I pressed my lips together and stepped forward.“Am I using Dani for my pride too?”I scoffed and shook my head, gazing out the window.Angry and cold all of a sudden.
“She’s the strongest in all of the kingdoms, so I wouldn’t doubt it.”
I inhaled the deep aroma of Eros’s natural scent—cinnamon.“Well, if you didn’t want me to be with her, you shouldn’t have asked me.All I wanted—All I have ever wanted—was you.For the thousand years we spent away from each other and for the millions of nights I dreamed of Raphaela, I woke up in an empty bed and wished you were still there with me.”
Dani groaned on the bed and pulled the blankets over her head.“If you’re going to fight, do it in one of the Lust Rooms downstairs.We got soundproof walls installed.”
“Go,” Eros said to me.
Dani sat up and threw a pillow right at him.“I said downstairs.I gotta get my beauty sleep, or I’m going to be hungry tomorrow, and you don’t like when I’m hungry.”
I walked to the door and held it open for him.He grabbed a shirt, pulled it over his head, and walked out.
“What a woman,” I said, walking down the stone staircase, lit by pink fire.
We made it all the way downstairs to the main floor before he spoke.“You’re getting on every one of my nerves tonight, Lucifer.”
“Is that because we didn’t get to fuck at the bar?”I asked, walking toward the Lust Rooms.
“No,” Eros said, not making eye contact with me.He walked in the opposite direction toward the door.“Now, leave.”
“What’s your problem tonight?Why don’t you stop acting like lust is the only emotion you can feel for people other than Dani?What is so wrong about us, Eros?I can’t understand it.”
“I’m a fucking incubus, Lucifer,” he finally said, turning toward me.His nostrils were flaring.“Fallen angel of erotic love.”He took another step toward me.“What don’t you understand aboutthat?Don’t let your pride get in the way, thinking that we were something than what we were.We fucked.That was it.”
“Did you forget that you were an angel of love?”I stepped closer.“You were worshipped almost as much as a god.And when you and I were sinning in Heaven, you told me you loved me.An angel or a demon—it doesn’t matter.You embodied love at some point, and I know you can’t have love for only just one person.”
“I can.”
“We don’t live in Heaven anymore.You keep forgetting that.We’re in Hell.You’re not under that ghoul’s strict rules.You can live however you want.Love whomever and how many you want.”
“Why don’t you shut up for once in your life, Lucifer?”he said, stepping toward me.His eyes were black pits.“And leave.”
I blew a breath out of my nose and drew my finger across one of the side tables in their foyer, stepping closer to him.“No.”
His jaw clenched.“Leave.”
“No.”
He grabbed my jaw in his hand, trying to intimidate me.
“No,” I said again, stepping toward him.I grabbed his chin in my hand.“I’m not going anywhere.You love me whether you admit it or not, and all I have to do is this to prove it.”I pulled him closer to me and pressed my lips to his.
And he kissed me back, this time needily.
Twenty-Seven
I turned in bed,groaning softly as Lust’s sunlight blared through the window.Eros was lying on his stomach next to me, completely naked.I pressed my lips to the center of his back, where his parents had torn off his wings, and dragged my nails down the side of his back.
“Luci,” he mumbled, eyes still closed.
“Good morning,” I said.
Let’s just say, after our little fight last night, we had made up.
Slowly, he fluttered his eyes open and gazed around the room.“Shit,” he said.“Dani is going to be?—”
“Fine with this.”
