Page 42 of For the Love of the Gods

Dominic

I had a short list of things that irritated me.

Those who use others to get their way, no matter the expense.

People shrieking when they saw me.

Rose’s insults. They were grating enough to earn a spot on the list.

Insects.

Shitty alcohol.

But people knowing more about my wife than I did was now firmly on the top of that list.

First, Raiden knew she drank tea instead of coffee. Why she took the coffee I had offered instead of correcting me was something I’d figure out by myself. Unless someone decided to inform me first, which was clearly a fucking pattern.

I learned that she can cook a meal good enough to almost knock me off my chair through goddamn leftovers of a dish made for other people. Maybe someone would tell me what I had to do to get her to make a meal just for me.

Sebastian Apollo informed me that green was her favorite color. Light green, not the deep evergreen of her eyes.

Lukas knew her drink order. Red wine, dry. Unless they had white wine from the northern part of the peninsula, from a Bacchus vineyard, then a glass of that.

He also knew that she makes pancakes on Saturdays. And that he’d be at my house tomorrow to eat them. He offered no explanation for why he showed up at my house near midnight asking for Rose.

According to the gossip that was Sabina Minerva, Daphne had brought Lukas to Pancake Saturdays without warning anyone and by the end of it, he and Rose had seemingly set aside their differences.

Corrina knew that she’d “surely” be on the patio to watch the sunset.

Jason Dionysus knew that Rose had the best recommendations for god-safe restaurants in the Upperworld. What he could not tell me is how frequently she goes above ground.

Everyone seemed to know that she loved music. Anything with piano, according to Julian Mars, who also informed me he would be stealing a dance. If she let him. No one asked me how I felt about that.

Everyone also thought it fitting to inform me how great Rose looked tonight. That I fucking knew.

She always looked good—beautiful. But when she walked downstairs in that dress I almost lost every ounce of self-control I had. It was tight, highlighting every dip and curve of her body, and the color made her eyes shine like emeralds. It took everything in me not to rip it off of her, to lay her down on the staircase and sink my teeth into those pretty thighs of hers.

She looked stunning and every glance I snuck at her throughout the night only pushed more blood from my brain to my dick.

I also knew that her skin was silk soft and she smelled sweet but rich like vanilla and roses. Rose smelled like roses, because of course she fucking did.

I knew that her breath hitched whenever I touched her. And that she was trying to hide the effect I had on her.

I knew that she had a perfect cupid’s bow that taunted me every time I looked at her.

I knew that she was hiding something from me, burying it under hostility. But there was warmth there, and it drew me in like the urge to run your finger through an open flame.

The bartender she was talking to seemed to know that too. He was laughing and trying his mighty best to flirt with her.

In fact, everyone seemed to know that. People would talk to her and leave smiling. She was smiling too, full-bodied and blinding.

She’d never smiled at me like that.

I needed to know to make her smile at me. I needed to know more about her than all of these random gods who had no claim on her.Iwas her husband. I needed to know her better than she knew herself, to get under her skin and figure out how her brain worked.

Then, I told myself, I would start planning my revenge.

But, before that, I needed Julian to remove his hand off her lower back before I rendered it no longer functional.

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