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He was acting as if he was the Cameron that he had been.
A man who easily called up the desires of women the moment that he entered the room.
A man who was sought after by all.
No, he was the man who had lived alone in a castle for ten years with not but his right hand to keep him company.
He was a man who had only hours ago chased this woman from the room with nothing but his face and a shout.
He was maimed.
Ruined beyond measure.
But it had been true always. It had been true before.
It was just now he could not fool anyone.
“One, two, three,” she said, urging him on. And then he instinctively began to lead as Athena counted.
“Thank you,” he said, “but I do know how to count.”
“You weren’t moving. I thought you might have needed some help.”
“How nice for you, to have found a husband the world will think a brute.”
“Better a husband who appears to be one than a husband who does not, but will create devastation in private, don’t you think?”
“I am capable of devastation.”
“You speak of the loss of Irina.”
“I was carefree then. I thought that I had beaten the game. I was born into nothing, and I had become something. And I made the mistake of believing that I might very well be everything. I thought that I might be God. I had created a world from nothing. And who else does that? I fancied myself all-powerful. Not subject to the rules of anything. There was nothing but what I wanted in the moment. I loved fast cars and fast women. I loved being able to choose where I went and what I did, what I ate, what I wore. Who I took to bed. It was all intoxicating. I had, up until that point lived a life where everything was dictated by need. Need in the most basic, survivalist sense of the word. And then it became about want. And I got lost in that.”
“An accident is an accident.”
“Yes. Of course it is. But when you drive at a high rate of speed, and you are both distracted...”
“It sounds as if you were both along for the ride.”
“But I was not God, was I?” He smiled, and he knew it was a bad imitation of the expression. “Yet I could not bring her back to life. That’s a lesson for you. Creating things is not the ability to create life, Athena.”
She moved her hand up his arm, where he gripped her at the waist, past his bicep, to his shoulder. The touch was so unexpected, so sensual, and he had to grit his teeth against the effect of it.
“Men can create life. I don’t even think creating life is what makes you particularly special.”
“And what is then?”
Her eyes met his, luminous and unafraid. And he wanted to draw closer to that light. “What youdowith that life.”
He ached to draw closer to her and yet he knew...
The accident with Irina had been his reckoning. His curse. The moment his outsides had transformed to match his insides, so he could no longer snare anyone into his toxic circle by convincing them he was an angel, when he was instead, a devil.
He did not draw closer to her.
“I suppose you don’t consider sitting in a castle for a decade to be a worthy use of life,” he said.
She shook her head. “I have been forced to hide. Forced to stay put. To stay concealed. You can leave whenever you want to, and yet you don’t. I have a hard time understanding that.”
