Unacceptable.
Her chin dipped as she nodded in confirmation.
With deliberate slowness, I leaned over until my face hovered inches from hers.
“You havenobusiness here. You are nothing but a peddler of pain wrapped in pretty packages. I bet if you even felt a fraction of what your failure does to others, youwouldn’tcarelessly spread it so freely.” Each word came out bearing the venom of a thousand hydra.
The disdain for everything sherepresentedwashed over me, and without thinking, my hand shot out and grabbed her upper arm. Mygriplike iron, unyielding and punishing at once.
One firm jerk, and her small form stumbledover the threshold into the foyer with me. She gasped inalarm, already tense with resistance.
I slammed the doorshut,my decision made to put an end to her role in spreading lies in the name of some mortal-born holiday. A holiday in which fools became trapped in torturous cages of their sentimentality.
“H-hey!” she squeaked out in protest. “Let go! I bruise like a peach!”
I snorted at the analogy. “Good.”
Focused on disrupting her efforts to inflict love on anyone else this Valentine’s Day, I had just the solution in mind. Striding over to the stairs, I tugged her along like a disobedient puppy.
Hauling her up the grand staircase, she was light enough to keep upright despite her feet struggling to keep up with my pace.
“Where are we going? I have other deliveries to make!” The panic in her voice rose with every step, and something dangerously primal inside me relished in it.
Guiding her forcefully down the hall, I arrived at a closed door. A door to a room I had designed in tribute to artifacts from the lore of our kind. It would be all too fitting tocontainthe goddess of desire.
Shoving the door open, a dark smirktugged atmy lips.
“Welcome to your new home,Heartspite.”
CHAPTER FIVE
When the doorswung open to reveal the room just beyond, my knees were on the verge of buckling at the sight. What may have looked like a bedroom at first glance was anything but.
The crimson curtains shielded all but the thin bands of sunlight that cut through the room in diagonal stripes across the floor. To the far right, the obvious outline of an imposing four-poster bed stood cloaked in shadows. More angular shapes and edges of polished wood hinted at typical bedroom furniture along the perimeter of the room.?
But there was one imposing object to the left, nearly as tall as the ceiling. I could only make out the white sheet that covered it, thanks to the spill of sunlight that revealed the bottom edge.
Curiosity and dread warred at oddsinside me. Though the overbearing presence at my back decidedly shoved me forward as he released my arm.
Stumbling into the room, I flailed several steps before steadying myself. Whirling around, this jaded man had already closed the distance between us. A sharp snap of his fingers, and lights flickered on overhead.
It took several squints to adjust to the harsh shift as darkness receded abruptly. My arm still ached with the promise of bruises to come where he had roughly handled me. But all of that paled in comparison to everything revealed inside this room.
The massive bed was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Gilded posts, sheers tied back with velvety ropes the color of ripe pomegranates, and a mattress dressed in silks and furs that the most ostentatious of gods would have pined for.
Dressers and wardrobeslinedthe walls as I had expected. Oil paintings graced the room, each one telling a different story. The labors of Heracles, King Midas, Hades and Persephone, and one depicting a tale Iwasn’tfamiliar with.
The rest of the room had priceless trinkets and tokens of a time whenall ofancient Greece worshipped us gods. Each item wasseemingly mundaneif not for the thrum of power beneath its surface, one that sang a tune true to divine origins.
All of it left me dizzy with overwhelming familiarity. But none of it prepared me for the monolithic sheet-clad structure across from the bed. Its shape was familiar, butthe scale was all wrong. Curved at the top and cylindrical at its core,it’dbe a far stretchfor evenme to assume that this massive mystery piece came from IKEA.
“You know what they say about curiosity,” he said, drawing my attention away from the concealed object that loomed nearby.
Before I could answer, heleaned inclose enough to my ear to feel his breath warming my skin. “It killed the Cupid.”
A sharp chill rolled down each vertebra of my spine.
He must have seen the reaction of my body, orperhaps hewas easily amused by his own sense of humor. Either way, a resounding chuckle echoed from his chest.
