Goddess of Light (Goddess Summoning #3)(29)

He shook his head and framed her face in his hands. "They're about you, though, aren't they? The swallow is you, and so is the woman who doesn't need another turn to cry."

Pamela could only nod.

"This kiss, this kiss!"

As if the song played only for them, Apollo pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He kissed her as a man wanting to keep his lover safe from pain and heartache and sadness.

Her lips parted and she accepted him, and as she did Apollo felt something open within him, like a latch had been unlocked and a trapdoor lifted, allowing what had been missing to fill his soul. Her arms crept up to return his embrace, and he forgot Mount Olympus; he forgot the modern world of mortals. His reality tunneled down to the taste and touch and scent of Pamela. Then she moaned and shivered, and the world rushed back. The fountain was dark again, and the wind and rain had intensified.

"You're cold!" He rubbed her arms, thinking himself an insensitive clod. While he'd been lost in her, she'd become waterlogged. "We need to get back. You could become ill out here."

"Phoebus." She pulled on his arm, keeping him under the little tree. "It's true that we should probably go back to the hotel, but I wasn't shivering because of the rain. And you should know that even though I might look a little" - she wiped at a drop of rain that crept down her forehead and grinned - "waterlogged, I'm not some delicate hothouse flower. I won't melt, and I've loved every second of kissing you in the rain."

He felt the tightness in his chest dissolve as his heart acknowledged the warmth of her gaze. He wasn't the only one who felt their connection - she was in it with him. And somewhere in the depths of his mind his instinct whispered to him that this is what men and women do... this was the mortal dance of love.

"But I am totally soaked, and it doesn't look like it's letting up," Pamela said, glancing out at the downpour that surrounded them.

Apollo followed her gaze. He could, of course, keep the rain from touching them all the way back to Caesars Palace - but there was no possible way he could explain such a feat to Pamela.

"I'll tell you what - I'll race you back to the Palace." Pamela grinned at him.

"You can not run in those shoes," he said, pointing to her feet.

"Well... we are in Las Vegas. What would you like to bet on that?"

Without waiting for his answer, she dashed, shrieking, out into the rain. Laughing, Apollo followed her, staying just far enough behind her so that he could watch the roundness of her bu**ocks jiggle as she ran with cute, feminine little steps.

Apollo couldn't recall the last time he had felt so young or so happy.

Neither of them were paying attention to the street. He was watching her. She kept glancing back over her shoulder at him.

"I'm winning the bet!" she shouted at him.

A sound made her look in front of her, and she gasped. The street! She'd completely misjudged how close it was. Trying to pull herself to a stop, her stiletto heel caught in a crack on the edge of the curb. Helplessly off-balanced, her arms windmilled as she tried to right herself. Twisting, Pamela felt a horrible, sickening pain in her ankle, and then she toppled forward.

Always before when terrible things had happened, like the death of Hector or when Artemis lost her temper with Actaeon, Apollo had noticed that time slowed, drawing out the event and letting it unfold before him like pine resin beading and then traveling in a tedious trail down the rough bark of a tree. Not so with Pamela's accident. Everything sped up with superhuman force. One instant she was smiling coquettishly over her shoulder at him, the next she was teetering at the edge of the street. She twisted forward towards the street surging with metal monsters. Apollo read her death in the air around them. There was no time for rational thought. His body acted on impulse guided by his immoral heart that had suddenly felt shattered at the thought of losing her.

"No!" Apollo leapt towards her with speed that was blinding to the moral eye. He flung out his hand, palm open. His shout caused an instant sonic blast, which created an audio tidal wave, buffeting the cars away from the path of Pamela's falling body.

She didn't touch the hard, wet concrete. He couldn't allow that. With superhuman speed, Apollo caught her in his arms and pulled her back onto the sidewalk.

Tires screeched to a halt. There was a vague crashing sound of one car hitting another. Honking horns blasted the night. But through the rain and wind, no one seemed to notice the god who had caused it all. The god who now knelt on the flooded pavement cradling a mortal woman close to his chest.

"My ankle," Pamela's voice shook with pain and shock. "I think it's broken."

Apollo gently pulled her slender foot from the ridiculous shoe. As he did so, he felt through her soft skin to the bone that had been twisted until it snapped, and he cringed, imagining her pain. Quickly, his hand brushed over her ankle, and he silently willed the nerve endings to cease their shooting agony. Almost instantly he felt her breathing deepen as she relaxed. In one smooth motion, Apollo lifted her into his arms, and the God of Light strode like a shaft of blazing sun through the rain and wrecked cars.

Later, witnesses of the bizarre pileup on the corner of Las Vegas and Flamingo would talk of a tall man they had glimpsed through the rain that night. They would say that they thought he carried a woman, but they couldn't be sure, because all that they could remember was the odd way his eyes had flashed. They would also all swear that they couldn't tell exactly what he looked like because his body was surrounded by a light that made him look like he was glowing with the fire of the sun.