“How very odd,” she murmured. Perhaps she hadn’t stumbled over her own feet to get away from him, but a vine. She assumed the caress upon the top of her foot was from the dress she wore, but had it been a vine?
“Yes, indeed.” He kicked it away. “Perhaps your guardians are trying to send a warning.” He glanced about. “Do you think they’d have me strangled with vines?”
This time it was Nina’s turn to laugh. “No, but if they tried, I would stop them.”
He glanced up at the trees. “I promise, I am not trying to harm her.”
No, he wasn’t because he was not aware of the turmoil within her being, which she could not confess. “You should go.”
Orion stared at her once again, his brown eyes full of concern. “Have I angered you?”
“No,” Nina quickly assured him. “I just think it is time that we parted for today.”
“Very well,” he offered slowly, still concerned. “May I return tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she answered without thought, and in the next moment vowed once again to protect her heart from Orion Drakos.
Fifteen
He could have sworn that Nina had enjoyed the kiss, but she had pushed him away. She then mentioned being friends. Did she want there to be nothing more between them?
He snorted as he made his way through the boxwood. She’d asked if he was a rake. Though far from innocent, he’d never been accused of such. Or at least he had not in the past year because his mother wished him to at least attempt to appear respectable.
Perhaps he had simply kissed her too soon. They had only met less than a fortnight ago and it was far too soon for such familiarity. Except, he had needed to kiss her. The desire was so overwhelming that even if his mind had been warning him not to take such action, he still would have done so.
It was the sweetest of kisses. Innocent, warm, trusting and he had hoped to deepen it further and then she pushed him away.
“You were told to stay away from the grove.”
Orion jerked his head up to find his mother standing near the cove.
“Come with me.”
“Bloody hell!” he muttered quietly. Why hadn’t he gone out the way he’d entered and then he wouldn’t have been caught. But he’d been too disturbed by the vine and haunted by Nina’s kiss to realize that he was leaving the grove through the break in the boxwoods. The very entry he had been avoiding.
Orion followed her inside, knowing that a lecture was soon to follow. Once again, he was being treated as a child and it was beginning to infuriate him.
His mother led him to the library where his father sat behind a desk. He rose as his mother closed the door. It was bad enough that she was going to chastise him, but Orion didn’t need to hear it from his father as well.
“You have gone to the grove again, after I have forbidden it.”
Orion looked his mother in the eye. “Yes!”
“Why?”
“Why?” he returned with outrage. “You have been keeping a secret on the other side of those boxwoods my entire life and I still do not know why. Yes, there is a Greek Temple that had been created to honor Goddess Gaia, but that does not explain why I cannot go there, or anyone else for that matter.”
“It is sacred,” she answered.
“Does that mean Nina is sacred as well?” he demanded and wished he could take back the words. Now she knew that he’d met the lady of the grove.
His mother drew in a gasp. “Who do you speak of?”
This time it was Orion who narrowed his eyes on her. “Please do not lie to me or play me a fool. I visited the same day as you. I only hid when you, my aunts, my sister and cousins began walking toward the temple. What I would like to know is why they can visit the grove and not me.”
“Because you are a man,” his father answered as he came around the desk. “Only on the rarest occasion am I allowed to enter.”
“Yet Cassian can visit all that he likes,” Orion countered. Orion knew why Cassian was allowed there but wanted to see and hear the reaction of his parents.
