“Trevon!” I called after him. “Take care of yourself.”

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER 25

OceanofPDF.com

Dani

I sighed and flopped down onto my bed. This was very, very weird.

Ever since Eros, Javier, and Zane moved in, we were all dreaming of them. And these weren’t normal dreams. These were intense and intimate dreams that left us wanting more.

But why? Why were we all suddenly thinking of the guys next door?

I rested my head on my pillow, opened an internet browser on my phone, and typed: What does it mean when you dream about people?

Hundreds of articles from Psychology Today, Cosmopolitan, and Bustle popped up. I recognized some of them from my Psych 101 class in college when Maria and I had to do a research project on Carl Jung. I doubted that they’d be factual, but I still wanted to know what these dreams meant—even if it was all just a far-fetched theory from Freud or from some psychic who read palms for a living.

Someone knocked on the front door.

I groaned and tossed my phone onto the bed. Who was knocking this late at night? It was nearly 1am. Maria was out with Zane, and Trevon was long-gone by now.

When they knocked again, I pushed myself off of the bed and walked to the front door. I peeked through the peephole, eyes widening. “Eros,” I said, pulling open the door. “What’re you doing here?”

He leaned against the doorframe, eyes hazy. “Come out with me.”

“Now?” I asked. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to go wherever he wanted to take me, but I wasn’t prepared. Mentally or physically. “Nothing’s open.”

His lips curled into a smile, and he took my hand. “I know a place.”

Eros drove us downtown, near Crimson’s Nouveau, and parked on the side of the road. He curled an arm around my waist, pulling me into his chest. Instead of walking toward the entrance of the restaurant, he led us down a dimly lit alleyway toward the rear of the building.

Snow was falling around us, flakes sticking to Eros’s thick hair. A few men were standing outside in the alley, passing pills to each other. I grabbed onto Eros’s bicep. “Where are we going?” I whispered to him, eying the burly men who were now staring directly at us.

He directed me to a gray metal door and banged two times on it with the side of his fist. After a few moments, a man—who looked exactly like those in the alley—opened the door. I squeezed his bicep harder. Where were we?

The man nodded to Eros, and Eros stepped through the door, tugging me in. We walked down a deserted hallway, then down a set of dusty stairs. A single light flickered above us. The low thump of music played through the walls, and I tried to calm my racing thoughts. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Eros pushed open another door.

I stepped into the room, nearly bumping into a waiter who was dressed in a maroon suit. Eros grasped my hips and pulled me back. “Be careful,” he murmured into my ear.

There was a bar in the center of the room, filled with people flirting with each other. Twelve beige cushioned booths sat around the perimeter of the room. Everything was lit with dim red lights which hung off of the brick walls.

Eros guided me through the crowd of people to a booth in the back. All the women were dressed in skimpy little dresses or short skirts, and I felt out of place in my leggings and sweater.

“What is this place?” I asked, sitting down.

“This is The Lounge.”

“Why are we here?” I grabbed a menu from the middle of the table and tilted it toward the candle flickering between us.

“Because I wanted to see you.”

“How can you see anything in this place?”

He chuckled, the light from the candle illuminating his face. “We can go if you’d like.”

“No!” I said, quicker than I meant. I took a deep breath. “I mean, no, we can stay.” His lips stretched into a genuine smile, and my heart tightened. I missed that. “So, what is this place?”

I gazed around the room. The Lounge definitely wasn’t a regular bar. By the way people were straddling each other and kissing, shooting down alcohol and touching, it looked more like a sex club to me.

A woman at the bar took a sip of red drink, grabbed her friend, and kissed her. Her hands roamed down the woman’s body and dipped between her legs.

Jesus.

Eros followed my stare and chuckled again. “It’s a place to let loose.”

“Why don’t you just go to a regular bar? What’s so special about this one?”

He pointed to the drink in the woman’s hand. “Regular bars don’t have those.”

I gazed around the room, noticing that almost everyone here had a similar drink. “What are they?”

“They’re called Passion Delights.”

Well, I knew what I wasn’t getting. I was going to stick to my water for tonight. If I had one of those things, I would break and beg Eros to do naughty, naughty things to me before the end of the night.

I placed down the menu and leaned forward. “So… why’ve you been ignoring me?”

Eros’s stare remained on me—so dark, intense, and distant. “I’ve been dealing with my family.”

“But you’ve been ignoring me,” I said. I understood that he had his problems—we all did—but he had been over the apartment with Maria and Zane. He had time to see them.

He grabbed my hands. “I have.”

“Why?”

A waiter walked up to our table and cleared his throat. “Evening Eros.” The man was tall, dark, and devilishly sexy. His blonde hair rested on the sides of his face and his piercing blue eyes stared right at me.

Eros swore under his breath and shook his head.

“Haven’t seen you around in a while,” the waiter said. “Last time you were here was with Luci, wasn’t it?”

There it was again. Her stupid name, ruining our time together. Luci, Luci, Luci.

Eros clenched his jaw. “We would like to order.”

“I see that you’ve brought a friend,” he said.

“We’ll take a basket of Fervor Crisps, a Passion Delight, and…” Eros looked at me. “What would you like?”

I pulled my hands away from Eros and rubbed my neck. “Water is fine.”

The waiter was staring down at me. “Is she yours?” he asked Eros, not peeling his eyes away from me.

Eros tensed and sat up taller. “Our order.”

The waiter bowed his head slightly. “My apologies.”

When he walked toward the bar, Eros turned back to me and grabbed my hands again. “Ignore him.”

I nodded my head and drew my finger against this ring. “Why’re you ignoring me?” I asked. I wanted to know if it was because of Luci, but I couldn’t get myself to say her name. I didn’t want to seem like I was jealous—we weren’t even exclusive yet.

Hell, I didn’t know what we were.

“My family is bothersome,” Eros said. A stray piece of hair fell into his face as the faint scent of cinnamon drifted through the air.

I knew that. From Javier, from Kasey, from Eros himself. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation that I overheard last week. I wanted answers. “What am I involved in?”

“What’re you talking about?”

I took a deep breath. “I overheard your conversation with Javier last week,” I said. He pulled his hands away and groaned, leaning back in his seat. “You told me that you’ll tell me things later and I want to give you space to tell me when you’re ready, but…” My heart clenched. “But I don’t want to be lied to or kept in the dark. I don’t want to be—doing whatever we’re doing—with someone who’s keeping secrets from me. I—I don’t think I could handle that after what Trevon did.”

That was the truth. And, as much as I hated to admit it, my conversation with Trevon made me question everything. He was cheating on me for weeks, and I had no idea. What if Eros was the same way? What if he had secrets that would hurt me too?