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“It sounds as if you have met your match.”
He laughed. “Apollo. There is no match for me. No match forthis.”
“Not in your looks, friend. In your spirit.”
“In what sense?”
“You are a stubborn asshole. This Athena sounds like she has a backbone made of steel. And how? Do you not marvel?”
“Marvel at what?”
“If everything that you’ve told me about her is true, her father spearheading her off to be married to a stranger. The fact that she has never left her family compound before these past couple of weeks... She is extraordinarily self-possessed.”
“Yes. She is that. But it is only irritating. For she does not do that which I asked.”
“Good. You deserve that.”
“She is beautiful,” he said. “And I am pleased with that. Because when I present her to the public, it is all the better that she is stunning. She will make a triumphant prize. A tale as old as time, don’t you think?”
“Obviously. And yet you do not sound pleased with her beauty.”
A smile curved his lips. “Look at me.”
“I am. I have. These past ten years. But you don’t trust me to see you face-to-face. I have seen you.”
And yet he could not shake the fact that it felt as if Apollo had not seen him. They had the ability to have a screen between them. He could control the setting, the lighting. How long he was comfortable with the interaction.
It was different, to be seen. Really seen.
To have Athena look at him, fully look at him, with those dark, liquid eyes was almost more than he could bear. He felt as if his skin was being flayed away from his bones. And he knew what that felt like. He had actually experienced it.
It was a strange thing. The bite from the dog had felt like nothing. But Athena’s gaze? That had been nearly unbearable.
“I want her.”
The words nearly cut his throat.
“Unsurprisingly,” Apollo said, the word brushing Cameron’s statement away. “Have you been with a woman these past ten years?”
Cameron laughed.Laughedat his friend.
With all the rage and bitterness in his soul.
What did Apollo think he had been doing here?
“Of courseI haven’t been. I’ve seen no one.”
“Truly no one?”
“What did you think, Apollo? That I was playing games with you?”
“No. I didn’t. And yet I could not quite believe that you had actually concealed yourself to that degree. I had thought that at least you would...”
“That I would pay for sex?” he said, flatly. “That I would become one of those sad men or women that we mocked mercilessly as we took their money, as we took their desire? No. I would die celibate before I debase myself in such a fashion.”
“I did not mean to suggest...”
“But you did,” he said, hard. Ruthless.
