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Fuck, he was…nervous. So damn nervous. She was the only woman who’d ever managed to make him feel this way. The only woman who ever would.

There would be no one after her. So he really hoped he wasn’t about to fuck their relationship up. If he did, he’d grovel. Would get on his knees like he’d told her before. Crawl for her—anything.

Loren held his heart in her hands. She’d held it since the day he’d laid eyes on her in that alley on the Avenue of the Scarlet Star. He had belonged to her since the moment he’d chosen to kill for her—and back then, she didn’t even know it. And neither did he.

“What’s in it for you?” she’d asked him at Rook and Redding’s that first day.

You, Darien said in his mind now. You’re in it for me.

You’re it for me.

He had just opened the front door and stepped inside when Loren came into the foyer, his friends and family who were present—Ivy, Jack, Dallas, and Max—trailing behind her, all wearing identical expressions of concern.

Darien’s heart started pounding at the sight of the shine in Loren’s eyes, the hurt and betrayal etched deeply into her sweet face—the betrayal that told him he was several hours too late.

Fuck.

Jack said, “I hope you’re feeling better.” His grin was a nervous one, and he lifted his hands in a gesture of prayer. “Because god-fucking-speed.”

“We need to talk,” Loren bit out, her nostrils flaring with furious, shaking breaths. “Alone.”

92

Roman’s House

YVESWICH, STATE OF KER

Loren walked swiftly down a hallway in the lowest floor in Roman’s house, Darien shadowing her about a dozen feet behind. She’d asked him if they could speak in private, and when he’d agreed, she had immediately come down to the place where they were least likely to be overheard—the floor with the training rooms, the shooting range, and the armory.

Most of the lights down here operated on a motion sensor, so she didn’t need to flip any switches until she pivoted into one of the training rooms. She hit the switch and walked out onto the black mats covering the floor, the material sinking under her socked feet. The mirrors lining the walls showed several of her all at once, but she didn’t look at any of them. She had no desire to see how pained and confused she looked; feeling it was bad enough.

The sound of Darien’s heavy footsteps drawing closer made the butterflies in her stomach rapidly flutter their wings. She hugged her middle and paced across the mats, only stopping once the Devil walked inside, and she could not hold back her words any longer.

She faced him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.

Darien stood just inside the doorway. He still wore his boots, his right hand in a black compression glove. He looked…tired. Wary. She hated that this needed to happen tonight, after what he’d just gone through, but…

Had he told her sooner, instead of withholding the truth for whatever flimsy excuse he had, this wouldn’t have happened.

“I was going to,” Darien said. The reply was hoarse and brittle.

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“How convenient,” she scoffed. “Exactly when I’ve already figured it out on my own!”

“I’m not lying.”

“Why?” she asked him again. “You still haven’t told me why! And don’t you dare say it was for my protection.”

“It was,” Darien said anyway.

She threw her hands up. “Gods.”

“Loren, you were overwhelmed. You were scared as hell. You couldn’t even wrap your mind around the fact that you were friends with us—that you knew us at all. What was I supposed to do, be like, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re fucking me too, hope you don’t mind’?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, her heart pounding at that naked truth. Although plenty of memories had come back upon seeing the photographs in her phone, everything that followed their first kiss was still shrouded in a fog of mystery.