo heard it and interrupted me with, “Cease. Explain. Clearly.”
See?
Arrogant.
Also dictatorial.
Unfortunately, still hot.
Whatever.
I sat up away from him and he let me. “Okay. Do you know what cookies are?”
He shook his head.
“Cookies are like little cakes. Except moister, richer, yummier. And the ones I made are the most favorite of most anyone in my world.”
“And you made these today?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
His face changed, his hands slid back up my sides but did that pulling me to him again and his voice was very low and rough when he queried, “For me?”
I held his gaze and whispered. “Yes. For you. And also for you to take to Christophe and Élan.”
His entire frame stilled.
Oh boy.
Okay, see, I had a plan.
Earn their hearts through their stomachs.
They were kids. That would work. Right?
When he said nothing, I said haltingly, “I, well…thought I would give them, um…a bit of my world. The kind of bit kids in my world like. And they might, uh…enjoy that.”
“You’re coming to meet them.” It was a question said in a statement.
“Yes, maybe…” I pulled in a huge breath and finished on a question, “The day after tomorrow?”
“We will dine together,” he decided.
Shit.
Crap.
Shit.
“Okay,” I mumbled.
Apollo wrapped his arms
around me. “They will like your cookies, poppy. They both have a weakness for sweets.”
I nodded.
He pulled me closer. “And they will like you.”
I swallowed.
“They will,” he pushed.
“Okay,” I muttered.
“This makes me happy, my dove,” he whispered.
Okay. Well.
Him being happy made me happy.
“Good,” I whispered back.
“Now have we covered everything you wished to discuss?” he asked, his hands beginning to roam again, his eyes warming, his lids lowering and all that was hot.
And him and all his masculine beauty in that bed with its cream eyelet duvet cover and pale yellow sheets with peach embroidery, his broad shoulders against the headboard, his chest right there, I suddenly had something else to discuss.
“I have one more topic,” I shared.
“Speak,” he ordered, and I smiled a small smile that for some reason made the warmth in his eyes fire.
I didn’t speak.
I reached for his wrists and wrapped my fingers around. I then pulled his hands from my body and stretched one of his arms along the top of the headboard, curling his fingers around the edge.
When my eyes went from his arm to his, I saw now they’d really fired. At seeing it, I fought squirming in his lap, took heart that he liked what I was doing, stretched his other arm out and did the same thing.
When I looked back at him, his eyes were ablaze and I couldn’t fight the squirm.
“You said we’d explore,” I whispered and his eyes scorched into me. “I want to explore.” I kept whispering.
He said nothing, just held my gaze, his burning into mine causing a burn in me.
“Will you hold onto the headboard while I explore, baby?”
At that, his eyes flared and his voice was a growl when he said, “For you, poppy, I’ll try.”
I felt my sex convulse at his answer.
“Thank you, honey.”
His look was so hot, making me so hot, I didn’t delay.
I put my lips to him explored.
Running them and my tongue up his neck, across his throat, along his collarbone, I moved down and added my hands. I traced the bulges of his pectorals with my lips then moved to his nipples. With my thumb rubbing one, my tongue lashed the other.
His hips bucked and a stifled groan rumbled in his chest.