Page 71 of Curse of Immortality
“Oh, so you do care about dignity. As long as it’s yours?”
“I already apologized and when I offered to take off my clothes, I never suggested it would be in front of all these people. You’re going to get me booted out, again, and I don’t…”
Althea cut him off mid-sentence. “Give me your shirt.”
Sucking in his lips, Damon glanced over the room. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed to be undressed in front of others, but as a Fader, Damon preferred to keep a low profile, and stripping in a public inn was anything but low profile. “All right, but if I do this then will you give me a chance?”
With her arms crossed, she didn’t answer.
Sighing with annoyance, Damon grabbed onto the fabric of his shirt and was about to pull it up when the drunk men sitting by the bar began whistling.
When Damon turned around to tell off the men, Althea’s gaze drifted to the compass on the table. It clearly meant a great deal to Damon and that told her it had to be an heirloom of some kind. Maybe it would make him stay away from her if she took the compass and showed him that she wasn’t a scared little Earthen.
After Damon’s warning to the drunk patrons, they began booing and throwing pickled onions in his direction. Most laughed, except for the barman, who was getting tired of the commotion.
“Are we even now? You wanted to embarrass me, and I would say you succeeded.” Damon stood in his underclothes, wearing only a long white shirt and his underpants, but Althea wasn’t satisfied.
“You’re still far from naked,” she said in a dry tone.
Damon leaned in and whispered, “There are other ways I could make it up to you, you know.”
“This works fine for me… Go on,” Althea encouraged with a nod to his lower body. “You saw me without anything covering my private parts. Now take off what’s left.”
From across the room, the annoyed bartender was making his way over. From his tense expression, Althea knew he was about to ask Damon to put his clothes back on.
There were too many people watching, and she had no real interest in seeing him completely stripped naked. Putting his jacket and shirt down on the table, she leaned forward and scolded, “Damon Bradshaw, you can put your clothes back on. All I ask is that you stay away from me. I don’t care if we live to be the last two people on this Earth, I want nothing to do with you.”
Still having Charles’ order in the back of his mind, Damon couldn’t give up. A weaker man might have backed down, but he looked Althea deep in the eyes, and stuck as close to the truth as he could. “I can’t do that.”
“Excuse me, sir, but I’ll need you to get dressed or leave.” The corpulent bartender was red in his face but created the perfect distraction for Althea to leave.
“Piss off,” Damon hissed at the man while putting his shoes back on and then the rest of his clothes before grabbing his jacket in one hand and setting off in pursuit of Althea, who abruptly rose from the table and hurried out of the small and dark tavern at a fast pace.
She was halfway down the street before he caught up to her. “Look, can you stop for a second?”
She ignored his plea and continued walking with her gaze straight forward and the wind playing with her orange curls.
“Althea, I apologized. What more can I do to make you forgive me? I know I seem like a stranger to you, but it’s different for me. I’ve been around you for close to fifty years and I have strong feelings for you.”
It stressed Althea that Damon was right on her heels. She had already been in an emotionally draining confrontation with Maeve earlier and desperately needed to create a portal and escape to Orenda where she could digest everything in peace.
The park was close now and she only needed elements of nature to create the portal to go home
“Where are you going?” Damon called out behind her.
Over her shoulder, she hissed, “Stop following me. Just leave me alone.”
“Did you even hear what I said?”
With too many people in the street, her senses were overwhelmed, and with Damon too close to avoid him, Althea stopped abruptly and turned. “What?”
He looked genuine when he repeated, “I have strong feelings for you. Why else would I humiliate myself in this way?”
“Oh, you think this is humiliating foryou? What about me realizing that I’ve told you my secrets when I thought you were an animal? I would have never stripped naked and bathed if I had known it was you.”
Holding up both palms to appease her, Damon said, “And I understand that. Which is why I’m apologizing to you. Again.” Although he genuinely meant it, it only came forth as condescending to Althea.
With a deep breath, she looked up and down the street feeling stressed and upset about the situation. “How many animal shapes can you even shift into?”
