Page 97 of Sigma

He snorts. “You’re funny.”

I wrap my arm around his chest. “It would be okay if you did mean it.” I can’t believe what I’m saying. “And it’s okay if you didn’t.”

He just shakes his head. “I cannot…mean it, Corinna. I’m not capable of that.” A harsh pause. “Of love. Don’t think I am, because I simply will not ever have that within me. If you think you can heal me…fix me? That us fucking a few times—no matter that it was…” he trails off, as if he can’t find the words.

I feel the sting of his words, but I don’t let it seep into my heart. I feel his fear, and I know his reaction to fear is to lash out. To harden. To tighten the mask around his true self, to heighten the walls around the island fortress of his emotions.

“Apollo.” I press myself up against him, breasts flattening against his back, arms underneath his to clutch at his chest, my lips whispering against his neck. “It was more than fucking. I know it, and I know you know it. You can deny it. You can pretend otherwise. That’s okay. I get it. But it was still way,waymore than just fucking. I mean, granted, it was the best sex of my life. I’ll have dreams about the way you fucked me. It was…it was goddamned magical, Apollo. But it wasn’tjustfucking.”

He inhales deeply. Holds it. Lets it out with tight control through pursed lips. Steps out of my hold and into the shower, adjusting the temperature.

I wait, and watch him wash, condition, and rinse his hair, water sluicing over his beautiful body, running in rivulets over his muscles.

Long minutes of silence in which he completely ignores me.

“So that’s it?” I say, eventually.

He won’t look at me. “That’s it.” A pause. “They’re out there, you know. Your parents. In Spain and coming here. I had word earlier. That’s what I came to tell you, when you…attacked me.” Is there a hint of a smirk in the tone of his voice? Maybe. Not on his face, certainly.

I just stared at him, absorbing this information. “So…what’s…what’s happening?”

“That’s up to them.” He scrubs his skin with a bar of soap, not answering. Rinses. Steps out, leaving the water on. “Your turn.”

He nabs a towel from the heated rack and dries himself with it. I’m frozen, unable to process this abrupt shift in him.

With a sigh, dabbing his face with the towel and then wrapping it around his waist, he turns to me. “Take a shower. Or don’t. I have preparations to see to, and work to attend to.”

“Apollo.” I reach for him, but stop short of touching him. “You don’t have to turn back into the asshole to prove a point to me.”

He tosses the towel into the nearby hamper and stands naked in front of me; for all of his nudity, however, there is no vulnerability in him, no softness. He’s as armored and guarded as if he were in a suit rather than as naked as God made him.

“That, dearest Corinna, is where you seem to have erred.” He gives off no expression, neither cruel nor kind. Simply blank. “I am not turningbackinto anything, because I never stopped being anything but who and what I am. If you think you saw something…else…in the things we did, well…what you believe you saw in me is not anything to do with me.” He breezes past me to the closet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

I step into the shower, mind whirling, emotions boiling. I use his shampoo and conditioner, his bar of soap. Rinse off, and then simply stand in the hot spray, trying to get a grip on things.

I know what I saw.

What I felt.

I know I saw beneath the hard mask to the man he could be.

I am absolutely certain that for a moment or two, Apollo tasted what could be between us, and found himself desperately wanting it. But then…

He panicked.

The why of his retreat back behind the mask is complicated psychology I’m not qualified for, but if I had to guess? He’s scared. He wants something he’s never had, never known: love and acceptance.

He wants to be able to be that man, the one who gives and receives rather than simply takes and demands. The man with soft eyes and a tender touch.

But he doesn’t believe he can have that, be that.

He doesn’t believe I could possibly be truly and openly offering that to him.

He doesn’t believe it.

He wants it—oh yes, I could see that plain as day.

So the question is…what do I do?