Warriors of Poseidon 04 - Atlantis Unmasked

scarred left side, Atlantis Unmasked - Warriors of Poseidon 04
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    hesitant at first. Afraid she‟d offend him. He flinched a little, but then held still under her touch.
     
    “Is it so repulsive to you? My face?” He lowered his eyelids, but not before she‟d seen the flash of pain darken his eyes to a stormy green.
     
    The words themselves took a moment longer to penetrate, perhaps because they were so much the opposite of what she‟d been thinking. “Are you—what? How can you even ask me that? You are the most beautiful man I‟ve ever seen in my life, and a flaw only makes beauty more poignant.”
     
    She leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss on his scarred face, and he seemed to stop breathing. “Did you know that some master artisans purposely put a flaw in their art so that God will not be offended by perfection?”
     
    He laughed, and the sound was bitter. “That‟s a pretty story, but the analogy rings false.
    There is a huge difference between an artist deliberately pulling a thread in a tapestry and Anubisa calling Hellfire to burn my face.”
     
    His muscles tensed, and she could tell he was on the verge of pulling away from her. It was a constant dance between them, pushing and pulling, moving apart and coming together. A strange waltz between two hopeful but almost unwilling participants.
     
    “Tell me about it. What is Hellfire?” The question was blunt, but she didn‟t know any other way to ask it. She sat up in bed, pulling the blankets around her.
     
    “It‟s exactly what it sounds like. It‟s fire channeled from the lowest of the nine hells, and Anubisa, as goddess of Chaos and Night, is mistress over it. She can channel it to her purpose or for her unholy pleasure.”
     
    Atlantis Unmasked - Warriors of Poseidon 04
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    He shrugged and then jumped up to pace the floor. “Evidently one day ruining my face happened to be her pleasure.”
     
    Grace didn‟t even know she was crying until she tasted the hot tears as they ran down her face and touched her lips. She scrubbed at her face but never took her eyes off him.
    “How could you stand it? How could you be so incredibly brave as to survive?”
     
    He whirled around and glared at her. “Don‟t you mean to ask why I was such a coward that I didn‟t take my own life to escape? I tried. Believe me, I tried. But there was always someone there watching me. Keeping me from inflicting any pain on myself.” He stopped pacing and laughed bitterly. “Evidently only they were allowed to cause me pain.”
     
    The memory of the flames from her vision—the whips and torture—burned through her mind like a brand. She shook her head back and forth, denying the vision. Denying his words.
     
    “No, that‟s not what I meant to ask at all. I know you‟re not a coward. I‟ve seen your amazing courage. It was much braver to survive that horror than to take the easy way out.” She hung her head, ashamed to look at him. “Trust me, I know. And my reasons for wanting to take that final way out are pathetically unimportant compared to what you endured.”
     
    She watched as his boots walked into her field of vision. But he didn‟t touch her. Simply stood there for a long moment. Then he finally spoke, and ice and pain mingled in his voice. “Strange, then, that we found each other. That I finally found the one reason—the one person —who could save me from an eternity of wanting to take that final step, and she wants nothing more permanent of me than a brief moment of physical comfort.
    Believe me, the torture of that knowledge is more than anything Anubisa and her minions could have done to me.”
     
    Atlantis Unmasked - Warriors of Poseidon 04
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    Before she could recover from her shock at his words, he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him.
     
    She sat in the bed, stunned, clutching the sheets to her chest as the enormity of what he had said sank in. He thought she was the one not wanting any permanent commitments with him. He thought she was the one who only wanted a physical relationship.
     
    She threw off the blankets and jumped up to get dressed. This was one misconception she was going to clear up immediately. She had given herself to him, finally daring to take a risk, body, heart, and soul. She wasn‟t going to back down now, even if she had to beat some sense into an Atlantean warrior.
     
    Alexios stormed through the fort, almost wishing that someone would