Page 413 of The First Taste

“Enough!” Hades barks. “Let her go, Eros.”

Eros gives me a little shake, his eyes pinning me in place. Hades starts toward him and Eros turns me loose, raising his hands.

“It’s fine. Persephone and I have a lot of road ahead of us to sort things out. Isn’t that right?”

I glare at him, crossing my arms protectively around myself. I look back as I’m getting into the car to see Hades’ expression. He stares at me for a long moment, his jaw clenching. But then he turns away and gets into the driver’s side of the sedan.

Eros pops the trunk and moves the box of my art supplies into it. Then he slides into the driver’s seat, settling in as I close the door. He gives me a tight smile.

“Buckle yer lap belt. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to ye, would we?”

The way he says it has me grasping for my seat belt and feeling goosebumps on both my arms. If that wasn’t a threat, I would hate to hear what Eros actually considers intimidation.

We pull out of the driveway and Eros snaps on the radio. He pulls onto a little highway, heading away from the coast. There are no streetlights after a certain point and no other cars on the road at this hour.

He distractedly flips through stations until he finds talk radio. I squint at him as I listen to the stream of what I assume is Arabic.

What am I supposed to make of Eros?

He’s handsome. Or not that, exactly. He’s pretty. The dark, carefully combed-back hair, moss-green eyes with their dark lashes, and cheekbones that look chiseled by a divine intelligence… it all works seamlessly to camouflage the actual man beneath. It would be easy to look at his obvious, in-your-face gorgeousness and dismiss him without giving it another thought.

But I suspect there is quite a bit more to Eros. The man is currently listening quite intently to the flow of information being broadcast in a language very different from his own. I try to piece him together, fitting him against Hades like a puzzle piece. It makes me curious, despite myself.

“How many languages do you speak?” I blurt out.

Eros shifts in his seat, his mouth tightening at the corners. “Why, do ye need something translated?”

I blush, shrugging a shoulder. “I’m just curious. I assume that you and your brothers didn’t grow up speaking English. Or not only English.”

He squints out the dashboard, taking his time to respond. “We all grew up speaking Scottish Gaelic.”

“Ah.” I nod, running my hands over the fabric that covers my knees. “I should have probably asked Hades that by now.”

“Is that so?” Eros slides me a glance. “Tell me something. Do ye usually make a habit of getting so up close and personal with the men who hold ye hostage?”

My eyebrows jump up. My face suffuses with heat, the blush spreading all the way to my neck. I lick my lips.

“No,” I murmur.

He purses his lips, turning back to look straight ahead. After a minute, he slows the car.

“We’re going to stop for gas,” he says. “Start looking for highway signs.”

I glance out the window at the rocky, sandy landscape. “I don’t speak Arabic.”

His lips curls. “Of course ye dinnae.”

When he finally finds a place to stop, he pulls the car up to the pump and climbs out of the sedan. My arms and legs aren’t cramped yet, but I get out anyway, just to escape the car for a few minutes. Sharing a car with Hades’ brother is starting to feel oddly like walking a tightrope in front of an expectant audience. I’m not sure what exactly it is that he wants but I have the feeling that it doesn’t matter to him. Whether I balance perfectly or fall several stories to a grisly death, it seems like his mind was already made up about me before we even got in the car.

I stretch my arms over my head as he starts to open the trunk. Eros lifts out a black canvas bag, closes the trunk, and sets the bag on it. He nods at the bag.

“Go on, then.”

I frown at him. “What?”

He lifts his chin, staring me down. “Have a look in the bag.”

“What’s in it?” Arching a brow, I drop my hands. I pin him with a suspicious look. “Is it a bag full of human hands or something?”