Eris opens the door and tugs me into the room. It’s decorated in similar vibes to the rest of the place, expensive and sensual. The comforter is a deep cerulean and there are a wide variety of pillows on the bed in white and varying shades of blue. Thick curtains hang over the large windows overlooking the city.
She walks to a doorway leading into a large closet. It’s mostly empty, but a handful of obviously new clothes hang near the front of it.
That sick feeling in my stomach rises again, but I try to do as she asked and have faith. I cross to the clothes and frown. These certainly aren’t Eris’s size. A quick look at the nearest tag has my brows rising. “These are my size.” I check another two, finding the same thing.
“Of course they are.” She sounds a little smug, but I don’t hold it against her. Not when she’s grinning widely with happiness lighting her dark eyes. “Do you like them?”
As promised, they’re comfortable lounge clothing. Expensive, yes, but nothing so overt that it would give me the excuse to refuse the gift. I almost laugh. As if I would. Maybe there are people out there who value their pride more than fancy gifts, but the latter are few and far between in my world and I’m not about to turn them down.
I cross back to her and go up on my toes to kiss her. “Thank you. They’re lovely.”
A sound from the entrance of her penthouse has her lifting her head. Her frown clears when a deep voice calls her name. “Oh, that’s Adonis.” She presses another quick kiss to my lips. “Why don’t you get changed and I’ll get that food ordered?”
“Okay.” I turn back to the clothes as she slips out of the room. Impossible not to take this evening as a sign that we could really work. Oh, my rose-tinted glasses aren’t so thick that I don’t see the wide variety of pitfalls awaiting us, but Eris is one of the most formidable people I’ve ever met. If anyone can make a nontraditional romantic situation work and keep herself and Theseus alive in the process, it’s her.
I get the feeling that Adonis will go where she—and where Theseus—goes. Which leaves us with the last potential wrench in this tangled situation. Theseus. I don’t know what he’ll do. He’s surprised me a few times since he married Eris, but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to counteract more than a decade’s worth of loyalty to Minos.
No matter how much I desperately want him to.
34
HEPHAESTUS
It’s the strangest thing to walk into Aphrodite’s penthouse and find her, Pandora, and Adonis waiting for me. They’ve all gathered in the kitchen similar to how we were this morning, but there’s less tension in the air. As I watch, Pandora slips past Aphrodite and trails her fingers over my wife’s back. Adonis stands a little apart, but his shoulders are relaxed and he’s working a cork out of a bottle of wine.
Aphrodite sees me first. I watch in confusion as she walks directly to me and presses her hands to my chest. “Glad you could make it.” She even sounds like she means it.
“Glad to be here.” I sound like I mean it, too.
Damn it, I do mean it. I don’t know how the home of the woman I was forced to marry, that I hated above all others, managed to become a haven, but it feels that way. It’s not just because Pandora is here. Or Adonis. It’s the strange combination of them…plus Aphrodite.
Eris.
She still hasn’t moved away, and I can’t quite lift my hands to return the almost tentative touch. But I can’t leave it unanswered, either. “How did the rest of your day go?”
Her smile is small, but it reaches her eyes. “I only jumped at loud noises a few dozen times, but better than yesterday.” She pauses. “Yours?”
Part of me wants to shut this down, to stop even the tiniest hint of camaraderie. I might not like what I’ve learned of Minos’s plans, but I can’t just shuck them off. The thought of doing so makes my skin crawl…
Or maybe that’s the thought of letting him hurt the woman standing in front of me, her expression open for the first time since she walked down the aisle to me.
I swallow hard. “It was a shit show. Probably for the same reason yours was.”
Her smile fades. “It’s not ideal that we’re on opposite sides of this now, no matter how we started.”
How could it be any other way? I don’t have an answer by the time she steps back and leads the way into the kitchen. I don’t know what to expect, but Pandora presses a quick kiss to my cheek and then Adonis hooks the back of my neck and kisses me hard enough to make my skin go hot. He releases me before I can decide to do anything more about it, though.