"I thought you'd like it."
"I did. Though I can't say it's a very conventional start to the date." Her lips quirked up into a smile, assuring me that she'd enjoyed it all the same.
"Maybe I did it to get you out of your clothes."
She let out a light tinkling laugh that made everything inside me tighten. "Then you did a bad job. Our magic keeps our clothing intact, you know that."
"It was a good theory."
She shook her head, but it didn't hide the amused expression on her face. "Why don't we see how the rest of the date goes before we talk about me taking my clothes off," she said.
My pulse quickened at the promise in her tone. That wasn't how I'd intended things to go, though I also wasn't about to complain if it did.
I cleared my throat. "I had a lot of your favourites brought down."
She gave me the side-eye as if she knew how her words were affecting me. "What if they aren't my favourites anymore?"
I froze. Somehow, I hadn't considered that. "Then I can get something different. There are a few restaurants here, or if you fancy something else, I can go back to Earth and bring it back..."
"Ptah." The way her lips curled around my name stopped my rambling and only left me more sure about how connected the two of us were. She reached up and placed a hand on my chest, the intimate touch reinforcing my thoughts.
I rubbed the back of my neck nervously. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. That was my fault. I was just teasing you. My tastes haven't changed much." Mischief flashed through her eyes as she dragged her gaze down the length of me.
I couldn't complain, I'd been doing the same.
She pulled away and headed towards the blanket laid out on the ground. She sat down, her dress falling away from her legs and leaving them tantalisingly bare.
If I didn't know better, I'd have thought she was trying to entice me. But I planned on being the perfect gentleman. I was going to show her how serious I was about making this work.
Chapter 7
Bastet
There was something about the way Ptah looked at me that was impossible to ignore. It had always been this way. I had lived for thousands of years, first as a mortal, then immortal, and finally as a goddess, and not one other person had made me react in a fraction of the way he did.
And I was going to make him pay for it.
I moved my leg as I leaned forward to pick up my glass of wine, knowing that the slit in my skirt would fall away and bear it to him, going up dangerously high. As intended, his gaze moved higher and he swallowed hard, just like I intended.
"How's Ra?" I asked.
"You want to talk about Ra?" he asked.
I shrugged. "The two of you used to be close, didn't you?"
He cleared his throat. "Reasonably. He's running a solar company now."
"Oh?"
"It's called SolRa."
I covered my mouth and laughed. "And you called me obvious."
"He isn't hiding from anyone," Ptah pointed out.
I shrugged and reached for a couple of grapes. "I was successful at it until Sekhmet encouraged me to go to speed dating," I responded.
