Riley, will you marry me?”
She gaped at him for a long moment before she tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her mouth had dried up like a box of sand.
What was he doing? Just what exactly had she clicked into place when she’d been shifting his dark and light jigsaw pieces apart before?
“Darrak . . . I—I don’t know what to say. I’m surprised you’d ask me . . . this. It’s just, I . . .”
A shadow of doubt entered his expression. “It was stupid, wasn’t it?”
“No.” She gripped his hands. This was so unbelievably sweet and unexpected and . . . she didn’t know how to deal with this. A wistful sensation passed through her wishing things could be different than they were. Wishing they were remotely normal and could discuss things like this seriously. “Not stupid. Just not—Darrak, I . . . it’s just not something we should even be thinking about right now. There’s too much to deal with. I mean, at the very least you don’t even have a birth certificate. Or a driver’s license. And . . . and we’ve only known each other a month. One month!”
Clarity washed over his expression. “Forget I said anything.”
Her stomach twisted. “No, I don’t want to forget it. Just . . . maybe ask me again when things are better. But right now—you can’t honestly think this is a good time for this, do you? Besides, we have to go deal with Andy.” She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. “We really have to get moving right now.”
New clothes flowed over his skin, and he let her go completely. “Of course. Andy. I forgot about him for a minute there.”
Eden grabbed at the bedsheets to cover herself. She suddenly felt extremely naked. “Darrak, I mean it. We’ll talk about this later, I promise we will.”
He got up off the bed, averting his gaze. “No problem. I’m going to let you get ready. I’ll give you some privacy.”
He left the bedroom and the door closed behind him with a soft click.
It felt very quiet all of a sudden. She could even hear the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears, loud and fast.
Darrak had just asked her to marry him. Marry him. And she’d all but replied with a hell no. The last thing she wanted to do after all they’d been through was to hurt him, but what was she supposed to say? And what in the world had possessed him to ask her that in the first place? Had he really been inspired, of all things, by Stanley Dancy, minion to wizards and demons alike?
The full moon was making everyone go wild this month.
So, that couldn’t possibly have gone much worse than it did.
Darrak wished for a button to press that could undo the dumber things he attempted. It would have helped many times over the years.
This, quite possibly, had been the dumbest.
“Eden Riley, will you marry me?”
He covered his face with his hands. “What do I think this is? The Bachelorette?”
Sex didn’t normally make him lose his mind like that. First time for everything.
It was sort of humorous, actually. A cursed archdemon asking someone to be his wife in holy-freaking-matrimony. And the entire idea had been put into his mind in the first place by the romantic lothario Stanley, of all people.
Hilarious. Maybe someday he’d be able to laugh about it.
That day was not going to be today.
Fine. So the proof was in the proverbial pudding. He had sensed it all along, but now he knew for sure. What he felt for Eden was not returned in full. She cared about him, she lusted after him, she might even love him a little. But it wasn’t nearly the same as how he felt about her.
Point taken. He didn’t need any further embarrassment, thank you very much. He could take a hint when it hit him in the face with the force of a city bus.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the oval mirror attached to the wall. “This is what happens with all that angel inside of you. It’s turned you into a romantic dope.”
He was soft, sensitive, and making offers of marriage.
It was the beginning of the end, just as he’d predicted for himself.
Lucifer must have been laughing his ass off about his least favorite ex-employee. Darrak was nothing more than sentient hellfire with a soft side.
There were bigger issues to be concerned with at the moment; he knew that. Much,