“Honest? With who?” My mind is a little fuzzy around the edges at this point; I’m like three margaritas in and feeling loopy as shit from it, which is exactly the point. Except, it does make it hard to follow conversation topics.
“Apollo. Mr. Kane. Tell him that you’re sorry and that you want to stick your tongue down his throat.” She picks up her drink and sucks on the salt rimming the edge. “I’m pretty sure he’ll figure out how to handle it from there.”
“I already told him I was sorry, and I can’t just tell my boss that I want to stick my tongue down his throat!”
Petulance warning ahead: I’m, like, the worst at saying sorry. No, I’m really, really bad at it. I already swallowed my pride enough to do it once today; I cannot imagine saying it again. I’d rather eat raw caterpillars than say I’m sorry twice. That’d be, like, awful.
Natalie glares her evil, do-what-I-say eyes at me. “Ashley, I know that you’d rather streak naked down Broadway Avenue than tell someone you’re sorry” — she’s right about that — “but in this case, I think it’s necess—”
She gasps and then her eyes cut straight over to mine. “Don’t look over there,” she hisses, her eyes darting back and forth between mine and something over my left shoulder, “but your Mr. Kane is heading our way.”
“What?” I whip my head around, which makes Natalie jerk my shoulder and turn me back toward her again.
“I told you not to look!” she hisses, staring deep into my eyes. “Just look at me. Don’t look around. Just stay calm. Nothing is wrong.”
Which, of course, makes me want to do nothing but look around and panic and freak out, but Natalie’s pinning me to my seat with her eyes so I just stare back, unblinking.
And then, he’s passing us. I can feel him even before I spy him out of the corner of my eye. He’s headed to the adjoining banquet hall. He must be a big man around here because they only use that place for large parties and there aren’t any today. So this guy can pretty much do what he pleases, I guess? Makes sense with a name like the Wolf of New York. The air just gets all electrical and hot and sparkly and I have a hard time breathing and I think that I should take a sip of my margarita, if only to have something to do with my hands while waiting for him to go, get out of ear shot, go somewhere else, which is when I swallow and send the margarita mix down the wrong tube.
Which is how I end up gasping, crying, and Natalie pounding and whacking me on the back as I try to learn how to breathe again.
Thank
Fucking
God
Apollo has already passed and thus missed his opportunity to perform CPR on me.
Or…
I think for a moment, as I’m hacking up a lung, that a mouth-to-mouth session with Apollo might just be worth sucking tequila and ice down into my lungs for.
Finally, when I can breathe again and the daggers of pain in my chest have eased, I grin at Natalie, wiping the tear off my cheek. “You, ma’am, have a full-on disaster area as a best friend. I hope you know that.”
She grins back. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
We suck at our new drinks for a minute—the waiter apparently taking my attempt at Death By Inhalation as being his cue to deliver more yumminess to our table—and then Natalie says, “So, what’s the chances that we run into our brand-new boss here tonight? I’m starting to feel like I’m in the middle of a romance novel.”
“Hmm…” I say contemplatively. Despite the cold of my drink, I’m happily warm and relaxed now. “This can’t be a romance novel; I’m not falling in love with Mr. Kane. I’d rather like to stick my tongue down his throat though, or at least have him spank me like the bad girl I am.”
“So more like one of those super sexy, insta-lust kind of novellas?”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding my head vigorously. “Definitely one of those. Lots and lots and lots of sex.”
Nat and I stare at each other for moment. “What are you still doing here?” she finally says and I stand up quickly, wobbling on my feet as I go.
“The heroine is off to fuck the hero,” I say, snagging my drink from the table and waving it around grandly.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want full deets in the morning.”
“Not a moment left out,” I promise, and then follow Mr. Apollo Kane.
38
Apollo
My fingers drift gently over the ivory keys as the employees of the bar work to clean up. They didn’t have anything here and this room isn’t supposed to generally open to the public. But I’m Apollo Kane. I do what I want.