“You’re an asshole,” he says.
“You’rethe asshole. You’re a villain.”
And then his huge hand comes and cups the side of my face. In a dark, demonic voice, he murmurs, “Oh no. I’m a far more complex, far more terrible creature.” I shiver, eyes opening as I look up into his. They radiate the most spectacular white light. “I’m not a villain. Not a hero either. Like you, I work on my own. Don’t have time for Boy Scouts or merit badges.”
I chuckle, shoulders shaking. “You’re two-faced.”
“Which one of my faces do you like better?”
He’s joking, but I actually have an answer to that. I reach up and stroke his cheek. He flinches and it fills my chest with a scary tremor. He’s not a male used to being touched, is he? At least, not with gentleness. “This one.”
“That’s a lie.” He grabs my wrist, then tilts his mouth into my palm, kissing it and sending feeling coursing through all my bones. “I saw you damn near pass out when I turned on the charm back in that elevator.”
“Maybe. But this is a face I’d do a lot more than pass out for,” I admit like a fool. But it’s worth it to see the surprise on his face.
“Yeah?”
I nod.
“Like what?”
And then I blurt out, “Try to trust. I don’t trust Taranis at all. But I’m starting to trust Darius.”
His hand strokes down to my neck. His face looks ... I can’t interpret his expression at all. He looks pissed, but his touch is so soft.
“Thank you for tonight,” I say. He doesn’t respond, just watches the movement of his hand over my skin. “Your eyes are so bright.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Right?”
His claw flicks over my collarbone gently. He exhales, and then exhales deeper. “Okay,” he says calmly. Far too calmly. His gazemeets mine again and is so bright it’s impossible to hold it without squinting. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Let’s go to your place.”
“We can hang out on my balcony. I have those heater things that are terrible for the environment, but,shh, don’t tell anyone.”
He rolls his eyes. “Who would I tell? I don’t have friends. And I know damn well you don’t either.”
The strange realization hits me, and I shrug at the truth of it. And then we both start moving at the same time, except we’re moving in opposite directions. “I thought we were going to my balcony,” I say.
“We are. But I’m not going to take the elevator all the way down to the lobby and then take the other elevator all the way back up just to go down four floors. Come on.”
Instinct and curiosity have me trailing after him as he snatches the wine bottle off the counter, gripping it in the same massive hand as his glass. As he approaches his balcony doors, they slide open automatically. I wonder whether it’s his gifts doing that or he’s just a lazy fucker who had automatic sliding glass doors installed in his penthouse.
We’re high up on the thirty-second floor, and even though I’m on the twenty-eighth, my balcony faces a different direction—west instead of the more highly coveted south that his faces. Actually, I observe as I step out into the wind, his balcony wraps all the way around his penthouse. Lucky sonofabitch.
I’m smiling giddily, still wrapped up in his comforter as he wraps his burly arms around me and lifts us up together from the floor of his balcony. “Eyes on me,” he whispers in a low voice, making my stomach clench as I’m distinctly reminded of the first time he said those words to me.
He goes silent then as we round the building to the west side and start to descend. “You know I’m not gonna drop you, right?”
“I don’t think Darius would drop me, no,” I reply right as a particularly loud siren sounds way beneath our dangling feet, makingme jolt. “But sometimes I don’t know who I’m speaking to—Darius or Taranis.”
He’s quiet again for another pause, this one long enough for him to finish his descent and touch down lightly onto my balcony, covered with a bright pink-turquoise-cream-and-yellow outdoor rug. Even though my plants are thriving in the day’s lingering sun and I’ve got fancy self-watering cans rigged up, I’ve been concerned because my balcony door has been jammed for the past few days and the maintenance guy couldn’t fix it.
“I wouldn’t let you fall.” The way he says it so simply feels so unlike him.
