And still they came.

They came to have fun and be entertained and escape the drudgery of daily lives spent at desks, in cubicles, behind windowless office walls. They came to lose themselves in darkness and adventure and the camaraderie of the underground. They came to fight. They came to dance. They came to play and drink and love.

They came to live. And tonight, more than ever before, Eliana needed to live, too.

A roar went up as she was spotted. She strode from the shadows of the connecting tunnel, her black trench billowing out behind her, a small, satisfied smile on her face. This was her home, and these were her people—related or not—and she loved it. She loved them all.

“Butterfly!” someone shouted from the back of the crowd, and hundreds of voices took it up in a chant that swelled and crested like a wave. Butterfly! Butterfly! Butterfly!

Always a chilly fifty-five degrees, the air in the catacombs took on a decidedly electric vibe.

She prowled to the middle of the grotto and paused. She shrugged off her coat, handed it to an anonymous person who darted forward from the crowd to take it, and let her gaze drift over the sea of bodies. She knew what the cataphiles saw when they looked back at her: choppy blue hair and tight black leather, motorcycle boots and a cinched bustier that left her arms and shoulders bare, the butterfly between her shoulder blades exposed and strangely animated as the shadows played over her skin. For the first time in a long time she’d worn makeup, smoky eye shadow and eyeliner drawn out past the corners of her eyes to accentuate their catlike tilt. Her lips were a curving slash of vermilion.

“Who wants to go first?” she shouted above the noise.

A group of four men, money held aloft in fists, pushed to the front of the crowd. One of them—the biggest one, blocky and grinning, with ham-hock hands and the cauliflower ears of a professional boxer—peeled off his shirt, dropped it to the ground, lifted his hand, and pointed a stubby finger at his chest.

Eliana smiled and thought, The bigger they are, the harder they—

“I’ll go first,” boomed a deep, masculine voice from the shadows along the back wall, a voice every cell in her body recognized, and every head in the crowd craned around to see.

They didn’t have to try very hard. He stood head and shoulders above everyone else. He stepped forward from the shadows, and one by one, mouths hanging open, every person shrank back as he passed.

Demetrius.

Here.

Here!

The music died. Hushed whispers ran through the gathering. A palpable crackle of excitement leapt from person to person, viral, infectious.

He prowled toward her, exuding a raw current of danger, feral and heated, his eyes locked on hers. When he reached the edge of the crowd he paused. Deliberately, holding her gaze, he slowly unzipped the black hoodie he was wearing, shrugged it off, and let it fall to his feet.

That was when the air actually turned to fire.

Audible gasps went up through the crowd. The ham-hock hands of the man who’d just been ready to fight her trembled. Someone whispered an astonished, Merde!

And beyond her thundering heart and frozen muscles and horror, Eliana could appreciate why.

Huge, bare-chested, and leonine, D stood exposed, chin lifted, eyes hooded, shoulders thrown back. His body was carved and corded with muscle, a sculptor’s imagination gone wild. From the V-shaped muscles that rose from the waistline of his low-slung leathers to the articulated corrugation of his rock-hard abs to the bulging biceps of his arms and the flare of heavy lats on his back that tapered down to his narrow waist in an inverted triangle, he was magnificent. Breathtaking. Hercules, Adonis, Samson, and Tarzan, all rolled into one.

He had multiple, elaborate tattoos: the stylized Eye of Horus on his left shoulder, thick black tribal symbols tracked down the length of his right arm, an enormous cobra that snaked its way down from his neck, around his back, and up to his chest, where it coiled, sinuous. In the center of one loop of scales right over his heart there was inked a name in cursive letters with thorny vines and flowers patterned around.

The letters spelled out Eliana.

Astonished, she glanced back up at his face, noting the scratches she’d given him had already healed. He was smiling at her, a slow, seductive curve of his lips. “How ’bout a rematch?” he said in a low, amused rumble. “Five hundred says I win this time, too.”

Son of a bitch.

The crowd exploded into a frenzy. Bets were placed, money changed hands, and shouting and shoving and chaos ensued. From one corner of her eye she noticed Alexi standing with arms crossed, glaring back and forth between the two of them. The flabbergasted blonde beside him couldn’t tear her wide-eyed gaze from Demetrius’s naked chest.

He took a step forward. She took a step back. They began to circle each other slowly, warily, their gazes locked together. All the noise and movement faded to the background as her focus honed on his face. His movements. His breath.

Her own breath was ragged, her pulse a thunderstorm inside her skull.

“If you think I’m going to lead to you to the others, you’re wrong,” she said, low enough she knew only his ears would be able to hear. Over four hundred miles of hiding spaces in the catacombs; he’d have to search for days to find them, and by then they’d be long gone.

He cocked an eyebrow. The silver rings in it glinted in the light. “Not here for them, baby girl. I’m here for you.”

If he meant to anger her with his endearment, it worked. “Nice tattoo, by the way,” she snapped, glancing at his chest. “I’ll be carving that off your dead body later.”

He tutted. “You’ll have to kill me first. Good luck with that.”

Then he lunged forward in a blur of bronzed skin and leather and grabbed her.

She twisted out of his grasp, using all her strength to tear free. But he had her again in an instant and pinned her arms behind her back. Heady and warm and masculine, the scent of his skin flamed hot in her nose as he leaned down and whispered into her ear, “You’re not trying very hard. You need to give the crowd their money’s worth. Butterfly.” She felt the fleet brush of his lips across the flesh of her shoulder, and then he released her and sprang away.

She whirled around with a savage snarl. He was on the other side of the space cleared by the circle of bodies, hands on his hips, staring at her with a heated expression somewhere between amusement and anticipation. He stretched a hand out and crooked two fingers at her, a silent command.

Come.

Oh no. Oh no he didn’t.

Fury blinded her, and she went on pure instinct, striking out, hitting, kicking. The next few moments were a blur. There was the sensation flying, of falling, of gravity spinning away. Her hands were around his throat, his hands came around her waist, and suddenly she was flat on her back in the center of the fighting ring with Demetrius straddling her body, his hands pinning her wrists to the ground above her head.

The roar of the crowd was deafening.

He grinned down at her, victorious, and then, before she could scream the curse that was on the tip of her tongue, his mouth was on hers.

Ache and salt and softness, the ground cold and hard against her back, Demetrius warm and hard against her chest, pulling greedily at her lips, drinking deep…the sharp edges of her fury began, awfully, to melt.

He pulled away first, panting, flipped her over, and in one horrifying, fluid movement, flung her over his bent knee so she was staring in shock at the dusty, scuffed ground.

And then—horror of all horrors—he spanked her.

In front of everyone.

Three times.

Hard.

The crowd went absolutely insane.