So enjoy it while you can, a little voice urged her.
And she decided to do just that.
Chapter Ten
Zervou laid inhis bed, staring at his ceiling, while Ariadne slept in his arms. He had not slept a wink. Even as the morning light began to filter into the windows of the room, he was wide awake.
It was all very disorienting. This was not something he did. And getting rid of a woman after a healthy, enjoyable evening together had always been like second nature. Not something that required thought or effort.
This required both and a decision on just…what he was doing.
He didn’t mind crossing blurry lines. A fake relationship to lure her father into the light was not complicated by sex. If anything, it was a nice bonus. The moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d admitted that the potential was there.
But a woman falling asleep in his arms was not part of that bonus. It was not something that had ever even tempted him before. He enjoyed women and their company but was always happy to see them go. Happy to get his mind and life back to whatever the plan was at hand.
Last night, he hadn’t been able to force himself to rouse her. He’d spent far too long staring at the bruise on her ribs. The crooked line of her nose. The way her left hand—curled gently on top of his chest—was slightly puffier than the right—like it was swollen from landing blows.
He had watched her box, even if it had always been practice. He understood that the kind of athleticism she dealt with meant her body would be marred by the sheer physicality of what she did. Day in. Day out.
He could not seem to get a full handle on the actual mark of those things on her soft, beautiful skin. It was an impotent kind of rage that reminded him of childhood. Scrabbling by. Refusing that which he wanted. And then finally breaking through, finding ease in the world around him. All while everyone he loved refused any of it.
It was a feeling, a concern, a complication he would have walked away from any other time, no matter how alluring the woman, because he had plans to enact. Revenge to seek.
But he could not walk away from Ariadne. Not when she was at the center of that revenge he sought.
Yes, that’s the only reason you don’t want to walk away.
Ariadne shifted in his arms, clearly awakened by the tension that had crept into the muscles that held her still. She yawned, blinked her eyes open. For a moment, their foggy brown depths met his, and all the discomfort swirling inside of him eased into something…else. Something he had no vocabulary for and probably wouldn’t like it if he did.
Then she looked away from him. “Oh,” she said, sitting up and—unfortunately—pulling the sheet up to cover her. She ran a free hand through her tangle of curls as she looked out the window. “Morning.” She did not say this in greeting, more in observation of the time of day.
“Yes, it is morning, Ariadne. Early, though. Your first class is not until eight, correct?”
She made an agreeable kind of noise, still clutching the sheet to her chest, her gaze still on the windows.
“I will have breakfast brought up. And some more suitable clothes for your day.”
She made a sound, kind of like a sigh. “You should call me Ari. I suppose we are…friends, after a fashion.” She studied the discarded dress, then pulled the sheet off him and wrapped it around her as she got to her feet.
Ari. Friends.None of these things quite added up.
So he did not react to her words. Instead, he changed the subject. Next steps. “We will be going to Paris in a few days. A party that will garner more press than we’ve seen so far.”
“Paris.” She sighed a little. “How long?”
As though he was asking her to dig trenches in the arctic. “At least four days, I should think,” he gritted out. “I’m quite sure I can find you training facilities should that really be necessary.”
Her expression was neither grateful nor happy. She looked put upon.
He had to breathe through the anger trying to sneak into all the cracks of his persona. Because even if he had enjoyed last night, it was just a persona. Ariadne…Ari…was just a tool to get what he wanted.
Whether she appreciated his help or not was no matter. What was important this morning, though, was to make it clear that her sleeping in his bed was not something to confuse the matter.
How she accepted or didn’t accept his help was of no matter, because at the end of this,shewould be no matter. And because he was a good enough man, he thought it only fair to warn her, lest she get ideas.
“I do not need to reiterate to you that this is not…real.”
She turned slowly. She stared at him, as if the words didn’t penetrate. As if they were some kind of surprise. He expected hurt or anger. Something negative. But instead, she did the most confounding thing he’d ever seen.
