Goddess of Light (Goddess Summoning #3)(39)

"Thank you, I think," she said, trying to regain her equilibrium. "If being called uniquely comely is a compliment."

"It is indeed." He was still holding her hand.

"Then thank you for sure."

"You are most welcome." Reluctantly he released her hand and sat beside her. "You were never far from my thoughts today, Pamela." His gaze slid from her lovely face down her body to the long legs she had crossed and cocked to the side so that their sleek length was clearly visible. "Your ankle must be fully recovered if you chose to balance on blades again tonight."

She smiled and wiggled her foot. "It feels perfect. And these are not blades. These are this season's new Pradas, which cost me a fortune, but I fell in love them, so I had no other choice but to take them home with me."

"Fortunate shoes," he said in a voice turned husky. Apollo reached down and caught her ankle in one hand, running a thumb across her skin while he felt for the bones and tendons he had healed just the night before, double-checking that all was well with her. But he was finding it difficult to focus on healing. Her ankle and foot looked incredibly sexy in the little slip of a shoe - and her toes had been painted a bright red to match her dress. There was something indescribably sexy about those almost naked feet and those scarlet-colored toes.

Pamela felt his touch travel from her ankle through her thighs to coil in the pit of her stomach like a long, intoxicating drink of expensive scotch. She was very sorry when he released her foot.

Apollo motioned for the servant to bring him a glass of wine before returning his attention to Pamela. "You already know what I did today - I thought of you. Tell me what you did here in Las Vegas while time passed slowly until we were to meet again."

Good, she thought, conversation was good. They needed to converse, because she needed time and mundane talk to get her raging hormones under control. Please, please, please don't let her babble like a boob.

"First, I did something I rarely do. I slept late."

He raised one quizzical, golden eyebrow.

"I'm definitely a morning person. I usually get up in time to drink a leisurely cup of coffee while I watch a beautiful Colorado sunrise."

"You like sunrises?"

She smiled, relaxing into the familiar subject of the conversation. "I adore them! Actually, sunrises are one of my absolute favorite things."

Her answer resonated within his soul. Suddenly he longed to bare himself to her, to tell her who he was and to share his world and his life with her. She loved sunrise. Didn't it stand to reason that she would love the God of Light? He actually opened his mouth to tell her his true name, but his rational mind caught up with his impulse. He didn't want her to automatically "love" him as a god. He wanted her to fall in love with Phoebus, the man inside the God. Still, he couldn't mask the intense desire that filled his voice when he spoke. "Sunrise is also very important to me. Perhaps someday soon you and I will experience the sun climbing the sky together."

Pamela blushed and didn't know what to say. She couldn't even stutter. Hell, this was definitely more than just being out of practice with dating and flirting in general. He made her feel like she couldn't catch her breath. She wanted... she wanted... Bloody buggering hell! She wanted so many things when he looked at her like that. But she'd wanted so many things when she'd first met Duane, too. He had seemed to hold the key to the rest of her life within his firm, capable hands. Reality had shown that the only thing he'd held within his hands had been emotional ropes with which he wanted to bind her to him - to choke the spirit from her and to make her into something she wasn't, his ideal of a perfect wife. She could still feel the rope burns from that stifling relationship.

So, slow and easy... she needed to slow down and take it easy with Phoebus. He seemed wonderful, but her intuition kept screaming that things were rarely as they seem. Having fun this weekend was one thing. Getting tangled in the ropes of another relationship was certainly another.

Within Pamela's expressive eyes Apollo read her struggle and then her subsequent withdrawal from him, and it pained him more then he would have imagined. But he had no intention of giving up so easily. His smile was warm and open.

"Good," he said as if he hadn't just issued an invitation that she had ignored. "It pleases me that we have the appreciation of sunrise in common, but you said you overslept, so you missed the rising of the sun this morning. What else did your day hold?"

Pamela met his eyes. They were so warm and so incredibly blue. They made her think of the summer sky over the Mediterranean Sea...

Hell! She was doing it again - falling into his good looks like an f-ing teenager.

"Pamela?"

"Oh, sorry." She took a sip of her wine. "My mind was wandering. Sometimes I lack focus. Not with my job," she amended hastily. "There I'm totally single-minded. Like this afternoon. I started sketching my version of that horrible fountain. I thought I'd been there maybe twenty minutes or so, but when I finally checked my watch and took a breath, two hours had passed." Pamela paused and squinted her eyes. "I just did it again, didn't I?"

"It?"

"Lost focus, shifted subjects." Babbled, she thought.

"Definitely."

"Sorry again, Phoebus."

Apollo smiled. He enjoyed her bright thoughts and the way expressions danced across her face, especially when she spoke about her work. She wasn't a vixen trying to entrap the God of Light, nor was she a maiden, dazzled by his immortal powers. Pamela was real. Her responses to him were honest and true - and that was more of an aphrodisiac than he could ever have imagined.