Apprehension slid down Daphne’s spine. Tugging the blanket up to her chest, she ran her fingers through her hair, then pushed to her feet and wrapped the blanket around her. She moved toward the closet and leaned against the doorjamb as she watched him pull a box from the shelf above the rack and flip off the lid.
“You’re up early,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. Nonchalant had never really been her specialty, but if there was one thing she’d learned from the Sirens, it was that morning-after awkwardness killed the mood like nothing else, so better to avoid it altogether. “Any chance you made coffee? I don’t operate well unless I have caffeine. Well, food too. We burned off so many calories last night, I definitely need food.”
She was rambling. But this time she didn’t care. He seemed to like it when she rambled.
He pulled a black knit hat out of the box, replaced the lid, and set the box back on the shelf. Handing her the hat, he stepped around her and said, “I’ll find you a coat.”
Two things hit Daphne at once. He was definitely avoiding eye contact—or any contact for that matter. And he was getting her dressed for outside weather.
“A coat for what?” She snagged the sleeve of his shirt before he could get all the way past her. “What’s going on, Ari?”
He gently pulled his sleeve from her fingers and moved back a step. “I’m taking you into town. You need to get back to wherever it is you came from and I need to get back to the way things always are for me.”
He was pushing her away. The realization hit like a punch to the gut. Last night had meant something if he was kicking her out like this. She stepped away from the wall. “I liked last night, and I know you liked it too. I don’t want to leave.”
“Well, you don’t get a say in it.” He moved for the door. “It’s safer for you if you just go.”
Safer... Safer, she realized...from him.
She darted around him, stopping in the hallway, preventing his exit. “Silas told me about your blackouts. I’m not afraid of them. I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”
He turned his mismatched eyes on her. But unlike last night, they weren’t soft and dreamy. They were hard and icy. “Silas should learn to keep his big mouth shut.”
He tried to move past her again, but she stopped him with a hand on his chest. “He cares about you. That’s why he told me. And they’re not your fault.”
Those steely eyes narrowed. “You don’t know what they are, and you don’t want to be around when they happen.” He grasped her wrist and pulled it away from his chest, then stepped around her. “This isn’t up for negotiation. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes whether you’re dressed or not. It’s cold outside. I suggest you listen.”
He stomped out of the room before Daphne could stop him, but as soon as he was gone, her stomach sank and all the excitement she’d felt last night leaked out of her like a balloon deflating. Dropping down to sit on the hearth, she clutched the blanket at her chest and tried to stop her silly heart from aching.
If he wanted her gone, there wasn’t anything she could do to stop him from kicking her out. She wasn’t strong enough to intimidate him, sex clearly hadn’t worked to seduce him, and Silas was gone, so she didn’t even have the half breed on her side to talk some sense into the Argonaut. But what really hurt was the fact she’d failed. Not at her mission—she’d decided last night she wasn’t about to let Zeus manipulate her into doing his dirty work ever again—but at convincing Ari he wasn’t the monster everyone thought him to be.
Her gaze drifted to the rug where they’d slept tangled together, then to the clothes he’d left for her. And as both blurred in front of her eyes, she realized something else.
Without the Sirens, without a purpose in her life, she had no idea where she would go from here.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The howling wind was nothing but a dull hum lost in the roar of the engine as Ari maneuvered the snowmobile around a tree. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to distract him from the simmering heat at his back.
He tried to focus on the solid handlebars beneath his gloves, on his knees pressing against the seat between his legs. The machine was an extension of himself, the skis slipping over the pristine snow with ease, familiar and comforting. But the warm circle around his waist where Daphne held on for dear life kept distracting him. And the pressure of her thighs against the backs of his legs, the press of her breasts along his spine—even through the thick jackets they both wore—definitely wasn’t comforting. It was arousing as hell, and every time she flexed her arms and moved even closer to hold on tighter, he remembered what it had felt like to have her wrapped around him last night. Naked and begging for his touch.