CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVII

The pub Prometheus had planned on celebrating in with Amara was packed. He must have forgotten that it was a Saturday when the rugby was on, a true sport he could get behind. However, he couldn’t stand the boisterous grown men who were childishly taunting each other as beer spilled over glasses, and angry voices were raised as the visiting team scored another try. The home team were getting their arses handed tothem.

“I apologise for this.” He noticed Amara’s acute uncomfortableness as they moved through the bar. There wasn’t much space between shoulders that continued to drunkenly try and barge into them. And there was only so much fending off he could do to protect Amara’s small frame before they simply ran out of room.

“I’m staying in rooms above this place if you’d be more comfortable there?” he asked her, his lips practically pressed against the shell of her ear so she could hear him. Amara nodded in agreement with a smile that said she was eager to get out of the crowded pub and so they wentupstairs.

The rooms, to Amara’s shock, were huge. It appeared he had rented out the whole top floor. There was an informal living area upon entry, with a wardrobe just to the left, painted a ghastly mint green, with a little chalkboard sign hanging off the brass doorknob that had ‘welcome’ scrawled on it in a poor attempt at calligraphy. In the opposite corner, a mini bar was set up, just like the bar downstairs. Why there would be a bar when you could just go downstairs Amara had no idea. Moving through into the bedroom, she saw the carpet was a deep brown, the walls and bedsheets cream. Reaching out a hand, she touched the sheets to find them satin smooth. Opposite the bed was a wooden desk, above it a flat-screen TV. Then, as she moved around the room, she saw the door to the bathroom that had marble flooring and a deep free-standing bath.

“Well, it’s better than where I stay.”

“Make yourself athome.”

Amara looked around but the only decent place to sit was the bed. Given how the dynamic had changed between them earlier, she felt uncomfortable sprawling out on it. She didn’t want to come across as desperate, so she perched on the edge ofit.

“Would you like a drink? There’s a couple of mini bottles of champagne in here. We could toast to your newjob?”

“Minibars are way too expensive. We can just go down a little later when it’s calmeddown.”

“Price isn’t an issue, Amara. But if you don’t feel comfortable drinking …”

“I’ve always felt comfortable enough around you to drink,” she huffed. Perhaps it was because he didn’t drink lager as Ralph had. Perhaps it was because he seemed content with just one drink. Perhaps it was because he carried himself differently. Amara couldn’t pinpoint it. She just knew she didn’t feel uncomfortable when she was with him in the same way she had with him, even before the alcohol had been afactor.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Prometheus said gently, breaking Amara out of her reverie as he handed her a glass of champagne. They toasted to her new job and Prometheus took a seat on the opposite corner of the bed to her, one leg sprawled out, with his foot resting on the floor, the other hooked into a seatedposition.

“What do you do for a job?” Amara asked, realising in that moment how little she knew about his day-to-day life.

He paused for a moment. “I’m a craftsman by trade. Metal work, things like that. But I got out of the business a long time ago. Now I occasionallyconsult.”

That explains his big, strong arms and where all the money comes from, Amara thought.

“How old areyou?”

“Older thanyou.”

Amara scowled and tried another tactic. “Any family? Are you from around here? Have you always been? You don’t have an accent …” Suddenly she was thirsty to know every facet of this fascinating man.

“Why the sudden Spanish inquisition?” he asked, though he had a crooked half smile as he asked her.

“Just ... curious,” she shrugged. How was she supposed to tell him that she felt shy about practically jumping the bones of a man she knew nothing about? If she knew more about him, then it would make anything that did happen between them better than the last time she’d been in a similar position, she reasoned to herself. She risked a glance at him and was rewarded with blazing eye contact that scorched her to the soul, the electricity, the pull towards him almost magnetic. Amara blinked and glanced back down at her glass. She wondered if he’d felt it too. In an effort to settle the squirming uncomfortableness inside her, she took three large gulps of champagne until half the glass was empty.

“Never mind, it’s none of my business. I shouldn’t pry,” she admonished herself.

“No, it’s ok. It’s just a long story, that’sall.”

“I likestories.”

“I know.” He paused for a moment, appearing to consider his options. “You may as well settle in then,” he said, gesturing to the headboard. The pair of them stretched out on top of the covers before he began to regale her with tales from his home in Greece as if it wasn’t the ancient civilization he’d always known it to be. She in turn told him all about the wild-child trips she’d had around the streets of Paris growing up.

As night fell, she asked him a question he’d never have predicted.

“Can I stay here the night?”

“Are you sure?” he asked gently. Amara nodded.

“I’ll set up the pull-out.”

Standing, he moved to the end of the bed. What had appeared to be a wooden chest for clothes actually had a camp bed stored in it.

“Oh you don’t have to do that …”

He paused and looked at her, staring into eyes of shattering green that stripped him to his soul.

“Amara,” he said, a gentle warning in his tone.

Instead of backing down as he expected, she tipped her chin back in defiance. He noted the change immediately. The squaring of the shoulders. The locked jaw. The sharp gaze that was laced with desire and something ... more. If he focused for too long on her eyes or her full mouth, his jeans were going to become uncomfortably tight ... again.

“I’m going to run you a bath,” he muttered. This was in no way a discussion he was prepared to have with her right now.

He filled the free-standing bath three-quarters of the way full and sprinkled an assortment of essential oils that made the bathroom smell of roses and honey. He also added a luxuriant bubble-bath mix, the light catching on the bubbles and making them sparkle from blue to pink between one second and the next.

“You know how to draw a bath,” Amara remarked, leaning against the door jamb in the white linen robe she’d put on while he’d been busy. He could tell she was faking nonchalance but if it would get her to behave while his self-control was teetering, he’d takeit.

“Hippocrates said that the key to health was an aromatic bath and a scented massage everyday.”

“Sounds like a man who knew his way into a woman’s heart.”

Prometheus chuckled. “And yet, he made those remarks for anotherman.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He tested the temperature with his elbow. “Come now. The water isperfect.”

Walking over to him, she tested it with her hand, stood, and felt a shiver run through her body. Disrobing with her back to him − a quick hiccup of his heart − then and there, she sunk into the water until she was fully submerged. Only then did she look at him.

He was standing stock still, the muscles under his shirt he’d stripped down to strained, his jaw a harsh line. He was, very determinedly, looking Amara in the eyes.

“Yes?” she asked coyly.

“You should wait until a man leaves,” he grounded out through clenched teeth.

A pregnant pause rested between them. But when Amara went to open her mouth, Prometheus stepped out of the bathroom.

When the bath water ran cold, and she’d perused and applied all the toiletries she could, Amara began to feel sheepish. It had been a moment of insanity, she told herself. That’s how she’d justify it to him if he asked. Except it hadn’t been that. It had been a need to prove to him that she wasn’t just a broken butterfly, the maiden in distress he’d originally met. She wasn’t the traumatised young woman he’d found in that exhibition. Ok, she was still healing but ... she’d been in shock then because she thought she’d seen Ralph again. Now, she knew it was just that − shock. She was perfectly capable of holding her own against a man … against him. She had been for the past fewweeks.

Wrapping the robe tightly around her, and leaving her hair damp around her shoulders, Amara tentatively opened the bathroom door. The cooler air, without the steam of the bathroom, slapped her in the face. It seemed to clear her head a little.

As she stepped out, she saw Theo spread out on the bed reading a book. His shirt had skewed slightly, revealing a thin sliver of bronzed abdomen and dark curls that had Amara’s eyes wandering and mouth watering. A sensation she had always found acutely uncomfortable.

“Good bath?” He eyed her, sceptically she thought, from above the book.

“Yes, thank you.” She shuffled over and plonked herself down on her side of the bed. The movement caused her robe to slip slightly, revealing a glimpse of smooth torso and barebreast.

He stared inturn.

She watched him watching her as she brought her hand up to where the robe slipped. When she let a small smile slip, as she chose to tease him some more by tantalizingly stroking at her skin ever so softly with her fingertips, he captured her wrist in his hand.

Amara froze.

Prometheus realised he had just done something disastrously wrong. Immediately he released his hold on her wrist but it was too late. The eyes that had been staring at him full and sensuous with desire a minute ago were now wild. Amara’s muscles were rigid in a way that once again screamed get the fuck away from me. Her breathing was shallow − that damn robe was not helping him − and she watched him like prey watches a predator before itattacks.

“Amara, sweetheart, I need you to take deeper breasts, breaths. Dammit. Can you do that forme?”

No response from the woman across from him. He slid off the bed, making sure to keep his eyes on her as he walked backwards to the minibar to get her some fresh, cool water. When he returned, she had her eyes closed, the robe tugged firmly over her now as she crossed her arms, but she was breathing deeply.

“Here, drinkthis.”

Eyes so pure and filled with so much hurt and pain, blinked open and stared at him. He got onto his knees at the side of the bed and gently reached out to stroke her hair. She didn’t flinch. He understood immediately that it must have been something to do with her wrist. He looked down at said wrist to see her nervously wringing it. When his eyes met hers again, he saw the fear that flickered behind them. Still, she continued to breathe deeply and he continued to stroke her hair.

“You’re not ready yet,” he told her gently. It killed him to say it. He wanted nothing more than to wrap her in his arms and banish that insidious fear from her bones. He wanted to growl at any demons that came her way and keep her safe.

“You think I’m a child. You’re babying me,” sheaccused.

“No, I think you’re traumatised,” hereasoned.

“You think I’mbroken.”

“I didn’t say that,” he said, a dark anger beginning to simmer in his tone.

“You didn’t have to.” She pushed his hand away and sat up, swivelling round to the other side of the bed before stalking off to the bathroom door and slamming it shut. When she emerged, she was fully dressed.

His anger had continued to build as she’d been in the bathroom. She was so young, so naive. But it was more than that he admitted to himself, for he was a man who knew his own flaws well. He hated being shut out. He hated having words put in his mouth and he hated when his actions of help were thrown in his face. But when Amara exited, with her shoulders squared and a look of wounded pride on her face, the penny dropped.

Gluttony. Lust. Pride. He had seen the Goddess of Gluttony and her work first-hand on Amara. He had not, however, seen Eros strike with his arrow. That could have happened at any time, Prometheus reasoned to himself. The thought that Amara had only kissed him because she’d been touched by the God of Lust wounded him, but he couldn’t think about that now. Because Hubris at some point, the third god to intervene with his own challenge, with his excessive pride, had infiltrated Amara’s mind.

The goddesses, those two spiteful bitches Athena and Aphrodite, must have teamed up. They had been using him and his own actions against the priestess for her challenges. This was just a war move to them. Except it was clear Amara was losing every single battle to the fear. She had gorged without purging, given into lust but not overcome it, and now she was filled with a pride that would only make her defiant unless she could transmute it into humility. By the look on her face, that wasn’t going to happen.

He was losing the priestess to her humanity.

All his anger redirected itself at once to the goddesses he’d be having words with once he was back in Olympus. The priestess was no longer − had never been − safe with him here on Earth, herealised.

He didn’t know how Aphrodite had done it, but what he felt for Amara was not what he had felt for any other human before. He could admit that in the privacy of his own mind. And right now she’d be far safer away from him.

“I’ll call you a taxi to take youhome.”