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Hades was not wearing his cut, nor what I’d come to think of as his ‘badass uniform’, but he still emanated darkness while lying there. He produced shadows wherever he went, and those shadows swallowed me whole.
“You are the reason I didn’t get a dress,” I continued when he didn’t respond to what I’d said. I frowned in my mirror, trying my best not to look at him in the reflection. Then I’d get distracted, and we were already running late.
Macy and Hansen’s barbeque had started thirty minutes ago, yet I still wasn’t dressed. Because the perfect dress was still in Nordstrom, ripped and ruined, and I couldn’t go back to buy it since we’d ruined the dress and hadn’t paid for it. As if I hadn’t felt naughty enough.
“You want to go back to get the dress?” he asked from his spot on the bed. He hadn’t started getting ready because he was an evil creature who could just throw on clothes and look devastatingly handsome in about five minutes flat.
“If we go back there, we might get arrested,” I grumbled to the mirror, frowning at the dress I was wearing. It went down to my ankles, was floral, halter neck, with a small cutout in the mid-section and lace trim at the bottom. I’d paired it with a baby pink cashmere cardigan. Both were remnants of my life with Derek. I’d kept them because they’d cost an arm and a leg, plus they came in handy when I was in the mood to look like I wasn’t a stripper.
I’d thrown them on in a panic after everything in my closet seemed wrong.
“They could’ve had video cameras in the dressing room,” I groaned, my skin heating at the memory of what we’d done in there.
“They don’t,” Hades said.
I frowned. “How do you know they don’t?”
“Beyond the fact they’d be sued up the ass, I had our guy hack into their system, check to see if they had any footage of that area. Had him wipe anything from that area just to be sure.”
I blinked. “You had a guy hack into the Nordstrom security system just to make sure there was no compromising footage of us?” I clarified.
“I did.”
Jesus fucking Christ. What did one even say to that?
I had no idea what to say to that, so I just frowned at myself in the mirror.
“What are we going to say when we get there?” I asked, staring at Hades in the mirror.
“About what?”
I picked an imaginary piece of lint off my dress, nerves suddenly crawling up my throat. “About us,” I answered, not looking at him anymore. I sucked in a breath. “I mean, I don’t know your dating history because we haven’t really talked about that. But my guess is, based on the time I have spent with you, that you’re not really a relationship kind of guy. That maybe you’re more into...” I searched for a word that wouldn’t piss him off.
“Fucking,” he finished for me from his spot on the bed. My eyes met his, and he was watching me intently. In a way that made my stomach coil.
“Yes,” I agreed, both loving and hating the sound of the word and what it meant coming from him. Coming from him naked in my fucking bed.
“Fucking,” I said it again because I liked feeling dirty with him. He must’ve liked it too because his eyes flared, and he sat up slightly in bed. “And you’re very good at it,” I added. “Very good.” Fuck. This was not going well. “Um, and I don’t think there is a single thing wrong with just fucking or being sexually free. But I’m a thirty-two-year-old woman.”
Fuck.
I’d just told him my age. That wasn’t something that he needed to know. Sure, Hades looked like he might’ve been a few years ahead of me, but it was impossible to tell. His porcelain face was almost lineless, and the only sign of age was in his eyes, displaying the only evidence of the years he’d lived, the lives he’d taken. I wasn’t ashamed of my age, I looked great for it, and I’d never had a complex about it, but still.
I straightened my shoulders and played with the bun I’d piled my hair into. “As a thirty-something-year-old woman, I’m not interested in just fucking. Even fucking that’s as magnificent as we’ve had.”
I bit my lip, already regretting what I was about to say. It was all too tempting to give Hades everything and just take whatever he was willing or capable of giving me. I certainly would’ve done that in my twenties, but not now. “I need a relationship. I don’t need labels or even anything serious right now. I’m more than aware that we barely know each other. But one thing you should know about me is that I don’t bullshit. So I’m telling you how I feel without the bullshit.”
