I stuck out my hand for him to shake, wanting to keep a distance between us. Something was screaming at me to stay away. To run. Now. But, when he grabbed my hand, I froze.

Instead of shaking it, he brought it to his lips. They were soft and lingered for more than a moment. He was more gentleman-like than I ever expected.

After taking a deep breath, he gazed down at me with dark—black—eyes, and I gasped. “You had quite the entrance there,” he said, his scent becoming overwhelming. My cheeks flushed, and I looked down. Great, Dani, just great. He grazed his finger against the bottom of my chin and lifted it until my eyes were gazing into his. “Don’t be embarrassed.” He leaned over slightly, his lips grazing against my ear. “I should be the one embarrassed.”

Cinnamon. That’s all I smelt.

“What do you mean?” I asked, tingled running down my arms. My breath caught in the back of my throat, and Mom’s necklace chilled my skin as soon as Eros dropped his hand and brushed his knuckles against it.

He stared at the pendant with soft eyes, as if it was a relic that had been lost for centuries, as if it was the only thing that ever mattered. But, then, he looked at me. “It’s not every day I find a woman like you.” And I felt like I was the only one that ever mattered.

He took me in so steadily, gaze shifting from eye to eye, drifting down my face, thumb brushing against my cheek. And I stood there, staring back, unable to speak, unable to think, unable to get myself to push him away.

“It’s not every day a woman in her underwear runs away from me.” He stepped back and blessed me a smirk that would destroy me if I wasn’t careful. “And it’s not every day that I want to follow that woman back into her bedroom and take her right then and there.”

My eyes widened and nervously darted around the room to see if anyone else had heard what he just said to me. Maria had her arm around one of the men, her head falling into the crook of his neck, eyes closed, looking like she was in Heaven. The other three girls weren’t better off. Even Maria’s shyest friend—Hallie—was resting her cheek against one of their shoulders, eyes cloudy and distant.

I parted my lips and pressed them back together. My head felt foggy, like I was in a daze, in a trance, in something, because who in their right mind would say something like that to someone that they just met. And his eyes flashing black? Those couldn’t be real. But what if they were? What if I wasn’t imagining it?

I needed to get away, yet I couldn’t peel my eyes off of him. I wanted to feel his nose running up the side of my neck, his teeth dipping into my flesh, his hands pinning mine against my leather headboard, refusing to let me go. I pushed my knees together.

Sinful words from a sinful man that made me think sinful thoughts. Mom always told me that the devil disguised himself as our deepest desire.

When I looked back at Eros, he chuckled. I tugged on Mom’s pendant. “I… uh…”

“You want me,” he said. But his lips didn’t move, not even a little.

Okay, I was definitely just hearing things. God, I was really going crazy.

He brushed his fingers against my hip and stepped closer. Black specs reappeared in his eyes. His breath warmed my neck. Cinnamon. “Tell me you want me, Dani, and I’ll enact all those fantasies running through that dirty little mind of yours. Every. Last. One of them,” he murmured.

My tongue ran over my bottom lip. “… erm…”

The tips of his fingers snuck under the hem of my shirt and grazed against my stomach. I let out a shaky breath, not being able to distinguish the real from the fake. “I… uh… gotta go.”

Without hesitating, I stepped away from him, staggered back, and sprinted into my room.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Every time I closed my eyes, I could feel his fingertips gliding against my skin, burning into my flesh. They were tormenting me already in places he hadn’t even touched yet.

I cocooned myself in my plush pink throw blanket, trying to put as much space between Eros and me as possible. If this was how I felt after five minutes of meeting him, how would I feel seeing him every single day? How would I feel when Maria brought them over again?

There was only one thing that I could do now.

Let Project Hermit begin.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER 2

OceanofPDF.com

Dani

“Can you just open the door?” Trevon asked through the phone. “I left my key to your place back at home.” I gnawed on the inside of my cheek and walked to my bedroom door, hand on the handle, heart thrashing against my ribcage. “Hello?” he said, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Hi… I… uh…” I pressed my ear to my cold door, listening to the light hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. No talking. No shuffling. Maybe they weren’t here. “Give me a second.”

After peeking my head out and gazing down the empty hallway, I tiptoed to the kitchen. Shadows from the cabinets loomed over me in the darkness, but at least it wasn’t Eros’s shadow.

I stood on my toes and checked through the peephole. In the brightly lit hallway, Trevon had his hands stuffed in his pockets and his eyes shielded by the navy baseball cap I had given him for his birthday last year. But still I waited. I didn’t need this to be some sort of prank and have Eros appearing out of nowhere.

When Trevon looked straight at the peephole with the most heavenly brown eyes I had ever seen, I pulled open the door, wrapped my hand around his wrist, and yanked him inside.

“What the fu-” He stumbled forward.

I slammed the door. “Sorry,” I said, standing on my toes and kissing him.

“Is everything okay, babe?” He tilted his head to the side slightly, like he did when he was thinking, and eyed me. The bitter scent of beer sickened me. I licked my lips nervously, nodded my head, and pulled him into my room.

Another door Eros would have to get through to get to me.

Trevon tossed his hat onto my dresser. “You haven’t returned any of my calls or texts since yesterday morning.”

“I’ve just been busy with my psych internship and… um, stuff…” Like trying to hide from Eros. Maria had brought him over all day yesterday and even for breakfast this morning, and I couldn’t handle it anymore. If I saw him one more time, I was going to—

Trevon threw his shirt onto the end of my bed and crawled under the comforter, the light from the candle flickered against his brown and brawny abdomen. “I know when you’re lying.”

The wind whistled, blowing the curtains away from the window and brushing against the side of my bed. Outside, the city night was unusually quiet.

I parted my lips to speak, then closed them. What was I going to say? That an undeniably sexy man moved in next-door and he just so happened to have the hots for me. No. No way I’d do that to Trevon. He had known me since I was five, helped me through Mom’s death, was one of the only constant people in my life that I cherished. “I… I just haven’t been getting much sleep lately.”

It wasn’t a lie. For the past few nights, I’d been tossing and turning. Last night was the worst; my mind kept replaying the interaction I had with Eros. Over and over. The thought—his promise—wouldn’t leave me alone. And, it was getting too damn frustrating.

Light from my candles glimmered off of my black headboard. Trevon leaned against it, crossing one leg over the other. He grabbed my hand, pulling it away from my necklace. “If you keep doing that, you’re going to break it again.” He pulled me down next to him.

Like I had done nearly every night for the past five years, I curled into him, resting my head on his bare chest. He laced his fingers into my hair and scratched lightly. I sighed and drew my finger across the only tattoo he had on his body—a tabono symbol—that he got on his chest after winning his first college wrestling match.