Apollo settled up the tab while Jacinda went to use the ladies’. He’d watched her walk away and, aside from enjoying the truly remarkable view, he’d noted her steady stride. She’d sobered up.

This woman was something else. Cover-model gorgeous, centerfold body, tongue as sharp and quick as a whip but without nastiness. Just good-natured snark and a keen bullshit detector. He was captivated.

Goddamn, it was good to be into a woman for her own sake, just because she was hot and interesting. Bantering with Jacinda, he’d understood just how long it had been since he’d flirted with a woman for the enjoyment of the game. Not trying to get something from her—other than the obvious. Not softening her for her secrets, just trying to get to know her. Interested in getting to know her. Years. It had been years since he’d had the energy or attention to spend on just hitting on a hot chick. Years since he’d fucked, or flirted with, anyone but women with access to information he needed—or sweetbutts, with whom flirting was unnecessary.

He wasn’t sure he really had the energy or attention now, but he was going for it. He liked this woman.

She’d picked at her garden burger, which was a bit disappointing. He liked women who ate like human beings rather than birds. But she’d hit the chips as hard as he had, and put down a couple pint glasses of ice water after her last Sea Breeze, so he felt like he could proceed without being a dick.

Still, he was tempted to get her number, kiss her good night and send her home on her own. A cheap fuck was staring to sound, well, cheap.

With the tab settled, Apollo turned his attention to her friend. Ryan. The band had finished for the night, and he sat next to the old guy who’d played fiddle. A casual eye would see nothing but two guys who happened to have seats beside each other at a small table around which six people had crowded. But Jacinda’s remark that Ryan was dating the fiddle player had Apollo observing their body language through a different lens.

He didn’t give two wet shits if they were gay, but Tulsa was not San Francisco. Apollo found it interesting to see how people who didn’t fit the norm managed to get on with the business of living lives on the margins.

Through the lens of knowing, Apollo could see that Ryan’s eyes lingered like maybe one second longer on the fiddler than on anyone else. He could see that he laughed just a bit louder, he leaned toward his guy when he talked to the group. All the signs he’d notice between a man and a woman, but subtle enough to be invisible to people who saw only through the lens of their own experience. Interesting.

Frankly, he was just glad the guy wasn’t in his way.

Jacinda strode up—steady and strong—and stood behind the chair she’d occupied. Standing there, her torso was just about eye level, and he couldn’t help but look. That dark red halter fit her like a glove, and those leather jeans? Fuck. He’d known women who wore leather pants—several of the sweetbutts did, and leather was practically a uniform at Maddie’s place—but Jacinda wore them differently. They weren’t so tight they seemed surgically sealed to her body. They hugged her just right, gave in just the right places. She wore them comfortably.

Catching his eye with a sardonic gleam, she asked, “You ready?”

“Yes, I am.” He got up and led her through the waning flow of people who meant to hang on until last call.

Out on the sidewalk, the humid air settled over them with a peevish huff of midnight cool. Jacinda brushed her hair back with both hands, giving her head an absentminded shake so that the thick, straight mass swung like satin across her bare back.

Damn, he wanted to wrap that around his hand and pull.

She pointed toward the street. “That’s me right there.”

He looked; she’d indicated the unremarkable silver SUV he’d parked his bike in front of. Grinning, he nodded at his Harley. “And that’s me.”

“Huh. Convenient.”

An uncomfortable moment ensued where they just stood there. Apollo felt awkward about the next step. He fucked chicks probably five nights of every seven, or at least got blown, but that was either a sure thing or some kind of balancing act. Now he was caught between the motivation of his particular interest in this woman and the lack of ulterior motive as a guidepost for how to behave.

Jacinda broke the stasis. She turned and faced him straight on. “If we’re doing this, let’s be clear. I’m not going to your place, and you’re not coming to mine.”

He grinned over her shoulder at the SUV. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d fucked on wheels. Or the fiftieth.

“Yeah, you’re not getting in my truck, either.”

Knowing better than to assume she meant to get fucked on his bike—he’d done that, too, but only twice, and it had been a long time, because that wasn’t the kind of thing you did with just anybody—he was out of ideas. She clearly wasn’t a bathroom or back alley fuck—and, tonight, neither was he. She deserved some privacy, and he wanted it.

“Oookay. You got a pup tent in the back of your truck or something?”

He liked it when he made her laugh. That beautiful full mouth turned up and opened wide, and her cheeks rose up like round little apples. “You’re cute, Adonis.”

Ouch. “Apollo,” he corrected.

She twinkled at him. “I know. Follow me on your steel penile enhancer. I know where to go.”

Without another word, she spun on her boot heel and headed to her truck. She’d caught him flatfooted, and she was only a step from the curb when he reached her, grabbed her arm, and spun her around, putting her back against the side of her truck.

Her sudden tension and the aggressive—no, hostile—twist of her features surprised him, and she slammed her hands on his chest, holding him off.

“Don’t fucking manhandle me, asshole.”

He’d meant the move to be compelling, teasing, sexual. He’d only meant to kiss her and make her eat that crack about his bike being a ‘penile enhancer.’ But she was pissed, and the night was about to blow up right in his face. That bothered him a whole lot, and he backed off. “Sorry.”

“This was a shitty idea. I’ll see you around.” She pushed on his chest again, and he fought off the need to hold her in place with his body. He stepped back and she turned, heading for the curb again.

“Jacinda, wait.”

She stopped and looked back at him, waiting without patience. The muscles in her back and arms flexed tautly, and the streetlights carved shadows around their contours. Shit, she was fairly cut.

“I ... didn’t mean that to be aggressive. I wasn’t trying to force you. Honest.”

“Then what did you mean it to be?”

He stepped closer and held out his hand. “Can I show you?”

“If you try to hurt me, I will make you pay.”

“I believe it.” He did. He was twice her size, but he believed her. Suddenly, she stood there like an Amazon warrior girded for battle.

She took his offered hand, and he tugged—gently, this time—until he had her, again—willingly, this time—against her truck. He slid his hands over her jawline until his fingers were full of her hair, thick and cool and glorious.

With his mouth a molecule from hers, he murmured, “I just wanted to assure you that I don’t need a penile enhancement. Steel or any other kind.”

She resisted the kiss at first, nothing at all like their first liplock inside the pub, but she didn’t fight him, and he was patient. When she sighed and gave in, sending her tongue to meet his, hooking her hands over his arms, he let his hips fall forward and pressed his body fully to hers, making his assurance.

Her body writhed against his, and she made a feline sound. A purr.

He pulled back, sucking her bottom lip until he couldn’t. “We still on?”

She nodded, staring hungrily at his mouth.

“Lead me away, Catwoman.”

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

She led him to the Osage Motor Inn, a grimy dump of a motel just off the interstate. Aside from the occasional trucker who was too tired to drive three more exits to the Super 8, the only people who stayed here were doing something they couldn’t do anywhere nicer.

Which, Apollo supposed, was them. Still, he was disappointed. He hated this place. It was one step up from a back-alley fuck.

He dismounted and automatically moved to shrug off his kutte—it was a club rule to show colors whenever they rode, unless they were undercover for some reason—but he’d left it in his saddlebag, uncomfortable with Jacinda knowing his affiliation. That was a weird feeling, and he didn’t know where it came from. He was proud to be a Bull.

If this was a one-night stand, it was no big deal, but if it wasn’t, it was a secret, and one he didn’t understand why he’d held back.

She was almost to the office when he realized she meant to pay for the room.

Hell, no.

He ran after her and just edged her out at the door. “I got this.”

“No—”

“I got it.”

Those dark eyes became slits, but she backed off. He went in and paid for the room. The guy at the desk asked if he wanted it for the full night. Just to put the point on how tacky this place was. He booked the full night, paid cash, and took the plastic fob. Even that was grimy, and the bottom was chipped off.

When he came back out, she stood right where he’d left her, arms crossed. Moths, midges, and mosquitoes flicked around the buzzing yellow light in the eaves, and a bug zapper fired off every few seconds as something got an electrified kiss.

He dangled the fob. “Room 2.”

“Before I go in there with you, I need to set some ground rules.”

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t like to get knocked around. No choking, no spitting, no slapping. No means no. If I want something more, I’ll say so. If I want you to stop, you better fucking stop.”

Apollo had never had a woman read a rule book to him in advance. “I told you before, I don’t need to take advantage, and I don’t need to force. If you don’t want something, I won’t do it. Are you sure you want this at all?”

He read signals pretty well, but this woman was crossing all his wires. One thing seemed clear, though: some asshole had done something bad to her.

“I want it. I want you. I just want everything good and clear up front.”

“Works for me. Can I ask you something, in the interest of getting everything good and clear up front?”

“Sure.”

“Is there somebody you don’t want to know about what we’re doing?”

She frowned. “No. Why?”

“This is the kind of place you go when you don’t want people to know what you’re doing.”

That earned him one of her beautiful grins, and she stepped close and set her hands on his chest. “Do you feel tawdry, Adonis?”

He’d figured out what she was doing with the ‘Adonis’ thing. He couldn’t say he liked it, but for now, he’d let it go—and get another ‘Catwoman’ in sometime tonight. “Just don’t much like secrets—keeping them or being them.”

Her smiled became more thoughtful. “You give interesting answers. You’re not a secret.” She took his hand and pulled his arm straight, then turned it so the bull’s head was up. “You’re a Brazen Bull. Not sure how I feel about that. Neutral territory seems best.”

So much for keeping that one on the down low. She was almost as observant as he. Thinking of the hellfire that had rained down on the club because of Griffin’s girlfriend’s undisclosed affiliations, he asked, “You tied to anybody that wants trouble for the Bulls?”

“No. But trouble seems to find you.”

No denying that, lately. He laughed and dangled the room key. “We doing this?”

She took the key, and he followed her into Room 2 of the Osage Motor Inn.

It was exactly what a room like this in a place like this was: worn, low-pile carpet of an indeterminate color chosen to hide stains, a queen-size bed covered with an ostentatiously elaborate pattern, also chosen to hide stains, pressed-board furniture with faux wood veneer, most of it bolted to the floor or the walls. The window-unit air conditioner rattled as it tried to combat the heat and humidity, and the room had a damp feel and a rusty, metallic odor from the overworked condenser.

But it was clean enough, or it seemed so. Better not to blacklight the place.

Jacinda set her handbag—more like a messenger bag—on a thinly upholstered chair by the window and drew the flimsy curtains closed.

Still feeling that awkward sense of not knowing what the next move should be, Apollo flipped a switch by the door, and a hanging lamp, just a bubble-glass red ball suspended by a chain from the stained acoustic tiles on the ceiling, came on by the dresser. He flipped the other switch, and the two gooseneck sconces on either side of the bed went dark.

Now the room glowed dim and red, which seemed even tackier, but safer, too, somehow. Jacinda came to him. Bathed in that blood-red light, she seemed all the more a puzzle. Her dark eyes gleamed coal black.

The front part of her hair had been clipped back, off her face; now, she reached back and undid the clip, and a heavy drape of dark fell forward, obscuring half her beautiful face.

He brushed it back, savoring the weight of her hair over his hand, and she turned her face into his touch, brushing her lips over his palm.

“I’ve never met anybody like you,” Apollo marveled, trailing his thumb along her jaw, to her chin, down her throat.

“You don’t know what I’m like.”

In the pub, he’d enjoyed the way she’d deflected almost everything he’d said, he’d found it challenging, but now he felt impatient, wanted to admonish her to just let something be true, even if it wasn’t a fact, just for the moment, just for the mood.

So he’d shut her up. “I know enough.” He bent his head and covered her mouth with his, wrapping his arms around her, drawing her body tightly to his. Her soft skin smelled rich and spicy, a scent that gripped his cock and drew it full.

Their tongues wrangled and their moans filled the dank air of the room, and Apollo forgot all the unsettling things of this day, from the crap with Delaney and the Horde to Jacinda’s list of rules and the strange suspicion threaded through her interest in him. He even forgot where they were. Her arms wound around his neck, sleek and strong, and he dropped his hands to fill them up with her firm, leather-clad ass.

He picked her up and turned toward the bed. As her feet left the floor, she broke their kiss with a gasp.

“This okay?” Was this another thing on her list? Should he have asked first?

“Yeah. It’s hot.”

Grinning, he claimed her mouth again and made his way the few feet to the bed, wrapping her legs around his waist as he laid her down.

He worked his way downward from her mouth, tasting as much of her as he could—her throat, her shoulders, her chest. Pushing her halter top up and out of his way, he found pert, smallish tits, free of a bra. In the red light, he saw her dark little nipples pucker tightly and a wash of gooseflesh rise up over her skin.

When he took one into his mouth, Jacinda’s back arched dramatically, and her hands slammed onto his head. Her body writhed, keeping time with the sucking draw of his mouth, and she moaned lustily. Fighting against her clamped hands, he shifted to devote the same attention to her other pretty little tit, and used the chance to move his hands down her sides, letting his fingers feel the tautness of her body, the softness of her skin.

He found the fly of her pants and worked them open. Releasing her delectable nipple with a loud pop, and smiling at her responding whimper, Apollo laved his tongue downward, over her ribs, across her belly, into her belly button, and worked her pants down from her hips. As he hovered over her pussy, her hips came up high, seeking his kiss. He conceded, pressing his mouth to the slight dip low on her belly, just above her pubic bone. But he didn’t give her more, not yet. What he wanted was to taste all of this woman, to feel every pore of her soft flesh, taste every drop of her sweetness. He was here for her, only for her, not looking to get anything from this encounter but pleasure for them both, and the freedom in that intoxicated him as much as the spice of her fragrance.

He stood up and worked her pants all the way down, pausing to figure out her boots—they zipped—and lose them and her socks as well, until she lay spread before him, glowing like a ruby, with her halter pushed up high on her chest. As he watched, she rid herself of that, too, and was completely naked, her hair flowing out in all directions around her head, like a Gorgon, but beautiful.

“You are fucking gorgeous, Catwoman. Look at you.”

She answered by stretching luxuriously and smoothing a hand down her belly to the tightly trimmed bit of dark hair between her legs.

“I want to see you,” she purred.

Pulling his wallet out first, he pinched the short strip of condoms and set them on the bed, then shed his clothes as quickly as he could, tossing them wherever, keeping his eyes on the beauty laid out before him.

“Look at you,” she breathed. “It’s like Zeus sculpted you with his own hands.”

“The Greek god thing is gonna be a shtick with you, isn’t it?”

She grinned. “Your name is Apollo. I didn’t start the Greek god thing.”

“If it means you like looking, I guess I’m okay with that.” He eased onto the bed and over her lithe form, skimming himself up so that every inch of his progress was mapped along the contours of her supple skin, until he was face to face with her, framing her head with his forearms, pushing his hands into her hair.

“I like looking.” Her smile had evaporated as he’d slid up her body, and she stared at him now with surprising solemnity. Apollo had the feeling that she peered through his eyes, seeing more than he chose to show. For a moment, he felt nearly paralyzed.

He blinked, interrupting her gaze. “Where did you come from? Who are you?” he whispered. She was right—he didn’t know her, knew nothing but her name, but shit, he wanted to.

Leaving his questions to float in the air around them, she snaked her arms around his neck and lifted her head, covering his mouth, pushing her tongue between his lips, silencing him.

He closed his fingers, making fists in her hair, and took over the kiss, changing the join of their mouths so that he was in control. Jacinda writhed under him, digging her nails into his neck, hooking her leg around his, and bucked forcefully. Dimly, lost in the sensations that blazed between them, Apollo comprehended that she wanted something to change, and he eased his hold on her. But he couldn’t bring himself to give up her mouth.

At the moment his body relaxed, she bucked again and nearly succeeded in flipping him over. He was too much bigger than she was for that to work, but it got through his need-fogged brain, and he rolled to his back, bringing her with him. If she wanted to mount him, he’d be more than happy to be her ride.

She pulled back, out of that kiss, and Apollo tried to keep her, vaguely recognizing the loud, apish grunt as his own. But she rose up, tossing her head so that her hair flew back, and straddled him, her back straight and her tits high.

Apollo fixed on that marvelous sight, her form bathed in red. He reached for her tits, but she caught his hands in hers, sliding her fingers between his, pushing them down to the bed.

Now she hovered over him, her nipples grazing his chest, her face above his, that hair closing them up together, reducing the world to the space between their locked eyes. Shit, she was seducing the hell out of him.

“Let me touch you,” she breathed, tracing the edge of his beard with velvet kisses that made his cock bob and weep. He was caught between her strong thighs, the heat of her pussy was just inches away, and the part of him that wanted her most urgently strained toward her.

Feeling thick and stupid with lust, he nodded, and she let go of his hands. He left them where she’d put them and let her have her way.

With fingers like feathers, she skimmed from his palms along the angled length of his arms, her touch swirling to his shoulders, her nails grazing him occasionally, unpredictably, her mouth quirking up at the corners each time her touch made him twitch or groan or both. He was ticklish around the underside of his upper arms, and when she noted that fact, she lingered there until he jerked and flailed with tortured pleasure. Then she moved on with a Cheshire grin.

At his shoulders, she traced the lines of his muscles. She moved on to his chest and studied the tribal tattoo that swept over his left shoulder and pec, then resumed her cartography of his body, sweeping her fingers under the edges of his pecs, then down the recessed line bisecting his belly, over the ridges of his abs.

Her eyes followed the path of her fingers. “You are ridiculously beautiful,” she mumbled.

“So are you. I want to touch you, too.”

She shook her head. “Not yet. You got a taste. Now it’s my turn.”

“I want more. I want to eat you out and make you scream.”

“I don’t scream.”

He grinned. “That a challenge?”

“No. Point of fact.” Ending her tactile study of his body, she leaned over and picked up one of the condoms. As he watched her tear the packet open, Apollo felt a spasm of disappointment. He wanted more before they got to the big finish.

When she took hold of him, though, and bent to swirl her tongue around his tip, that faint regret slipped away. He lifted his hips, his body seeking of its own volition to get deeper into her mouth, but she backed off and rolled the latex over him.

She took her time, made the act a series of slow caresses, and the need to be inside her had him nearly crazy. As she finally mounted him, lowering slowly down his shaft until he felt her firm ass on him, he wrapped his hands around her thighs. He needed to touch her.

Laying her hands over his as if to keep him from moving elsewhere, she began to move, undulating on him at first, not moving up and down but twisting her body so that it clenched and circled around his cock. Holy hell.

Apollo loved to put a woman on top and let her ride, but even in that position, he was usually in charge, using his hands to direct the way she moved on him, taking over when he wanted to. Jacinda was running this rodeo and making him remain passive, and it was both outrageously hot and overwhelmingly frustrating. She held his hands so all he could do was grip her thighs, and she twisted and shimmied, keeping him deep, stimulating him to madness, but not allowing him the full, thrusting motion that would bring him off.

Or her, for that matter. He could see it in her expression—her eyes clenched shut, her brow furrowed, her teeth clamped on her bottom lip—she had herself at the edge but wasn’t going for climax.

He let her go as long as he could stand it—longer, even—and then, “Jacinda, fuck!” He bucked his hips, hard enough that he nearly dislodged her, and powerful sensation exploded through him, with so much force that he almost came right then.

Her eyes flew open as she sucked in a loud breath—not a scream, but satisfying nonetheless—and let go of his hands. He bucked again, finding her deepest limit—oh sweet fuck he needed to come—and she fell forward, onto her hands, hovering over him, her dark eyes wild and gleaming with red fire.

He bucked again, and she made that loud, surprised, moan of a gasp again.

“Jacinda ...” He had to push the name out through a throat that had turned to iron with the effort of holding back.

“Oh fuck yes,” she gritted back at him. “Do it, fucking do it!”

He slammed his arms around her, clamped his hands around her head, flipped them over, and let his need take the reins. Her long legs twisted around him and she held on, her eyes grabbing on to his and not letting go, while he fucked them both as hard as he’d ever fucked anyone in his life.

When she came, she didn’t scream, but it was beautiful. Her body went rigid, and she clung to him with so much fervor that she lifted right off the bed, arching her neck back so that he could see her pulse tearing at the sides of her throat. He felt the convulsions all through her, all around him. Her body held him, heated him, drew him deeper and deeper until he exploded too, with a shout that hurt his throat and might have been something close to a scream itself. His brain sparked out and his vision went dim, and they both hovered there, in a kind of orgasmic rictus, until it let go all at once, and Apollo dropped them both to the bed.

“Dear God,” he gasped, pulling out and collapsing on his back at her side.

“Yeah. Shit,” was her breathless answer.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

When Apollo woke, bright sun pushed around the edges of the window and filtered through the insufficient drapes. The squalid room stank of overworked air conditioner and wild sex. They’d gone at it twice more after that first time, exhausting his supply of condoms. Just exhausting his supply, period.

The pillow beside him was empty, still printed with the shape of the head that had lain there. A single strand of long, dark hair curled over the stiff white pillowcase. Smiling as memories woke and stretched through him, stirring mind and body to life, he picked up that silky thread and twisted it around his finger.

The room had the solid, inert feeling of emptiness. He listened for a second or two, seeking the sounds that would put her in the bathroom.

But no, he was alone.

This was not how things went for him. He usually woke alone, yeah, but because he’d left the girl’s house and gone back to his own. Or because he’d sent the sweetbutt out of the clubhouse crash pad. Not because he’d been left.

It had been a one-night stand, right? That had been the plan, right? A meaningless fuck. He’d only just met her at Donovan’s. So what if she’d left? That was for the best. No complications, no awkward small talk now, no wondering if he should buy her breakfast or whatever. None of the bullshit that had forged his choices about being the one who controlled the leaving. This was all to the good, waking up alone without any nonsense to deal with.

He sat up and wiped his hands over his face, trying to get control over the weird blue tint of his mood. The scent of her was all over his hands, his beard, everywhere.

A piece of paper was tented on the nightstand, his name written across it in blue ink and a confident feminine hand. He reached for it and turned it over. Just a piece of lined paper, the top tattered, torn from one of those cheap spiral notepads.

Drawn in the center was an omega symbol, embellished with two little triangles on top, and six angled lines in the middle. Cat’s ears and whiskers. Below that was the letter J, scrawled with a flourish.

Omega. The last letter of the Greek alphabet. It meant ‘the end.’

Apollo wadded the paper into a tight ball and threw it across the room.