Free NocC 007 - Stephanie Draven - Mythica 6 - The Fever and the Fury - Harlequin 2012-01 by Nocturne Page B

more than to get free of me.”
    “I was a different man then. Literally , a different man. Now, I want you to stay.”
    “No one ever wants a fury to stay, Luke. You’re just saying that to protect me from Athena, but you’ve sacrificed enough trying to protect others.”
    He shook her a little bit and then made her look him in the eye. “This, I’m doing for entirely selfish reasons. I want to keep you with me.”
    She looked like she might cry again. “Stop it, Luke.”
    “Why?” A flicker of doubt ignited inside him. “Do you want to leave me? Is this all some kind of elaborate trick to do your duty and be gone?”
    Her lip trembled. “No. But you’re suggesting that we stay together, in defiance, both of us guilty .”
    “I can live with that,” Luke said, and almost laughed when he realized it was true. He’d made the choices he had to make. He’d said that he didn’t regret them, but he didn’t realize until just this moment that he could live with them.
    He really could.
    “But this isn’t what you want,” Phaedra said, her eyes wary. “You want your old life back. You want to go back home to your country, to your granddad and your uniform. You’re just settling for me because you don’t think you can ever have anything better.”
    He paused, measuring her words against the truth in his heart. And when he did, something lightened inside him. “You’re right. I don’t think I can have anything better.” This time he did laugh. The first truly unburdened laugh he’d known in a very long time. “Because what’s between us is honest in a way that nothing in my life has ever been before.”
    She tried to pull away. “I don’t want to be your Plan B!”
    Luke held her fast. “Look, Phaedra. I can’t say that I was waiting all my life for you, because I didn’t even know you existed. I can’t tell you that this is the path I thought I’d choose. But sometimes Plan B is better than Plan A. People change. There are second chances. People are reborn, figuratively, every day. And they learn that sometimes the one thing they never expected is the only thing they really need.”
    If he was going to rebuild his life, rebuild his faith in anything, he needed her. He needed her strength and determination and the new eyes with which she saw the world. “I need you. I need someone in my life that won’t ever lie to me. And that’s you.”
    Maybe he was making an ass of himself, just putting it all out there for her to stomp on his heart, but so be it. She paused, frozen, as if she didn’t believe his words or was afraid to. So, he asked, “Phaedra, don’t you want to be loved?”
    “ Loved ?” Her lips pursed as if she’d never said the word aloud before. “I don’t know what that would be like.”
    He pressed another kiss into her palm. “Let me show you.”
    “That’s not fair,” she said, but her eyes glistened. “When you kiss me like that, I can’t seem to resist you. It’s not fair.”
    Maybe not, but he knew the argument was over. “Phaedra, this isn’t the life I planned. But maybe we can find shelter here in Budva, like your Greek hero. Maybe this old fortress will protect us and all the other sinners inside its walls. Why don’t we find out?”
    She seemed to be taking it all in. “You want to live in sin? Here? With me?”
    Luke glanced at the Old Town and the hills beyond. “Yeah. I do. I really do.”
    She shook her head, wisps of hair in her face. “What about your redemption?”
    “Do you really think I need it?”
    Her gaze softened, and he saw that she understood he’d done the right thing, the only thing that a man of honor could have done. But as she took a breath to speak, he stopped her. “Wait. Don’t answer that. Because I don’t want redemption, Phaedra. I want you.”
    Eyes still glistening, a tentative smile touched her lips. It might have been the first true smile he’d ever seen. “But…that means I can’t ever forgive you.”
    “Good,”