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“Because you were uncomfortable. And I didn’t like it.”
It was honest. That was what struck him. Her honesty.
And her desire to do something for him.
He moved away from her, to the far side of the elevator. “Athena,” he said. “Do not mistake me for something better than I am. Many people would be deterred by the scars. But you... You see a project. I am not your project. I am not a victim for you to pick up and make whole.”
“I consider myself warned.”
“I am who I have always been. And that is not the kind of man that you should involve yourself with.”
“I consider myself warned,” she repeated. “Do not make the mistake that everyone else has. Do not make the same mistake the man who called himself my father made. I am not soft, and I am not foolish. No matter that men have tried to control me all my life I know my own mind. I know who I am. I chose to do what I did because I care about you. You cannot stop me from caring.”
Everything in him went hard. “And that is where you’re wrong. I can. With time.”
She withdrew, but he sensed that it was not a retreat. Rather, a calculated move. She would be back. At full strength. One thing he knew for certain about Athena. She was formidable.
The goddess of war.
He would do well to remember that.
It was easy to take her as soft. Because she was so beautiful. But perhaps that was what had made the Athena of mythology equally formidable.
The elevator doors opened and revealed the penthouse. Athena didn’t look at any of the surrounding furnishings. Rather she went straight for the open windows that faced the incomparable view below of Paris. The Eiffel Tower. The Seine. She put her hands against the glass, her eyes clearly hungry for the site.
And he felt... Hungry for her.
He recalled what she had said in the car, and knew she had been testing him. The question was why?
He knew why he wanted her. What he could not fathom was why she might wish to test out her sensuality with him.
The man he’d been would have taken her up on that. Without question. Without care. He would have taken her admiration of him as his due and demanded that she worship him on her knees singing his praises with her lips. Her tongue. Yes, he would’ve done all those things. He was not that man now. And perhaps he should rejoice in the change, or see it as some sort of redemptive moment.
But he did not feel redeemed. He felt as dark and lethal as ever. And she...
She is a goddess of war.
Yes.
“I wish to go out,” she said.
“We were just out.”
“I know. I know we were. But could we... I will need a ring.”
He had no idea how he had neglected to realize that. She would, of course. Agreeing to show all the world that she belonged to him.
They had not exchanged rings in the ceremony and it had not struck him that it was missing.
It felt a glaring error now.
“And perhaps it wouldn’t hurt for us to be seen prior to your big unveiling. There could be rumors,” she said.
“I thought that you did not know anything about popular culture.”
“The man who called himself my father actively discouraged me from participating in such things, but aren’t all teenagers rebellious? In whatever way we can be. Obviously I was hungry for whatever information I could glean. It was difficult living where I did, but there were always ways to find a magazine here and there. One thing I do know is how hungry culture is for gossip.”
“You are a funny creature.”
