She pressed her lips together to hide her smile. “No, I didn’t think that.”

He nodded, satisfied. “Good. Your room’s across the hall. Take a shower, if you want, clean up. Then come downstairs; Smithers makes a mean holiday crepe.”

“Holiday? What holiday is it?”

“It’s Christmas, Butterfly. Don’t they have Christmas on your planet?”

Then with a mischievous wink, he was gone.

The shower turned out to be the best advice she’d had in ages.

She stood under the hot spray, letting the water relax the knotted muscles in her shoulders, letting the steam do its best to try to lull her worries away.

Not that it worked. No amount of hot water could wash away her kind of worries; no amount of scrubbing could get them unstuck.

Where was Silas right now? Where was her brother? What were the few who refused to leave the catacombs doing in her absence?

Was Demetrius, right at this moment, telling the Bellatorum where they were?

She pushed that thought aside, surprising herself at the vehemence with which her mind shouted a resounding No! Stupid. Stupid. Anything was possible, everything was, and to try to deny it was just stupid…but what Alexi had said kept echoing in her head, over and over.

You’re in love. It’s all over you both.

Because she’d grown to understand that life was as strange as it was unpredictable, it didn’t really surprise her when she heard the door to the bathroom open a few minutes later and close and a deep, tense voice growl, “The little yipper said you needed to see me, right away. Said it was important.”

Her disbelieving laugh was drowned out by the running water. She rested her forehead against the smooth tile, relieved and terrified in equal measure, both cursing Alexi and wanting to give him a hug of gratitude.

Just when you thought you had people figured out, pegged as petty or selfish or shallow, they went ahead and did something like this. Something huge like this.

Sweet Isis, maybe there was hope after all.

Thinking that, feeling that possibility, that little bud of hope, made her heart soar.

“What’s wrong? Are you all right?” When she didn’t answer, D stepped closer to the shower door and his voice grew louder, more urgent, impatience mixed with sharp concern. “Eliana. Answer me!”

The glassed shower door was fogged with steam, so she couldn’t see his face. And she suddenly, very badly, needed to see his face. She pushed away from the tile as if in a daydream, swung open the door, and stood there naked in the spray, staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. Which, maybe, she really hadn’t.

He dwarfed the genteel, luxurious room and frankly upstaged it. His bulk, masculinity, and sheer, unstudied elegance rendered all the expensive trimmings around him—gilded mirrors and gold fixtures and polished marble—effete and superficial, and she wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before, the way his presence made other things pale in comparison. The way he made everything else seem figuratively and literally small.

He stared back at her, lips parted, his face transforming from worry to shock to molten heat as his gaze traveled over her wet, naked body. When his dark eyes found hers again, they were on fire.

“No, Demetrius,” she said simply, “I’m not all right. I’ve never been less all right in my life.”

He took a step forward, his eyes searing hers. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill that bastard if he laid a finger on you—”

“He did something worse. He said we were in love, you and I.”

He froze. His nostrils flared. His jaw went tight, and his hands, hanging at his sides, clenched into fists. Steam swirled around them, hot and billowing, brushed over her naked skin like a million fairy fingertips, raising goose bumps in their wake.

“Is that what this is?” His voice was hoarse. “Love? Because it feels more like ongoing electrocution.”

She nodded, agreeing. “Or being burned at the stake.”

Slowly, heart pounding, breath growing short, she stepped forward to the edge of the large glass and tile enclosure. He watched her every move with avid, devouring eyes, his expression wary and yearning and hot.

And tortured. How tortured he looked, how wretched, like a prisoner of war—their war, the bloody battle that had been slowly killing them both for years. It pierced her, that look. It almost made her want to cry.

He said, “Run over by a truck and dragged along a thousand miles of bad road.”

She reached out, touched a hand to the flexing muscle in his jaw, and gently stroked her fingers across it until she found his lips, and then she traced those. “Drawn and quartered.”

“Swallowing battery acid.” His voice had dropped to near a whisper, grown gravelly, unsteady. His hands reached for her, finding her waist, encircling it. His face tilted down to hers, and he looked a little dazed, the heat and the thrill she felt being near him reflected back in his eyes, the raggedness of his breathing.

“Devoured by a shark—”

“Buried alive—”

“Drowning—”

“Drowning, yes, it’s just like drowning,” he whispered vehemently, gazing into her eyes, his voice broken, his face full of misery and desire. “Except you never die, and you never surface, and the suffering never goes away, it just goes on and on and on. For fucking ever.”

He pulled her up against him and crushed his lips to hers.

And then it was nothing but hunger, savage and raw, both of them drowning in each other.

It was effortless for him to pick her up in his arms and balance her weight as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, effortless to carry her into the shower without breaking his stride or breaking their kiss, effortless to press her against the tile and make her cry out when he took her nipple in his mouth and sucked, hard. They were both half in and half out of the spray, and he was getting soaking wet, still in his boots and pants and shirt, and she clawed his wet shirt from his back and ran her hands over him, heat and muscle and slick skin, his arms around her strong and deliciously possessive.

He kissed her ravenously with one hand fisted in her wet hair and the other digging into her bottom. She kissed him back, their teeth clashing, her breasts pressed against his chest, aching nipples slipping against his wet skin. He panted her name, fumbled with his zipper. When the long, hard length of him sprang free and pressed hot against her belly she was ready; she reached between them and grasped him, reveling in the husky greed in his answering moan.

“Maybe this is what love is, Demetrius,” she whispered hoarsely into his ear. “This is what love is for us—torture and suffering and pain. And this.”

She sank down on top of him with a swift, fluid motion of her hips.

He arched back and shuddered, clenching her to him, his body straining against hers. Then he held her up against the wet tile and thrust into her again and again, relentlessly, hard and unforgiving, as she pressed her heels to his spine and rode him, hearing the slap of their flesh and his erotic, low groans and the sound of her own blood roaring in her ears.

Pleasure gathered to a bright, electric peak inside her body. She moaned his name, drunk with him, teetering on the very precipice of release…

And then—bastard that he was—he fell still.

Her eyes flew open. Breathing hard, he was staring back at her, a wicked grin on his face.

“Oh no. Oh no you don’t,” she said, sudden cold realization dawning over her.

But he did, he was, and his next slow, seductively spoken words proved it.

“Not yet.”

“You son of a bitch!” she hissed, stiffening. “Not this again!”

He flexed his hips and pressed deep into her and she was so, so full—her anger turned liquid along with her limbs. She groaned and shuddered, and he laughed darkly against her neck, triumphant.