Warrior Rising (Goddess Summoning #6)(48)

“You know, if you didn’t bark commands at them, they might stop jumping out of their skin every time you’re near,” Kat said softly as they walked the short distance to the campfire together.

“They fear me even though they have no reason to. Commanding them or not will not change that.”

Kat thought he sounded angry, and she guessed she couldn’t really blame him. The women showed their fear of him so openly that it must grate on his nerves. Kat spooned up fish and garlic for all four of them, and even Patroklos ate at Jacky’s insistence. Then she and Jacky sat comfortable on the bench and ate the utterly delicious fish with fresh bread and wine, while Patroklos and Achilles sat on the sandy beach on either side of them.

Kat noticed Patroklos leaned his back intimately against Jacky’s knees. They ate and talked easily together. Kat decided she liked Jacky with Patroklos. That he was a good man was obvious, but he also had a fun sense of humor, and he seemed to appreciate her. And Jacky definitely liked him—despite her cynical nature.

Kat looked down at Achilles. He was sitting close to her, but his back was so ramrod straight that no part of his body touched hers.

She bent forward and whispered in his ear as she tugged on a long strand of his golden hair. “Lean back against me. You look uncomfortable as hell sitting all perfect and straight like that.”

He looked up over his shoulder at her, grunted, and then leaned against her legs. He was still stiff, so Kat butted him with her knees. “Relax,” she whispered into his ear, and after only a little hesitation, he did relax, leaning back more comfortably.

Pleased with herself, Kat looked around as she ate the tasty fish and saw that all of the women who had been mending clothes across the campfire from them were staring at her with looks ranging from shock to fear. Kat sighed.

“What have you done to make all of those women so scared of you?” She asked him quietly, not wanting to be overheard, but Patroklos answered.

“The women condemn Achilles no matter what he says or does. He has never harmed one of them. None of us have. We are not barbarians. The war prizes who come to our beds do so willingly.” Patroklos paused long enough to give Jacky a big grin.

“Finish your dinner. I’ll check your stitches afterward.” Jacky spoke matter-of-factly, but Kat could see that she also stroked the side of Patroklos’s thigh with her bare foot.

“Will you check them in our tent? Alone?” Patroklos’s eyes gleamed with obviously naughty intent, and for a split second he did remind her of Buffy’s Spike—not that she would ever admit that to Jacky.

“Yes.” Jacky made her voice all breathy, speaking in what Kat thought was a pretty darn good imitation of Marilyn Monroe. “There are some examinations that are much better done in private.”

Kat could have sworn only five more minutes had passed when Patroklos was picking up one of the pitchers of wine and two goblets and following Jacky, who said, “Good night,” to Kat with a wink, into their tent.

“So they’ve always been scared of you?” She took up the unfinished thread of their conversation after they were alone.

Achilles answered her, but it was clear the subject made him uncomfortable. “Women have feared me since the first time the berserker fully possessed me when I was with the maiden to whom I was betrothed.” His voice had gone from reluctant to cold. The more he spoke, the more dispassionate he sounded, but Kat could see the way his shoulders had tensed again and how he held himself too rigid so that he was no longer leaning relaxed against her. “I was nineteen and she was sixteen. She was of Ithaca’s royal house, a distant cousin of Odysseus. We thought to join our families. I’d known her since we were children. The night before our wedding we snuck away to be alone. She wanted me, and I her. I’d had no idea the berserker could possess me during such a time.” His voice raised then, sharp with anger. “I wasn’t on a battlefield. There should have been no reason—” He broke off and shook his head.

“What happened?”

“I killed her—raped her to death. I came back to myself with her bloody, lifeless body beneath mine. I have not taken a woman since that night.”

Abruptly he stood and, without so much as a backward glance at her, Achilles disappeared inside their tent.

“Well, hell. Where’s some Xanax and a good, sturdy straight-jacket when you need them?” Kat tried to joke with herself—to lighten the sadness of the oppressive mood Achilles had cast over them. Of course it didn’t work. What he’d told her was awful. He’d killed the girl he’d loved and was supposed to marry.

She stood up, not wanting to sit there and let the women stare at her. Or worse, one of them might come over to her and whisper another escape plot that Achilles could overhear. Kat looked at the closed tent flap. She wasn’t ready to go in there yet, either. With a sigh, she pulled off her shoes, hiked up her voluminous silk skirts and started walking toward the nearby seashore. Maybe the moon shining off the waves would calm her.

Kat had just reached the water when a huge burst of glittering diamond dust erupted in front of her, out of which Venus suddenly appeared.

“Darling, you’re not doing a bad job, but I thought that, perhaps, you could use a little advice from Love herself.”

Kat shrugged her shoulders. “Well, it definitely couldn’t hurt.”