‘What? A biddable servant you can do anything with? An object that you can ignore? No, I am not.’ She glanced up at him from beneath her lashes, a daring thought occurring to her. If she played with the knot of her sarong, what would he do? Would it irritate him? Would it knock that annoyingly expressionless expression from his face? He’d left her stewing for a whole week and part of her wanted to make him stew too.
Some of the other cleaning women in the compound had whispered about using their sexuality to make men do what they wanted, but Rose had never seen the point of it. If it wasn’t going to get her out of captivity, then why bother?
But perhaps she could understand it now. Like anger, there was a certain...power to it. Men were easy to manipulate, or so some of the others had said.
Maybe she could test her own power, see what it did to him. Experiment a little.
She lifted her hand and fussed with the knot, watching him slyly as she did so.
One corner of his twisted mouth turned up, though the rest of his face remained impassive. Was his lack of expression due to all that scar tissue perhaps?
‘I am not going to do what you want, Rose,’ he said. ‘No matter how many times you play with that knot.’
Damn. Either he wasn’t open to manipulation, or he didn’t want her as much as she’d thought.
She let her hand drop and pulled a face. ‘What’s the point of getting to know one another? When all you want from a wife is children?’
He gave her a steady look. ‘Are you a virgin, Rose?’
After years of staying quiet and still and keeping her secrets, her instinct was not to tell him. But she wasn’t in the compound now, and anyway, there wasn’t much point in hiding it. ‘Yes,’ she said, lifting her chin in challenge.
His eyes widened a fraction. ‘No one touched you? No one...hurt you?’
The question stung. That she’d managed to avoid what many of the others hadn’t made her uncomfortable, not to mention angry. ‘Vasiliev’s daughter, Athena, was my friend. She...protected me.’ She gave him a severe look. ‘Not that it didn’t stop men from trying to take what wasn’t theirs.’
He remained inscrutable. ‘I see.’
‘It doesn’t bother you?’ she asked suddenly, wanting to know. ‘That you bought me? That I was sold to you? Were you okay with it? Or perhaps you take part in it yourself?’
Again, his expression gave nothing away. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I do not. And no, I was not okay with it.’
‘Really? Because you look okay with it.’
‘If you hadn’t noticed, I do not have a lot of movement in my face.’ His voice was terse. ‘It does not mean I was okay with it, not in any way.’
That wasn’t fair. You thought it might be scar tissue, so why push?
A small thread of guilt wound through her, but she ignored it. Why shouldn’t she push? He hadn’t told her anything about himself and she needed to know.
‘So why were you there? In Vasiliev’s compound?’
Finally, an emotion flickered across his ruined face, but she couldn’t tell what it was. ‘Vasiliev was my father-in-law, once upon a time. I visit him every year.’
Rose blinked, taken off-guard. His father-in-law? She’d made up all kinds of reasons for why Ares would be at the compound. Good reasons, she realised with a start, because she hadn’t wanted him to be there for bad reasons. She hadn’t wanted him to be like all the others who visited Vasiliev.
That means he was married.
Rose blinked again. ‘You’re married? I mean, to someone else?’
Ares gave her an enigmatic glance. ‘Once. A long time ago.’
‘But what happened—’
‘We’ll talk tonight,’ he interrupted, his tone casual yet firm. ‘I’ll have one of the staff come and get you when dinner is served.’
Then before she could say another word, he turned and stalked back into the villa, leaving her staring after him.
She didn’t know what to make of that. She didn’t know what to make of him, full stop.