Chapter 44
Forty-Four
I turned around to face Eros, watching his eyes turn from dark black to his usual and comfortable green. My lips curled into a small smile, and … I was feeling so … light and giddy. Unable to keep these feelings away anymore. Unable to stop myself from loving him completely.
We had been together long, long ago. And I’d do anything to keep him this time.
Anything.
Eros glanced down the hall toward the party, but I grabbed his hands.
“I’d do anything for you, Eros,” I whispered. “Kill anyone. Betray anyone. Sacrifice my pride …” I swallowed hard, knowing that my pride was all I really had down here.
Pride and reputation … that was really all it was.
But I pushed back my fear. “I’d do anything, anything for you.”
“Lucifer,” Eros said, pushing some of my hair behind my ear, “don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I’m not.” I shook my head and grasped his chin. “I really love you, and nothing will get in my way of that again. I learned my lesson. I let you go, and I paid for it for the past thousands and thousands of years. I won’t make the same mistake.”
A look of hurt and pain and … heartbreak crossed Eros’s face. “You promise me?”
I pulled him toward me and pressed my lips to his. Heat, passion—I gave him all of me in that single kiss. Not many people brought me to my knees as quickly and as hard as he could. I’d surrender and change myself for him.
“I promise you,” I said.
After a few moments, a grin broke out on his face, and he grabbed my hand, leading me back toward the party. We lingered at the door, watching the people inside go crazy.
Dani still sat at the bar with Biast, his hand tightly gripping her chin, her pretty pink cheeks flushed. She had a lustful glint in her eyes, one that told me she had complete control of the conversation—however it was going.
Biast pushed her chin to the side, hand sliding around her neck, and pulled her closer to him until she was standing between his legs, the front of his pants rubbing against her thigh. From here, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Dani seemed to be enjoying how rough he was with her.
“What do you think of that?” Eros asked me, surprisingly not as tense as I’d thought he’d be.
“What do I think of it?” I asked him. “Are you okay with it?”
Eros gave me a half shrug. “Yeah, I knew it was coming. Even with you, Dani nearly drains me. She’s getting stronger by the day, and I can’t keep up with it. And, besides”—he cracked a smile—“I know she loves me. It’s just sex with him, and I get to watch.”
I chuckled. “You’ve watched them together?”
Eros smirk widened, and he walked with me to the Fervor Crisps. “Of course I’ve watched. Dani asked me to watch the first time they did it. She’s nervous about trying out new partners, and she thinks I’m going to take it badly. But with her, I know who I am. I know I’m enough emotionally.”
“Biast?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I let Dani know who I think she’s safe with. If I think someone will hurt her—physically or emotionally—I tell her not to sleep with them, and she listens to me.”
“But Biast?” I repeated, brow raised. “He just killed his father.”
“He can’t kill her, and she can’t kill him. They’re not attached emotionally.”
“You never feel the urge to … you know, sleep with other people?”
He picked up a crisp and broke it in half. “Sounds like you’re jealous.”
“Curious,” I corrected, snatching one side from him.
After stuffing the sweet in his mouth and swallowing it whole, he shook his head. “No. I don’t need to, and I don’t feel the need to with anyone else. I can’t without an emotional connection—you know that.”
A wave of guilt washed over me. I did know that. That was how Eros always had been, and I had taken advantage of it as soon as we got down here—it was the shittiest thing to do to him. And I was afraid that Dani might slip into the same behaviors.
“She always tells me before it happens,” he said, nudging me, as if he knew exactly what I was worried about. “Don’t worry. She’s not fucking anyone and everyone. She has standards. So far, it’s been you, me, Biast, Tonia, and a couple others.”
“Tonia?” I asked. “Nearly forgot about that.”
Eros chuckled and grabbed another Fervor Crisp. “Tonia was a onetime thing. Can’t see that ever happening again. She’s a Lust now, but … I don’t think Dani felt it with her. Said she didn’t seem that passionate about it.”