Warrior Rising (Goddess Summoning #6)(69)

She smiled. “Actually I was planning on asking you for the blanket until I dry.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” He looked embarrassed, which Kat thought was a huge improvement over him looking stony faced and emotionless or scarlet eyed and completely crazy.

When he made no further move, she said, “Could you bring me the blanket?”

She’d rarely seen him awkward. Even at rest he had a warrior’s feral grace, but when he jumped up and gathered the blanket he definitely gave off a bull in the china shop vibe and Kat had to bite the side of her cheek to keep from laughing.

She stood up and walked out of the water. His gaze never left her eyes, even when he opened the blanket for her and she stepped, naked and dripping, into his arms. Kat felt a tremor go through his body as his arms closed around her. Kat stepped back and smiled at him as if he saw her naked every day. The struggle on his face was obvious. There were no signs of the berserker, but Achilles was no longer relaxed, and she understood if his relaxation level continued to decline and his stress level to rise, she was, quite literally, flirting with danger.

“Tell me a story,” she said.

His face was a question mark. “A story?”

“Yeah.” The hand that wasn’t clutching the blanket around her took his, and she pulled him up toward the shrine and the waiting picnic basket. “Tell me a story about your childhood while we eat. Something back in Phthia.” She gave him a mischievous look over her shoulder. “Something not flattering.”

His snort sounded amused. “What if I was the perfect child and I did nothing that was not flattering.”

“Then I’ll eat the basket instead of the lunch you bullied Aetnia into packing.” Kat sat beside the basket, arranging her blanket around her and wringing out her wet hair before checking out the food. “Yum! Cheese, meat, olives and wine. All of my favorite food groups—fat and booze and salt.” Achilles had taken his position next to her, leaning against the pillar again and making an obvious attempt to relax and not stare at her bare shoulders. She handed him some bread and meat. “Good thing this body is so young. Less chance all this cheese will go to my butt—or at least not immediately.”

“Back in your time you aren’t young?”

Kat looked up from the food to him. Achilles didn’t look shocked or upset at the idea of her being old, just curious. She smiled. “Back in my time I’m almost a decade older than you.”

He did look shocked then. “You left your husband and children to come here?”

“Oh, god no. I’ve never been married and I definitely don’t have any kids.”

“Did you take vows of chastity to a goddess?”

“You know, Hera and Athena were confused about this, too. In the modern mortal world women don’t get married so young. Okay, well, not educated women with any sense and decent teeth. Actually some of us don’t get married at all. Or have children. We don’t have to.”

“Then what do you do with your lives?”

Kat’s smile was long and slow. “Exactly what we want.”

“You’re like men!” Achilles proclaimed, as if he finally understood.

“I guess from your point of view that’s true.” She raised one brow at him. “And in case you’re wondering. I have no intention of changing that about myself, even if I have changed worlds.”

He gave her a considering look. “Does that mean you don’t ever want to marry or have children?”

Kat ignored the little sizzle of excitement his question had her feeling. “Not necessarily. What it means is that if I get married or have children it will be because that’s what I want and not because it’s what’s expected of me.”

“Agreed,” he said.

“Good. Now I want to hear a story about you as a little boy.”

“An unflattering story.”

“Absolutely, they’re the best kind.”

“All right.” He settled in against the pillar and crossed his legs at the ankle, occasionally taking a drink from the wineskin while he talked and she worked her way through the food in the picnic basket. “When I was a boy I didn’t believe I could drown.”

“Makes sense. Your mom being a sea goddess and all.”

“It would have made more sense if I had been an immortal, too. But I wasn’t, even though I acted like I was.” He shook his head, remembering. “I drove my nursemaids mad. And when I outgrew them, it was my tutors I drove mad. I took ridiculous chances—swimming too far out to sea, getting caught in undertows and barely escaping—silly, reckless things like that. It got so bad that my father was going to forbid me from going to the sea at all.”

“Bet your mom didn’t like that idea.”

He laughed. “No, not at all. But she also didn’t like the idea of her only son being killed in a childhood accident caused by his own foolishness. So the two of them got together and planned a little lesson for me.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” she said after motioning for him to pass her the wineskin.

“It wasn’t. I must have been, oh, not quite twelve years old, which made Patroklos not even seven. He was forever shadowing me, which annoyed me to no end, but this particular day he told me that he’d discovered a boat abandoned in a cove and he would take me to it.”