Page 33 of Sin and Salvation

I glanced at the couch and found it piled with several blankets. He really had massaged me to sleep last night and had… come out here to sleep.

Guilt welled up within me. I simply couldn’t help it.

“If you’re going to have me stay here,I’llsleep on the couch. It isn’t right to kick you out of your own room.”

“No.” Zane’s tone brooked absolutely zero argument.

I stared at him mutinously, but he held up a hand. “It’s only for a week. And we can’t risk keeping you on the lower floors. Too many entrances and egresses. The elevator is magically keyed to us, so no undesirables can come walking in here to retrieve you.”

That was the sticking point for me.

As much as I hated taking Zane’s room and feeling like an interloper, the thought of Rasmus—or worse, one Maxime’s bodyguards, who they wouldn’t know on sight now—managing to find their way to my tiny downstairs apartment filled me a nameless terror.

I would rather be uncomfortable up here than closer to Maxime’s grasp down there.

“Fine,” I whispered, though a part of me was still angry. All I wanted in life was peace and freedom, to not feel like I was encroaching or being encroached upon.

Was that too much to ask for?

Apparently the universe thought so.

“Fine.” Zane smirked, looking almost like Aeron—who chose that exact moment to walk into the commons, shirtless, gleaming with sweat, and wearing gray sweatpants.

I almostfeltmy ovaries physically depart my body to start shopping for baby clothes.

Zane’s smirk only broadened as my eyes remained glued to Aeron’s back, the dark ink on his skin limning hard muscles.

“Do you have any more protests for why you shouldn’t live up here?” he asked.

Aeron turned around, cracking open a water bottle and draining it. I watched his throat work, beads of water sliding down over his broad chest, over the ripple of his abs, and finally, down the tapered V of his stomach to soak into the waistband of his sweatpants.

“Any… what?” I asked, the question forgotten.

Zane chuckled softly. “That answers that. No more protests, Venus. You can come and go as you please, but if you don’t come back… just know, we’ll come looking for you.”

I swallowed hard, but Aeron lowered the bottle, green eyes gleaming. “Believe me, sugar, I know your scent now. There’s nowhere you can go I can’t follow.”

A churning mix of desire, happiness, and fear filled me. The first two were self-explanatory.

The last one… well, they didn’t know Maxime as well as they thought they did if they truly believed they could follow me anywhere.

There were things about him even I didn’t know, and I’d spent years chained to his side.

Not to mention a long list of people who had gone missing from Concordia, and had never been found.

I smiled weakly at them both, hoping that if Maxime ever did come for me… they wouldn’t be caught in the middle of it.

It was best if I alone bore the brunt of his wrath. But if the universe had taught me one thing, it was that things rarely went the way I wanted them to.

ChapterSixteen

The wind whipped my face as twenty bikes roared down the street. I kept my arms wrapped tightly around Crow’s waist, a frisson of fear and excitement running through me.

My night of work had been a hell of a success. I’d made a trip out of the building before my shift after getting a few suggestions from Kylaea.

First off, I’d gotten my hair cut off. As the demon snipped away long locks of pink hair, it felt like pieces of me were finally falling away to the floor with them, and none of them were pieces I would miss.

There would be no more memories of Maxime gripping my hair and dragging me around; with my hair now bobbed above my shoulders, he couldn’t.

---