He made no demur, no word of a reply, but stopped to pick up the briefs he’d dumped on the floor—the man was a pig, and it irked my OCD tendencies that were thousands of years in the making, but he was worth it.
Most of the time.
When the door opened and closed behind him, I pressed my forehead to the cool pane of glass and prepared myself to deal with whatever shit Apollo was bringing to my door.
After sucking it up and sucking it in, I retreated to the bedside table and picked up the file I’d brought from the office last night. I had intended to read it before I slept, but my cock and Lux’s had different ideas.
Was Cinderella DiStefano the reason Apollo was in the Hamptons?
It seemed likely.
In all the years I’d been running this place, he’d never once asked me to extend an invitation here. Though it was my business, everything Pollux, Castor, and I possessed was under the umbrella of his ownership. There was no refusing him, no denying him, and I’d done as I was told—informed the mother that there was a place here for her child to stay.
I didn’t deal with intake. My role here was administrative, as was Pollux’s. We worked mostly on this and the stud farm that was based on the property. The truth was, the rehab center didn’t take much work, but the stud farm did.
A part of me wished I’d taken note of the DiStefano girl’s visit. But as was my usual way, I evaded most things Apollo meddled in. I did my duty and little else.
Skimming through the report from the counselors, as well as the questionnaire she’d filled in, I saw nothing untoward. Then, when that train of investigation reaped no reward, I grabbed my phone and did the simplest thing—googled her.
I wasn’t surprised to see the articles about the crash. Nor was I shocked by the headlines.
DiStefano’s daughter’s near-death experience.
Only child of Ponzi schemer DiStefano in a dramatic car chase.
Con man’s daughter in near-fatal crash.
I’d known who she was when Apollo had made the request of me, but seeing her? That silky hair, her eyes like precious stones, and a face that would stop any man’s heart? I’d never realized that Apollo’s precious ‘cargo’ would be so…
So what?
Magnetic?
Because that was how she felt.
I’d never felt much affinity for females. I never seemed to be around any that weren’t outright bitches or simpering misses, delicate flowers or hard nuts to crack. But this female?
Jesus.
I knew Pollux had been rough last night because of her. I knew I’d wanted him to be that way because of her too.
Knowing she was in the west wing was hard. Ridiculously close and yet so fucking far away she might as well have been in China. I’d wanted her, had needed her to be in bed beside me, and that was enough to draw my suspicions. With Pollux feeling the same way, and now Apollo and Castor showing up here after the God had been away for close to two decades?
No.
Something was going on.
But even as I read the articles, I saw nothing amiss. Well, aside from the fact that her father had screwed hundreds of thousands of people out of billions of dollars. DiStefano had beaten Madoff to the top of the financial shit list. In fact, he’d made Madoff look softcore by comparison.
His wife and daughter had been cleared of his crimes, and though the police had confirmed that the crash Cinderella had been involved in was after a high-speed chase, where her drivers and guards had tried to avoid some nut intent on mowing her down, a crash that had put her in a coma and had killed the driver of her car, I saw nothing to connect her to Apollo.
I should just go downstairs. Go and face him, get answers to questions I didn’t know how to form yet, but I couldn’t.
Me. The mighty Achilles. Known for just one flaw. Yet here I was, hiding in my bedroom.
Talk about chicken shit.
Chapter Two
Ella
The house felt weird this morning.
And that wasn’t because I still wished a random sinkhole would open up and swallow me whole.
It just felt… tense?
No. That wasn’t right. As I tried to settle on what exactly was off about this place, I had to stick with energized.
Strange, I know, but that fit the best. It was like the air was turbocharged, on red alert or something. Like there was an expectancy in the air, and I didn’t like it.
I’d admit that I didn’t want to be here.
In fact, I’d prefer to be at the Dentist than have to stay here for however long my mother deigned to dump me in this place. Root canals weren’t fun, but neither was this shit.
Some people would have flourished here. Mary, my next-door neighbor along the corridor, was loving every minute of it. She’d been sent here by her daughter because she’d had a nervous breakdown when her son had come out as gay—yeah, messed up, but the truth nonetheless.
Then there was Erin, a soldier with severe PTSD, and whose nightmares could wake up our wing because he screamed the fucking place down. He was doing well here, too. When he’d first arrived, his night terrors had woken us all up twice a night. Then, after the second week, it was maybe twice a week instead.
Only Lizzy seemed to be struggling like I was. She was here to find herself after a messy divorce. In her forties, she was some kind of tycoon and her cell phone seemed attached to her hand.
One of the mentors—that was what the shrinks called themselves here—tried to take it from her because phones were a big no-no, but her visitors managed to sneak them in for her. It was pretty funny because the tug of wars over Lizzy’s cell phones never grew boring.
With only thirty people staying here as a patient, it was no wonder that the guy who apparently managed the place had known the guest list back to back. But it sucked that, of those visitors, just two of us were finding it hard to find our inner peace.
Seriously, my insides were at war. Peace was just too much to expect when everything that was me wasn’t me. I was Ella. I couldn’t remember my surname, couldn’t remember what I did or who my family was. I just knew I wasn’t Cinder-fucking-ella.
Who the hell called their kid that anyway?
Jesus Christ.
Even last night, in the depths of my mortification, it had been compounded by having to admit to my real name. Every time I told anyone, and to be fair, I didn’t do it often, I’d wanted to drop my face into my palms. How had the woman who’d once inhabited this body handled that name?
Dolly had to have some kind of Disney complex. Either that or it was just a cosmic joke at my expense.
The turbulence in the air only heralded some relief. Mommy dearest was due to visit any day, and that was always pretty traumatic. She looked at me with such expectation and I genuinely hated letting her down, but there wasn’t much I could do. She hugged me with such feeling, such warmth, that I immediately felt guilty for not being able to respond.
She and Cindy had evidently been close, closer than close, I figured, but I was hugging a stranger. I couldn’t imbue that kind of feeling into a hug when I didn’t know the woman. Even when I tried, she knew, and always left with tears pooling in her eyes and that made me feel shittier.
And dammit, I was sick of feeling shitty.
As I headed down the corridor of the west wing, I noticed all the doors were open which meant, as usual, I was the last to get up. The only rule that didn’t blow here? There were no set bed or wake-up times. We had the freedom to join whichever classes we wanted so long as we attended at least one a day, and could eat when we chose.
It was pretty much an extended vacation in that sense, and I knew I was bitching about that, but this place just put me on edge. Everything about it did.
In fact, the only times my nerves hadn’t been shot to shit were when I’d been in the stables, listening to hot guy one and two getting it on.
It was like I was yearning for something, and it wasn’t sex. Erin had already come-on to me,
and that dude was fine as hell. He had an ass tighter than a basketball. Yeah. Think about that. If I was strong enough to slam-dunk the dude, he’d probably bounce off that pert deliciousness. Yum.
Still, even though he’d tried and failed to entice me between the sheets, nothing had induced me to do it. Not even his come-to-bed eyes.
But these past few evenings, listening to two guys play hide the sausage?
Hot damn that had made the yearning pull ever tauter; except I didn’t really know what I was yearning for.
Huffing as I jogged down the arterial staircase to the circular foyer that was a study in white, I forgot that Cindy was a fucking klutz and fell down the last three steps. Jenny, the receptionist, immediately starting squawking as she rushed over to me and helped me up.
Cheeks burning, I mumbled, “Thanks, Jenny.”
“It’s a wonder you’re not covered in bruises,” she chided, eying me as I wiped myself down with my hands.
“I am.” I shrugged. “They just fade fast.”
She tutted, and that tut alone was proof of how many times I’d done that since I arrived.
Once a day for the past few weeks minimum.
Yeah. Cindy’s tits weren’t even the excuse. They didn’t change my center of gravity at all. She just had a habit of spending more time on the ground than upright.
With Jenny shaking her head at me, I waved her off, cheeks burning, and headed for the dining hall.
Contrary to the name, it didn’t look like something from a boarding school. It was pretty cozy for a space that served four dozen people. Each table and its corresponding set of chairs were unique with different colors, different textures and woods. It made each table feel like an island, and while no man was an island, I was starting to wish I was one.
The dining hall wasn’t empty when I stepped in, which came as a surprise. It was eleven after all. Most people weren’t as lazy as I was, but then, I seemed to be awake at night. Like it was my comfort zone or something. I half-wondered if I’d worked nights in my other life, and that was why I found it hard to get to sleep at regular hours, but also why waking up before eleven—which still felt pretty early for me, to be honest—was so damn difficult.
When I saw who my fellow diners were, I wanted to scream. The sinkhole had yet to appear, and rather than hide from this, rather than evade the confrontation, I stormed over to the table and growled at one of the guys I’d met last night.
I wasn’t the kind of person to take shit laying down, and the fact he was here when I almost always ate alone, spoke volumes. He’d been waiting for me. With a different buddy of all things.
“Look,” I barked at him, satisfied when he jerked in his seat in surprise, “if you want to hash this shit out, then that’s fine with me.”
“Excuse me?” He blinked at me, and I shot the stranger with him a look. When he stared back at me as though he’d never seen another female before, I felt my cheeks pinken.
I wasn’t a blusher. I knew that much. Maybe Cindy was, but I was in control of her autonomous responses now, dammit. I. Did. Not. Blush. So, why was I blushing now?
This stranger wasn’t the same as the one last night, the one with the attitude, the one called Owen. And that name didn’t suit him, by the way. He wasn’t an Owen. I didn’t know what he was, to be fair, aside from Ass.
As I stared at the stranger, though, something inside me settled. It was like when you ate a fry that went down the wrong way and scraped all down your esophagus. That fry felt like it had been traveling down my throat since I’d woken up four freakin’ months ago, and now? It had finally gone.
Those moments when heartburn finally dissipated?
When nausea disappeared?
All those things were akin to the relief my body felt at this stranger’s presence.
My instinct was to run. To evade whatever kind of voodoo was going down, then the guy from last night murmured, “Sol? What is it?”
Sol? As in Solomon?
These names didn’t feel right.
I couldn’t say why, but it was like how I felt about Cinderella. And not just because it was a dumbass name, but it just felt wrong. They rubbed me the wrong way.
“I’m not sure, Brends.”
Brends?
Who the fuck was Brends?
Dude last night had been Steven… At least, I thought that was right.
Shit, all these names were so fucking confusing.
But that was the least of my worries. A hot flash washed over me, and I suddenly felt too warm, like my skin was too small for my body. My heart began to race as Sol stood tall, all six-feet-eight-inches of solid deliciousness packed into a form that beat anything, anyone, I’d ever seen in my entire life.
My God, what was it with this place?
Was it a hot guy magnet? With Erin and these two, then the guy from last night? Well, two guys because, were they twins? I didn’t know for sure, but having so much eye candy in the same place was wrong.
Yes, I know that sounded like a complaint, and that’s because it was.
This much hotness around was just distracting.
Sol’s hair was a bit nuts. It didn’t suit him. Shaved at the sides, long on top so it flicked back into a quiff. It should have been longer, down to his shoulders. The corn-colored locks just perfect for me to hold onto when I directed that fine mouth of his to my clit, even better for me to keep him there until I was done with him.
The modern style was attractive, and it framed his handsome features, but I couldn’t help my mind’s eye from changing his look.
He wore a pair of jeans that screamed money, and his sweater? It looked like cashmere.
His eyes were a dark green. They reminded me of a crystal I’d seen in a nearby shop. Bloodstone. They ensnared me in their trap, held me hostage until I couldn’t look away, couldn’t pull back from him.
“Sol, what’s wrong?” inquired ‘Brends,’ but ‘Sol’ didn’t appear to be listening. He seemed as lost in this as I was. Well, whatever the hell this was. I figured he was as taken aback by it as me.
That relieved me, if I was being honest.
The guy screamed wealth, experience, and confidence. Pretty much everything I didn’t scream.
From this place and my hospital ward, I figured my family had money, but Sol? It seemed ingrained in him. That patrician nose had been born to sneer at the common folk and that mouth? Those dark pink lips had been forged to tighten with disdain.
Not that he was looking at me in that way, but I could sense what kind of man he was, and though I didn’t like what I sensed, my preferences didn’t seem to hold much sway at the moment.
“What’s happening?” I asked, voice hoarse.
“You feel it too?”
Was that a quiver I heard? No. It couldn’t be. This guy didn’t ‘quiver.’ Surely not.
“I-I don’t know what I feel,” I whispered, managing to take a step back, to force myself away from his table where I’d strode over, intent on hashing out my little ‘voyeur’ problem. I couldn’t pull back far though. My body wouldn’t let me. It was like he was a magnet and I was some puny iron filings in need of order.
And God, none of this made any sense!
Why weren’t my legs working?
Why couldn’t I turn away? Head to the table I’d claimed as my own since the first morning I’d arrived here?
And since when wouldn’t a body do what its owner demanded?
Beyond confused, I managed to tear my glance from Sol to the other guy who looked just as perplexed as me. Only this time, when I looked at him, truly looked, did I see that he was different from the man from last night.
Oops.
Yeah. Twins.
Sure, in the ways that counted he was identical. Black hair, rich amber eyes. But this one? He had freckles on his nose, and on either side of those haunting honey orbs, there were smile lines. Same with his mouth. Smile lines bracketed those firm lips like he was a happy guy where, by contrast, the one from last
night had seemed stern. Far more serious.
After speeding up like a horse at the Kentucky Derby, my heart finally seemed to slow down. To settle into a slower than usual beat.
“Who are you?” I asked, my gaze on the twin—because he had to be. “Do you work here like your brother?”
The guy’s brows rose. “My brother?”
“Yes. Your twin,” I ground out. Talk about stating the damn obvious.
“You’ve met Pol—I mean, Steven?”
I tilted my head to the side at that. I recalled, most definitely, one of the guys calling out the name Pollux in the throes. Why had he changed it to Steven? What the fuck was going on with all these damned names?
“Yeah. I’ve met him,” I retorted, tone gruff from a mixture of embarrassment and remembered lust.
“How did you know I wasn’t him? I mean, at first you didn’t…”
Sol cleared his throat, once again drawing our attention back to him. “They’re fully identical. It took me a long time to discern between the two.”
I would never know why I did it. It broke all the rules of polite society, and though being impolite didn’t necessarily bother me, the strangeness of my actions did. Yet, I couldn’t help myself.
I had to touch him.
I leaned forward and ran my finger over the side of his face where the crinkles at his eyes sat, then down to his mouth where his smile lines wrinkled at the corner of his lips.
When our skin touched, it was like it had been last night, when Owen had latched onto my wrist, and when this man’s brother, Steven, had rubbed my bottom lip.
Heart in my throat, I whispered, “Your brother doesn’t have these.”
The twin’s eyes widened, the rich blue eyes darkening with an emotion I couldn’t discern. Want? Lust? Need? Was it a mixture of all three? A combination that was set to destroy me? To shake the ground upon which I was standing?
At that moment, I knew I’d never been more vulnerable.
I’d woken up in a hospital bed, a mother at my side I didn’t know, a doctor telling me that I’d survived some kind of car crash I didn’t remember being in, and that I was lucky to have woken from a coma. I had endured months of PT, which I’d raced through, ignoring each and every one of the doctor’s prognoses to walk again when they said it was impossible.
The Sun Revolves Around Apollo (The Gods Are Back In Town Book 2) Page 4
