Damn it. His life had never been his own.
"I'm sorry," he breathed. "You're just extremely irresistible."
"Strange, men have been resisting me for years."
"Yeah well, they were idiots."
Smiling, she reached up for his glasses. "Can I take these off?"
Ash swallowed as fear tore through him. "I wish you wouldn't."
"Why?"
"Because they'll make you uncomfortable. No one likes to look at my eyes."
She scowled at him. "What are you? Rosemary's baby?"
"Kind of."
She shook her head at his fear. "Well in case you haven't noticed, I'm not most people."
No, she wasn't. But not even the gods could look at his eyes without curling their lips in disgust. "Just remember, when you do this, there's no going back."
Tory froze at those dire words. Now she had to know what they looked like. Reaching up slowly, she pulled the sunglasses off his eyes.
Ash looked down at the floor, preventing her from seeing their color. But dayam, the man was even more gorgeous without the sunglasses on. Never had she seen a more perfect set of features.
"Look at me, Ash."
Ash ground his teeth as he remembered Artemis telling him the same thing. Back then, he'd been afraid of her hurting him over them. Now there was no fear of Tory doing him harm, but even after all these centuries he knew how seldom people met his gaze without curling their lips or cringing. He hated for anyone to see the evidence of his godhood.
Tory stroked his brow with a light, gentle touch. "Please, Ash?"
Bracing himself for her horror and fear, he looked up and met her gaze levelly.
Tory stared in shock at the swirling silver color. Never in her life had she seen anything like them. The color was so pale and pure. They reminded her of mercury. "Are you blind?" Even as the question left her lips, she knew it was absurd. He could see plainly.
His features were stoic. "No, I'm not blind. It's just an unfortunate birth defect."
She saw the shame in his eyes as he spoke and it made her chest tight that something so beautiful would hurt him so much. "It's not a defect. Your eyes are beautiful. Unique . . . like you. I think they're very cool."
He glanced away.
She caught his chin and forced him to look at her again. "Who hurt you?"
His gaze was guarded. "What?"
Tory stroked his jaw as she realized how shrewish that must have sounded. "I'm so sorry, that was so nosy of me. It's just, you're so guarded and private about even the most innocuous thing. Like you're afraid to let anything out for fear of it being turned against you. And it's everything, right down to your eye color. I'll bet black isn't even your natural hair color, is it?"
Ash swallowed at her question. She was eerily perceptive. "Like you said, we barely know each other."
She brushed his hair back from his face. "Have you ever been intimate with anyone?"
"Of course I have."
"I don't mean sexually intimate. I've no doubt you've been with countless women, even at your age. What I'm talking about is having someone who knows your most intimate thoughts. Someone you can be yourself with without fear of them judging you or thinking less of you?"
Ash laughed bitterly at the mere thought of being so open with another person. "It's in the nature of people to hurt each other. No one really cares about your thoughts or your feelings."
Tory ached for him. He was so closed off that it made her want to weep. "I care about your thoughts, Ash."
"You? You've misjudged everything about me from the very beginning. I'm nothing but another asshole you have to deal with."
"Because you haven't given me anything other than your worst to judge you by. Why did you come to Nashville? Huh? Why was ruining my reputation so important to you?"
She saw the light fade from his eyes as he withdrew further into himself. But it was the pain in them that made her ache for him and in that moment she knew he'd had a very personal reason for what he'd done.
"Why, Ash?"
Her hall clock chimed.
He pulled back. "It's nine o'clock. I have a date."
Bemused, she frowned as he left the kitchen with his beer and headed to her living room where he'd set up an Xbox 360 to her TV. At least that's what she thought it was, but instead of being white it was covered with black hacker/pwn3d stickers.
Ignoring her, he pulled a T-shirt out of his backpack, put it on, then sat on her sofa and attached an earpiece to his head.
She sat on the arm of the couch. "What does pwn3d mean? I see that all over the Internet."
"It's a gamer's term that means you've been owned or defeated badly." He turned everything on.
"You do this a lot?"
"Every Saturday morning."
She rolled her eyes, waiting to see something like Halo or Gears of War or some other macho male game come up. So when it started out with pink dancing animals, she scowled. "Viva Pi?ata?" It looked like a young kid's game.
"Yeah," he said as he signed in under his own name. "Hey Tobe."
She realized he was talking to someone on the earpiece.