Page 64 of Ungodly Rich

She started toward the intersection ahead, relieved to once again inhabit her own body. Wearing another woman’s skin always gave her a vague sense of irritation, like an itch she couldn’t scratch. She reached down to tug Abby’s pants upward—they were too loose as well as too short, and Abby’s silk shirt was tight over Aphrodite’s chest—butAphrodite lacked the energy to cast an illusion spell. For once, she was too exhausted to care what she wore.

“Where are you headed, sweetheart?” a deep voice asked. “I’d love to buy you a drink.”

Aphrodite stiffened. She hadn’t heard the man approach. He looked to be in his late thirties, tall and powerfully built, with pale eyes that lingered over her body.

“Thank you for the offer, but I’m going home. To my husband.”

Her husband. Aphrodite suddenly longed for Hephaestus—for his warm hands, his kindness. If he were here, this stranger wouldn’t have dared to hit on her.

But Hephaestus was gone, hundreds of miles away, because she had arranged it. Because she didn’twanthim here tonight.

Aphrodite cast a glance over her shoulder, wondering if she should head back to the club. But she was more than halfway down the block, and there was a major intersection ahead, where streetlamps cast bright pools of light over the sidewalks. She quickened her pace.

Undeterred, the stranger fell into step alongside her. He was dressed in a tailored shirt and jacket, an expensive watch gleaming on his wrist. But Aphrodite knew better than anyone that money was no indicator of how a person would behave. Of whether you could trust them.

“Your husband?” the man scoffed. “He shouldn’t have let you out alone. A beautiful woman like you, walking the streets at night by herself?”

The intersection was barely twenty yards away. Aphrodite heard approaching traffic, which surely meant that she could find a taxi. She was acutely aware of this man’s body, filling up the space next to her.

“As I said, I’m heading home. Please leave me alone.” Aphrodite tried to sound firm, but there was a flicker of the old fear in her voice, and this stranger likely heard it.

He stepped closer. Too close. Stupidly, Aphrodite kept thinking that the situation would resolve itself—that he would keep leering at her but stop before actually harming her.

Still, Aphrodite reached within for her power, just in case.

Nothing.

The lake within her, normally teeming with magic, felt as hollow as a scooped-out gourd. She was drained, unable to summon even the flimsiest thread of enchantment. Her hand flew to the necklace at her throat, but the girdle’s magic was too entwined with her own—she couldn’t use it, not when she was this depleted.

When the man moved, he was fast.

In the span of a heartbeat, he’d flung Aphrodite backward, into a narrow alley. Her head snapped against the stone wall, her vision blurring. Buildings loomed to either side of her, but their windows were shadowed and dark.

Aphrodite opened her mouth to scream, but the man’s arm pressed against her throat, cutting off her air. She struggled to breathe, to fight him off, scrabbling and kicking at him. But the weight of his body pressed urgently, inexorably, against hers as he reached down to rip at Abby’s pants in a rough, practiced motion.

She no longer felt like a goddess. Suddenly, she was a mortal girl again, unable to stop those stronger or more powerful from doing what they wanted.

• • •

It happened in the seventeenth year of Aphrodite’s mortal life, after her parents sent her to work in the house of a wealthy family.

“We can’t afford to keep you at home anymore. Not with your brother getting married,” Aphrodite’s mother explained, her voice hard. “Who knows,” she added, with a bitter glance at her daughter, “perhaps you’ll make something of the opportunity.”

Aphrodite knew precisely what her mother meant by that. She also knew what happened to women who gave their bodies too freely. They ended up pregnant and alone, without any prospects at all.

She tried to keep her head down, to work without attracting any attention. But it wasn’t long before the young master of the house took notice of her.

He was so painfully handsome, as well-spoken and polished as aprince from a fable. Aphrodite didn’t stand a chance. He followed her about the house as she swept floors or folded laundry, speaking such passionate words of love and devotion that she couldn’t help but relent. He brought her gifts of money, which she refused, and of flowers, which she wove giddily into her hair.

Aphrodite began unlocking the door of her room at night so that he could slip in.

What a fool she was, listening to his empty promises. But she’d been young, and mortal, and believed him when he said he wouldmarryher.

Then one night at dinner, his father announced the young man’s betrothal to an heiress.

Aphrodite was heartbroken. That night, she kept waiting for her young prince to come find her—to explain what had happened, maybe beg for her forgiveness.

When her bedroom door opened, she turned toward it hopefully—but it wasn’t the young man she’d fallen for.