"Freely," he added.

"Yes."

"With abandon," he finished and he didn't hide this pleased him as well.

I said nothing but I felt a lot. G.o.d, so much. It was almost impossible to contain.

He pulled me deeper into his body and again shoved his face into my neck. "This makes me happy."

Oh G.o.d.

"I'm glad, Lo."

His mouth went back to my ear. "Is my dove happy?" he asked tenderly and I bit my lip and felt even more.

So much more, it was devouring me.

And I didn't mind fading into it.

That shook me too.

My fingers tightened into his forearms and I answered, "Yes, I'm happy, Apollo."

He said nothing for long moments. He just held me intimately, pressed close, both of us on our knees.

Finally, he broke the silence. "You're seeping. I will wash you and we will sleep."

"Okay," I agreed.

That got me another squeeze and a kiss on the neck.

Then he moved away to settle me gently in the bed and he bent to brush his lips on my jaw before he left me.

Then he set about undoing me.

And he did this by washing me, sliding my nightgown on me, smoothing his hands over the material then joining me in the bed, pulling the covers up to my shoulders and gathering me close, tangling me up in him. He did all this tenderly, with that look I felt in my belly and around my heart on his face.

He also did it like I was breakable, but precious.

Cherished.

No one had touched me that way.

Not in my life.

He held me tight to him as he rolled side to side to turn out the gas lamps beside the bed, leaving us with nothing but the firelight.

When he settled us on our sides, he drew me even nearer and I felt his lips at the top of my hair.

"I tell you now, my poppy, for years, I never thought I would again be happy. Never again." He tucked me closer and finished on a rough whisper. "So I never imagined I could be happier."

At his words and all they meant, my heart slammed in my chest, but I burrowed deeper, shoving my face in his throat, unable to say anything. Only able to feel.

"Sleep, Maddie," he murmured.

"Okay, honey," I forced out.

I felt his lips leave my hair and he kept one arm around my shoulders, holding tight while the other one moved down my back to smooth over my bottom, cupping me there lightly as if he wished to sooth the warmth that his hand left there. Warmth I didn't mind in the slightest.

I should have slept. Everything I knew, everything I'd learned, everything that was me told me to keep my mouth shut.

But in his arms, all he'd said, all he'd done, all we gave each other, I didn't.

My voice so quiet, it was even difficult for me to hear, I told him, "All my life, I've never been happy. So I never imagined even being that way. Until now."

He heard me.

I knew because that got me another powerful squeeze that took my breath away and I felt his lips back at my hair.

"I wish you to share why this was with me, Madeleine."

"I will, honey," I wheezed.

He heard the wheeze and loosened his arms.

"Not now. Now we sleep," he commanded and at his arrogant, bossy command, I smiled against his skin "Right," I muttered.

"But I want you to sleep knowing how much it means to me that I've made you happy."

I took in a trembling breath and to let him know I knew how much it meant, and hopefully let him know how much what he said meant to me, I pressed my lips to the skin of his throat for a kiss. Then I turned my head and pressed my cheek at its base.

He continued to hold me close.

I burrowed closer, tightening my arms around him.

And I slept.

Chapter Sixteen.

Skulking "I cannot believe we're doing this."

That was Meeta.

"Shh!"

That was Loretta.

We were skulking through the forest toward the main house.

We were doing this because Apollo told me two things the night before.

One, the men he was waiting for had arrived, they'd been set to patrolling and thus all of Ulfr land was now protected. This meant it was safe for us to leave the house and wander around without an escort. Apparently his soldiers had been out on leave (kind of, I had a feeling "leave" meant "leave on missions Apollo didn't think it necessary for me to know" and I didn't really want to know so I was okay with that) but now they were back.

Two, he'd given the children my cookies and they'd love them.

"It's lucky I had one before I gave them to Christophe and elan," he'd told me, grinning. "For when I went back for more, they were gone."

This made me happy. Not only that the kids had liked them but also that he'd gone back for more which meant he liked them.

That night, I was to have dinner with them.

Suffice it to say, I was freaking out.

I wanted to ask Apollo for one more day (or seven of them) in which I could make them a variety of things. Snickerdoodles. Chocolate fudge. Lemon meringue pie. And I wanted to do this because I wanted them good and primed to meet me.

But I'd told Apollo I'd have dinner with them that night and I couldn't go back on that now. He was excited (in his bada.s.s other world soldier type of way) for me to do it so I had to do it.

For him.

But in thinking about it (okay, fretting about it), I decided that I couldn't walk into a room with them and keep my cool.

Unless I saw them again.

Therefore, during dinner one night when Apollo offhandedly told me their schedule-breakfast with him, studies, lunch, outdoor activities then back to studies before he spent time with them in the evenings-I was skulking through the forest with Meeta and Loretta in order to spy on them during their "outdoor activities" (whatever those were).

For moral support, I'd brought Meeta and Loretta along.

For obvious reasons, I had not shared with either woman, or Cristiana, that I was from another world. But knowing I looked so much like the other Ilsa, in other words, their dead mother, Loretta got me and understood my concerns about how the kids would react to me (if not all my concerns about why I was the way I was about them).

Meeta, however, watched me shrewdly in a way that felt weirdly like she'd figured things out, something she couldn't possibly do as, according to Apollo, only those who needed to know about the two worlds knew (with the warning I was to keep it that way, no matter how close I grew to the women).

That said, Meeta had agreed to go, if reluctantly. Though, mostly this was because, having been born and raised in the sun, heat and sand of the Southlands (this I knew because she'd described it), being out in the cold was not one of her favorite things.

So now we were skulking.

I'd been reduced to skulking.

I felt I should be slightly embarra.s.sed about this but mostly I was anxious about dinner that night and I didn't have it in me to be both embarra.s.sed and anxious. Therefore anxious won out.

"They can hardly hear us from this distance," Meeta pointed out to Loretta as I kept moving ever closer, using the horse tracks in the snow as my guide to the house.

"You never know," Loretta returned.

"Do they have unnatural hearing?" Meeta shot back.

"Not that I know of," Loretta replied.

"Then they will not hear," Meeta stated with clearly strained patience.

I was no longer listening to their somewhat ridiculous conversation, a conversation that would usually make me laugh, or at least smile.

In the last few days they'd had these a lot. This was mostly because Meeta was highly intelligent, highly logical and not overly emotional (or, at least, she didn't show it). She was like a Maroovian Spock. Loretta, on the other hand, was not stupid but she was excitable and emotional so she wasn't exactly Uhura or even Dr. McCoy. More like an honor roll cheerleader who'd been beamed aboard the Enterprise.

This made me Captain Kirk, for I was leading them on a misguided venture and I hoped, like Kirk seemed able to do, I could get us through it unscathed.

On this thought, I saw it through the trees.

The main house.

Karsvall.

And what a house.

I had taken not one thing in when we'd arrived there days before.

Now, as I cleared the trees but stood behind one, peered around it and stared, I had no choice but to take it in.

This was because it was ma.s.sive, long and four stories tall.

It was also made of the same lacy-carved, dark woodwork as the dower house but there was a lot more of it. Tons more.

The windows on the bottom floor were all arched and each as tall as a man. Along the front of the house there were decorative iron torches planted every three or four feet at a diagonal pointed away from the house. And on the second floor, every few windows, there were French doors that led to balconies with a carved wood bal.u.s.trade surrounding them.

I noticed, taking it all in as I moved behind a border of trees, that the whole thing cut stark in the white snow. All around it was cleared so the dark pines and leafless trees framed it from a distance making it look like something from a postcard.

I also noticed, as I got to the back, it was about symmetry.

The front had nothing leading up to it but a lane through a proud stand of pines that had clearly been planted in a way they looked like tall green soldiers at attention.

The back had matching gazebos, one on each side. Beyond the gazebos, there were large matching greenhouses with peaked roofs and ironwork shooting into the sky. And there was a line of short evergreen shrubs trimmed in perfect cones between the gazebos and the greenhouses, the shrubs delineating what my guess was the backyard, which was family-related, from what was probably more servant-related, the greenhouses.

And somehow, I had no idea how (they must have been dug by hand), two twin, rushing streams flowed in straight lines from the forest into a fountain that sat between the gazebos. Its waters brimmed forth from the tip of what looked like a carved marble saber. This water ran over frozen ice, the water and ice setting diamond twinkles into the sun. The streams also flooded out from the base of the fountain, going toward the house and disappearing under it.

I took it all in and found it breathtaking in its frozen serene simplicity.

But what stole my breath completely was seeing Christophe wearing a mini-me Apollo outfit including a long cape. He had a bow and arrow and was aiming at a target some distance away.

Not too far from him, elan was on her knees in the snow, not building a snowman but building what looked like a snow castle.

I noticed two things immediately.