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She knew that she should stop pushing him.
Except, while there was the aspect of him being the only man she knew, which in many ways should deter her, there was also the aspect that... She had him as a resource.
She wasn’t making up the way her body felt when it was close to his.
It did not need to be forever to be good. She felt certain of that.
And some would argue that it would be a waste of an opportunity...
He was staring at her.
“What?”
“You are a strange creature,” he said.
“A side effect, I would think, of spending so much time in my own company.”
“You said you had a friend.”
She nodded. “Rose. As I said she... Well, she was a maid. My father decided he was going to sell her and... His former son-in-law rescued her. He’s not unlike you.”
“In what way?”
“He is scarred. From a fire. It killed his wife. It was years ago, it was... The daughter that I replaced.”
He nodded slowly. “I see.”
“Yes. Well. I guess they felt that they owed him something. Ares has never seemed like a cruel man to me. He’s frightening, certainly.”
“The god of war,” he pointed out.
A smile touched Athena’s lips. “Yes. I suppose so. That’s funny. I hadn’t thought of it.”
“So Rose was your friend.”
“Yes. But we were both quite sheltered, so neither of us could really teach the other anything. And neither of us really remember life before coming to the compound. Rose had to work. In contrast, I never learned how to do anything. I can’t cook. I’ve never cleaned. I’m... I’m spoiled in many ways.”
“And yet you were willing to jump from a moving vehicle and escape the fate you did not care for.”
“Yes. I am not as soft as they think I am. It makes me wonder, again. What exactly happened to me in my years before going there. Because there’s something...some connection that I might not know about but...”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Not now.”
When they arrived at the glorious marble building, the limo pulled smoothly against the curb, and Athena stood in awe. She was used to luxury. But this was an old-world beauty of a different sort that she had never seen.
When they walked into the building, they drew stares. People looked away quickly, but she could see that they were transfixed by Cameron.
Athena began to speak loudly and quickly in French. Whatever she could think of. Silly things, laughing and doing her best to draw the attention. She looped her arm through Cameron’s as they headed toward the elevator. The doors opened, and they got inside, and once they closed, he turned to her. “You speak French?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “We spoke Russian as a...a family. I speak Greek and English, French, Italian, German...a bit of Japanese.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I had little to do, and so I learned when I could. As I said...my mother wanted me to be frivolous, I think. Malleable. She didn’t want me to want anything, and yet I did. I wanted more. I suppose that in and of itself is a triumph when you have been trained to not want at all, and are given every luxury to keep you from ever doing so.”
It made her feel stronger than she had a moment before.
“And why exactly did you do all that out there?”
