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“Did you not just hear the part about the guards? No. It was unspoken. If I ran away they would come for me. I just always had the sense that if that happened, I would break something. And the consequences of it would be unpleasant. Like I said. I began to have a sense that all was not normal when I was about ten. There were just some things that I knew. When I realized what manner of man Mattias was, when I realized this was not the fulfillment of any kind of fantasy, that was when I decided that I had to run. That was when I decided that it had to happen, no matter that it was frightening or unpleasant. It was worth whatever consequence to get away then.”
“You had fantasies about the guards?”
“I might not have been allowed free rein to everything, but there was a library. I am quite educated on what occurs between men and women, even if I’ve never experienced it myself. Yes, there were always strong handsome looking men looming about. And I was a teenage girl. Of course I did.”
“But none of them ever touched you?”
“No. Because that’s how terrifying my father is.”
“A pity.”
“You’re telling me. I could’ve passed the time quite nicely.”
He laughed, and she felt buoyed by that.
At least he found her amusing. The subject of her childhood seemed to have eased some of the tension surrounding his.
“I was given nearly everything except what I wanted most. Freedom. The very definition of a gilded cage, I know.”
“Do you suppose it was better, better than what I had to endure?”
“Yes. Because here I am, escaped now, on the other side of it, and certainly more innocent that a person my age should be, but also protected, in many ways. I wouldn’t have remained so. Because in the end...” She smiled, though there was nothing amusing about it. “I would’ve been turned into a horror as well. That’s the way of it. The world sees people as commodities and when you don’t have any power agency of your own, someone is always waiting for the opportunity to sell you.”
“I sold myself.”
“Only because somebody was a very insistent buyer.”
“Well, that is the truth of it.”
They looked at each other, it was dark, and his face was mostly hidden in shadow, she imagined hers was as well. She couldn’t make out the scars on his face. She couldn’t make out his expression, or much of anything at all.
“We go to London tomorrow.”
“I will be pleased for that.”
“You will like it.”
“I will.”
She wanted to stretch up on her toes and kiss him. She was nearly dizzy with her need to draw closer to him. But he had been very clear that he didn’t wish for that to happen. He said it was to protect her, but she had a feeling...
So much of his past, his trauma was tied to the things that people had taken from him. From his body.
She couldn’t walk with him, talk with him, hear the story that he told about that woman he had thought cared for him, and then asked him for sex, and then kissed him.
She would mean for there to be feeling behind it, but she didn’t think that he would be able to do more than that. She wouldn’t be any different, really. It would feel like she was using him. Like she had offered some sort of emotional balm only to turn it into something base.
She wouldn’t do that. They walked on, and her knuckles brushed his. She caught her breath. And then she deliberately wrapped her fingers around his hand, the rough warmth a comfort, a need and a deep pain all at once.
In the darkness, they held each other’s hands and walked back to the penthouse.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHENHEWOKEup the next morning he was in a foul temper. They would be having dinner with Apollo tonight, and the following night would be the product unveiling.
He had no patience for any of it. The first thing he remembered was the way the soft skin of Athena’s hand had felt against his own.
He growled, sat up and looked around the bedroom. It wasn’t big enough. Not sufficient enough for all the rage that poured through him. He wished to ride Aslan across the moors.
