Page 60 of Carry Your Debt

My eyes snag on the stack of pre-med textbooks.

Apollo.

“Yahtzee,” I crow, striding quickly across to the desk. Even before this paternity bombshell, he was their self-appointed leader. If they kept any records pertaining to their alliance in the Underworld—his room would be the perfect place to start.

I slide open the top drawer as carefully as I can, so as not to shift the contents inside. I doubt the Boys would go so far as to dust for prints, but they’d certainly noticed their shit being moved around. Inside are the usual homework suspects. Notebooks, stationary. A printed copy of this semester’s timetable.

But at the very back of the drawer, tucked behind a leather pencil case, sits a nondescript ring box.

My neck prickles as I reach for it.

A ring? For who?

Sloane?

Just as my fingers brush its velvet sides, however, I’m frozen by the distinct sound of a key turning in the front door lock. My eyes dart toward the bedroom door that’s now sitting ajar.

Fuck.Maybe I should have sent a text after they didn’t answer the door.

“Does this look like it’s been tampered with to you?” Apollo’s voice filters through the open floor apartment, a frown evident in his tone.

My fingers fly back to the sides of the open drawer, trying to lift it just slightly off its tracks, the goal being to slide it home as silently as possible. I curse inwardly when it doesn’t budge.

It’s Hermes’s voice that answers back, but it sounds forced with false humor. “Hmm, maybe? I was pretty wasted getting back on Saturday, I could have scratched it up then. You had to come let me in, remember?”

I pause, hearing that. I’d already come face-to-face with the aftereffects of my dumping him—when he’d turned up at my door at the Delphi. But the knowledge that he went out and got wasted because of it drops down like a jagged stone in the pit of my stomach.

“Don’t remind me,” Apollo replies darkly. “I was the one who had to clean the bathroom.”

My eyes slide over to the ensuite, wondering briefly if that means the two of them share. Swallowing, they slide back to the open drawer in front of me. He soundspissed, and that’s someone he practically considers a brother. Something tells me he’s not about to roll out the red carpet for the veritable stranger who’s broken into his room with the express purpose of touching all his things.

“Yeah, because you’re alwaysso good to me,” Hermes’s voice teases again, only this time inmuchmore honeyed tones. “Always cleaning up after us, and solving all our problems.”

My lips part.Woah.

There’s a pause, and my ears strain desperately.

“How about you let me solve at leastthisproblem for you?”

A muffled grunt, and then, “Mmm.”

Holy shit.

Slipping off my heels, I tiptoe as quickly as I can on socked feet toward the entrance to Apollo’s bedroom. I ease my phone out, opening up the selfie camera. And when I crouch down and angle it carefully around the bottom of the door, it gives me an inverted but unobstructed view of the source of those heated sounds.

A shirtless Hermes in profile—as he kneels between Apollo’s splayed thighs, his hand stroking lovingly over the sizable bulge in his best friend’s sweatpants.

Oh, good. God.Damn.

Voyeurism kink activated.

The two look as though they’ve come straight home from an intense workout, deliciously rumpled with their matching Academy track clothes and sweat-slicked hair.

Apollo lounges back against a single armchair like a dark king upon his throne, and I watch with fascination as a distinct tug-o-war of emotions takes place across his Romanesque features.

Lust wars with anger, wars with frustration, wars with desire.

Battling between an obvious preference to stay in control—and aneedto let go.

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