Electric Idol (Dark Olympus #2)(67)

I dip my head until my lips nearly touch her ear. “I’m not saying them because I care about who’s listening. I’m saying them because they’re true.”

“Eros, please.”

I lean back enough to meet her eyes. The conversation from this morning plays through my head. We were both more than a little out of control, both more than a little skittish about how intense things have gotten so quickly. The smart play would be to slow down, to give each other space to shore up our defenses.

Fuck that. “Have you ever been seduced, Psyche? Truly seduced?”

She licks her lips. “Depends on your qualifications.”

“That’s a no.”

She makes a face. “Fine. No.”

I give her a slow smile, enjoying the way she shivers in response. “You’re about to be.”





22


Psyche

Eros is dangerous in a thousand different ways, but never more so than when he smiles at me like he is now. Like we’re sharing secrets, like we’re sharing intimacy. It’s difficult to remind myself that it’s all pretend. Yes, the desire between us is real, but that’s just another tool to sell the story. It’s a side effect, not the main goal.

Have I ever been seduced?

I want to laugh in his face. Olympus would happily strike me down if I let myself be seduced in anything but secret. The rest of the world might have moved on from archaic views of a woman’s worth being linked to virginity, but Olympus hasn’t. At least not in the upper city. After my first disastrous dating experience, all the rest were done in secret. A mutually assured destruction, at least with my femme partners. When you’re spending so much time sneaking around to see each other, there’s not much room for seduction.

The thought of allowing Eros to seduce me feels a little like what it must be like to jump out of a plane. It might end with a soft touching down…or a devastating embrace from gravity. I can’t risk it.

I take too large a sip of my bourbon and have to twist away from Eros to cough as fire lances my throat and lungs. “Oh gods.”

“They have nothing to do with it.” His voice maintains that lower tone, the same one he uses when he’s inside me. “Psyche, look at me.”

Something uncomfortably like desperation lashes me. I grab on to the first subject that I can think of, one sure to distract me from the spell this man weaves around me with his very presence. “I’m surprised your mother hasn’t made her first move yet.”

His smile doesn’t dim, but the heat disappears from his eyes. He winds a strand of my hair around his finger, keeping his head close to mine. “I’ll see what I can find out tonight after we get home. There’s no way she hasn’t put something in motion; we just haven’t seen evidence of it yet.”

Home.

Now that’s a terrifying thought. My mother’s place has always been home to me. When I agreed to this marriage, it never occurred to me that I might start to consider Eros’s penthouse home, too. Let alone that it would begin to happen so quickly.

Focus on anything but that. “You must have some theories about her plans. You’ve helped her with this kind of thing before.” I need to remind myself why I must not, under any circumstances, fall for this man. No matter how much I enjoy what we do in bed. No matter how much I’m starting to appreciate his dry sense of humor and wit. No matter how drawn I am to the hints of vulnerability he shows me at the most unexpected of times. If anything, those traits just make him more of a threat, because I’m in danger of forgetting the path we took to get to this place.

He sighs. “I suspect she’ll try to pry you out of my life first. There will be some kind of rumors to undermine the love story we’re weaving, to suggest that you are in it for ulterior motives. Which, of course, makes me look like a fool, but I expect she’s furious enough that she doesn’t care.” I don’t know what expression my face makes, but he sighs again and elaborates. “She might be a temperamental monster, but she’s smart. She knows I wouldn’t have gone to these lengths unless I wanted to…unless I wanted you. She’ll try to poison our relationship first so that I’ll toss you out of my own volition. My mother doesn’t have much of a heart, but in the tiny sliver that still exists, she does care about me.”

Are you sure?

I don’t voice the question. It’s needlessly cruel, and he’s already experienced enough of that without me adding to it. A parent who cares for their child doesn’t use them as a fixer. Eros didn’t magically come by his expertise; someone had to teach him. I would bet a significant amount of money that Aphrodite facilitated that. I don’t know how early it started, but if he was ruining lives for her at seventeen, it began when he was young. While he was still impressionable and under her care. What kind of parent nurtures their ambition more than their child’s mental and emotional well-being?

I have my answer, don’t I?

The kind of parent Aphrodite is.

Probing into Eros’s childhood to dismantle what little faith he has in his mother isn’t on my agenda. It won’t change anything about our current situation…and I can’t shake the suspicion that it will hurt him. Instead, I focus on a different angle. “I have my own money. What other reason could I have for seducing sweet, innocent you into marrying me?”