Chapter Sixteen #2
It wasn’t a lie, but it still felt as if he was holding something back. Like he was telling just enough truth to answer the question but keeping the rest cleverly tucked away.
“Is the end of the world a foregone conclusion?”
His eyes sparked with something, but I couldn’t name it. “No, it’s not, love. Suppose you could say it comes with certain obstacles that could mean it goes either way.”
“And I have something to do with that?” I surmised.
“You do.”
He was impressed I’d figured any of this out. It was in the way he stared at me. Guess he never thought I’d draw these conclusions, and to be fair, it was pretty far-reaching to think I had anything to do with the end of the world over a comment made about a Horseman.
I expected to be panicked about everything, and maybe it was my initial shock or denial talking, but I was rather calm considering. It was nice to be getting answers after days of trying to figure out what the fuck I’d done. They weren’t the answers I wanted, but they were answers I needed.
I tilted my head and regarded him with a calculating stare.
“I’m only going to ask you this once, Songbird.
” His breathing ceased and his body became impossibly still.
“Because I deserve an answer, and I want to believe you.” His eyes flared with emotion, but I went on after taking a soul-fortifying breath. “Can I trust you?”
He moved too fast for my eyes to track. The kiss was hard and demanding. One of his hands had grabbed around the back of my neck and brought me as close as he could without sending hot coffee splashing into his lap.
After breathing new passion into my body with his kiss, he withdrew enough to look at me. “You can. I promise to protect you, Ems.” The usual humor-tainted twist in his words was absent. In its place, complete sincerity. “Because you’re mine and I’m yours, yeah?”
I thought hearing words like that would make me want to vomit or run for the hills or a terrible mix of both, but they didn’t. Heat swept through me from head to toe before collecting in my cheeks. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was blushing.
Maybe some part of me knew when I caught sight of him in that hallway that I’d fall for him if I wasn’t careful.
Maybe the signs over the last week pointed to a potent lure I’d never felt with anyone else.
Because when he said he was mine, I’d never been so glad to lay claim to someone.
And most surprising, I wanted to be his.
Worse, I wanted to believe the things he said.
If I was facing down the apocalypse, I wanted to at least embrace the things I’d been afraid to explore. I didn’t want to regret anything if all of this came to an end.
“Then I guess we have a world to save,” I whispered against his lips, smirking.
He chuckled huskily in reply. “But first we’ll need to do something a touch more important, love.”
“And what’s that?”
“A date.”
Confused, I pulled away as far as he’d let me go. “A date?”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “A date, Viper. A proper one.”
My lips kicked up at the thought. “What the hell, let’s do it. I’ll even cook.”
His cheeky smile made my stomach flip-flop. I felt like a total girl right now, and I didn’t hate the feeling like I thought I would.
“Oh yeah? You any good, love?”
Probably better not to tell him about the eggs I attempted and failed horribly to do barely a week ago.
He’d be worried I only offered to cook so I could poison him.
But honestly, how badly could I fuck up pasta, really?
If we were about to take on a demon and stop the end of the world, I could handle cooking for one date.
“You’re about to find out. But not while you’re here. I need to concentrate, and you’ll be a distraction.”
“Is that so?” A devious grin split his face, and his forward lean had me planting two hands on his chest to fend him off.
“Yes, so go upstairs, and I’ll call you down when everything’s done.”
“Call me down?”
I rolled my eyes. “You and I both know you have snake monster hearing.”
That seemed to amuse him a lot more than it should. “You’re one of the most perceptive humans I’ve met in a long time, Viper.”
“Well, you’re the only snake monster I’ve met, so you have me at a disadvantage here, birdie.”
His laughing eyes met my annoyed glance. “I’m starting to wonder which one of us is truly the snake monster.”
I swear to all that is holy…
“Out,” I growled, shoving him again.
He seemed skeptical as I hurried him out of his seat and toward the front door. “Why do I need to leave, though? I wouldn’t mind watching you tinker away in a cute little apron fit for a housewife.”
“Um, gross. No. That would never happen, so put that thought right out of your head. And anyway, if this is a date, then it needs all the steps of one. I deserve to be wooed, dammit. And this is my first date in…well, a while. I want the whole fucking experience.”
He seemed to perk up at the mention of my dating history. Or lack thereof.
“Wooed? The whole experience, you say?” His eyebrow waggle earned another exasperated curse from me.
“I already regret this,” I murmured, pushing on the brick wall that was the man-beast in front of me.
His chest rumbled with more laughter. “Is this dinner foreplay then, Viper? How about we skip right to dessert?”
I tried to hide a smile because his happy laughter after nothing but grim lines and world-ending revelations was getting to me. “Wooed, Z. Motherfucking woo me.”
“Thought that was what I was doing, pet,” his hands were all over me, caressing, touching, grabbing, and generally up to no good.
I smacked them away. “Get the fuck out.”
He still didn’t have a shirt on or his boots when I kicked him out of my apartment, but he was a magical snake monster so he’d figure it out.
And if not, his apartment was upstairs. He’d live without shoes or a shirt for a flight of stairs.
Hopefully the demons took a night off so I could enjoy this one simple pleasure before taking on Hell.
After dressing up for our first official date—I swear I wasn’t excited or anything—I was nearly thirty minutes into my pasta sauce creation that had splattered my face more than once when I heard someone open the front door.
I popped out of the kitchen with a spatula that took me forever to find, ready to use it as a weapon against Zelus for not waiting until I called him down. But then my eyes caught on someone I hadn’t expected to see.