“Men,” she said. “Always so black and white. All or nothing.”
“Get to the point, Lilith.”
She smiled. “You’re forgetting that for most of her life, your little witch was raised as a human.”
“And?”
“And humans like romance.”
“Romance?”
She shook her head at me. “No need for that terror-stricken expression. Danica is, after all, the woman you want to be with, correct?”
I shifted, grinding my teeth. “Yes.”
“But you’ve never taken the time to woo her. To romance her.”
I frowned. “You believe these are the kinds of things human women enjoy?”
She shot a glance at Bael, who was very carefully not looking at her. “All women want to feel seen. Especially human women. Prove that youknowher.”
“At the very least,” Bael said, “she won’t be able to continue pretending you don’t exist.”
3
Danica
Early the next morning, I left Evie sleeping and drove to the 2000-foot-high tower that served as both Samael’s home, and the headquarters for many of his various businesses.
Bael was standing in the lobby, chatting with a demon I’d never seen before. While most demons tended to have darker hair, Bael’s white-blond hair stuck out like a beacon, and he kept it long enough to brush his shoulders. His eyes were the color of a frozen pond. The demon could occasionally see glimpses of the future, and he’d once told me that he couldn’t see anything around me except pain.
Our relationship was a work in progress.
A group of unseelie were sitting on the new long, black sofas in the lobby, while several other armed fae gave me hard stares as I walked in. Why were so many fae guards here? I raised one eyebrow as I met Bael’s eyes. He merely shrugged.
“He’s in a meeting,” Bael told me as I pressed the elevator button.
I took the elevator to Samael’s penthouse and waited in his living room as I answered emails on my phone.
Finally, the door to his office opened and my eyes met burnished gold. The unseelie king smiled, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. That explained the guards in the lobby.
“Danica Amana.”
“Your Majesty.”
“Please,” he said. “Call me Fin.”
He’d asked me to call him that once before. But the chances of me calling the dark fae king ‘Fin’ were slightly lower than the chances of me doing a strip tease on Main Street.
Samael appeared behind him, and I resisted looking at him for as long as I could as the two men murmured a few words and Finvarra strolled out.
Finally, it was just me and the demon.
Samael stepped back and allowed me to walk past him and into his office. I silently cursed him as his citrus and cedar scent wound up my nostrils, my thighs clenching as my mind took me back to the feel of his—
That was enough of that.
I took a seat, watching as he did the same. He leaned back in his seat, his silver gaze on my face.
