Cupping his cheek in my palm, I rested my forehead against his. “I didn’t know what to say. There was so much going on, and it had only just happened. I was focused on getting you all back, and then on repairing things with Grim, and then after... I guess I was afraid it would ruin everything all over again, maybe? I never intended to keep it from you. I was just trying to wrap my head around it first.”
“If we don’t have honesty between us, what do we have?”
Sin was right. My gaze flicked to Grim, the one who’d kept the most from me over the course of our relationship. The one I’d been the least willing to forgive.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“From now on, even if we know it’s going to be a hard conversation, we all have to agree to be honest.”
Look at Sin, more emotionally mature than any of us. He’d grown so much since I first met him. They all had. I could never have imagined us having a conversation like this back in our penthouse days. Somewhere along the way, my horsemen had started to soften. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was more that they’d become more human and less these creatures of legend.
It suddenly struck me: the thing that had changed.
They’d learned how to love. An act they’d never had any need for prior to my arrival in their lives.
Pressing my forehead to Sin’s once more, I said, “I promise.” Then I kissed him, soft and tender, pouring the love I had for him into the gesture.
“We promise too,” Grim said, voice tight as he closed the distance between us and rested one hand on my shoulder. His fingers caressed me gently, demanding nothing other than physical touch.
“Yes. Nothing but truth between us,” Chaos added.
Malice sat down on the couch next to Sin, his fingers running along my spine before he pressed a kiss to my nape and murmured, “Forever.”
The secondI appeared in one of Lilith’s personal rooms atIniquity,I immediately realized what had happened. Fucking dreamwalk. The question was, who was I here to see? Auntie Lilith didn’t need to pull me into her dream in order to speak to me, but being atIniquityinstantly had me wondering if she had some secret to share.
The room wasn’t one I’d ever visited before, but the club I’d spent so much time inside held a signature air of magic. Leather and lust and something intrinsically Lilith.
I took a quick stock of my surroundings, my eyebrows inching up to my hairline with each piece of BDSM furniture I recognized.
Seriously, whose dream was this? None of my men were into the lifestyle as far as I knew, so what the hell was going on?
“My, my, crabapple. You look quite confused. Is power exchange not something you enjoy?”
Luc’s voice filled the room before he stepped out of a shadowy corner. Something inside me relaxed at the sight of him, my nervous system finally regulating because I could see him and know he was safe.
Fuck.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Who’s submitting to whom.”
His lips curled up in a devious grin. “Oh, I think we know the answer to that.”
A flicker of arousal caught in my belly at his words, but there was no universe in existence where I was going to let him call the shots right now. “Do we? Because I assure you, if you think I’m getting on my knees for you after the shit you pulled, you’ve seriously underestimated your sway over me.”
“I beg your pardon. ShitIpulled? Do you recall what you did to me nary a week ago? You seduced me. Mated me. Claimed me. Then fucked off with four other men.”
I had to fight the wince that wanted to appear at his words. When you summed it up like that, it did sound pretty awful.
“You seem to be forgetting the part where you were holding me hostage and I had to escape.”
Ha. There. Let him talk his way out of that one.
Lucifer sighed and rolled his eyes. “Still on about that, are you? You really need to get some new material, crabapple. We’ve already been over this. I did what I had to do.”
“Kidnapping is a crime in all fifty states.”
