Every Last Breath

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  Rolling over, I waited until my eyes adjusted to the dark. I thought he might be in the bathroom, but as my gaze flitted across the room, I saw him by the piano. My heart sped up, my mind immediately veering to what we’d done, what we’d shared.

  The sheets were pooled around my hips and I was too lazy to fix them. Instead, I loosely folded my arms across my chest.

  He was sitting on the bench, facing me, with his arms draped over his bent knees. I couldn’t make out most of him as I snuggled onto my side. “What are you doing?”

  Roth stood and glided out of the shadows. His expression was relaxed and open, but he didn’t look normal. Roth could never look just normal, but as he stood there, he looked as close as he’d ever be. “I’m probably going to sound like a creep, but I was watching you.”

  “That is a hallmark of a creeper.”

  One side of his lips curled up and a dimple appeared in his right cheek. “I can’t help myself. You’re just too beautiful to look away from. It’s true. I’m a demon. I don’t lie.”

  I stared at him.

  His grin spread. “I got up to get something to drink,” he admitted. “And I glanced back at you. I don’t even know why. I just did and then I stopped.” His smile faded a bit. “Maybe I can’t believe that you’re really here. That we’re here.” He raised a shoulder and smooth skin stretched over taut muscles. “And then I sat down and I started thinking about...about everything with the Lilin, and now I’ve been entertaining the idea of gathering you up while you slept and basically kidnapping you. Hawaii still seems like a good place. Screw whatever happens with the Lilin and all of that. We could survive. I’d make sure of that.”

  Reaching down, my fingers curled around the edge of the comforter. “Roth...”

  He sighed as he raised a hand, scrubbing his fingers through his messy dark hair. “I know. You can’t walk away from any of this. None of us can.” He dropped his arm. “So that was what I was thinking about while I was staring at you.” Those amber eyes flashed with mischief, and I relaxed. I wasn’t ready for the world outside to intrude. “Did I tell you that you’re beautiful?”

  “Yes.” Lifting my hand to the poof that was currently my hair, I laughed as I pressed my cheek against the pillow. “But I don’t know how you could think so. I’m a mess.”

  He tipped his head to the side and pivoted around, heading toward the bathroom. After a few seconds, he returned with a hairbrush in hand. With his jeans unbuttoned, they hung indecently low. I could definitely see where Thumper’s tail was heading.

  Not that I hadn’t really seen that earlier.

  Cheeks flaming, I pressed my entire face into the pillow, hiding what had to be the goofiest smile known to man. Despite all the craziness we were facing and the uncertainty of what the next hour or tomorrow could drop on us, my little piece of the world felt bright and warm.

  What Roth and I had shared, what we had done, was beyond beautiful and wasn’t something I could simplify with words. For it to have been that way between us, we had to be in love with each other—madly, deeply in love.

  I was the corniest cornball in a cornfield full of popcorn.

  Roth touched my shoulder. “Sit up.”

  “Meh,” I murmured into the pillow.

  He chuckled. “Sit up. Please.”

  Demons rarely said please. I was beginning to think it was a word not in their core vocabulary, so I sat up, tugging the comforter to my chest. Roth slipped in behind me. One leg was bent against my side, the other dangled off the edge of the bed.

  I looked back at him, but before I could speak, he lowered his mouth to mine and kissed me. The touch of cool metal against my tongue was all too brief. He pulled away and gently turned my chin so I was facing away from him.

  “Let me see what I can do with this,” he said, gathering up my hair. “You’re right. This is a mess. You look like you could’ve been in an ’80s music video. What did you do to it?”

  “I didn’t do anything. That—” I pointed at my head “—is all your doing.”

  He started to ease the brush through my hair. “Blame the demon. I see how you are.”

  As Roth worked his way through the tangles, it really hit me that the Crown Prince of Hell was actually brushing my hair. That was beyond bizarre but also incredibly sweet. My warm and fuzzy glow from earlier was turning into emotional weepiness. Tears pricked at my eyes.

  I needed a mood stabilizer.

  Roth was extraordinarily patient when it came to working out the knots, more so than me. At this point, I was usually cussing and yanking the brush through my hair. He hummed under his breath as he worked, and I immediately recognized the tune.

  “Is ‘Paradise City’ your favorite song?” I asked.

  “The song just kind of got stuck in my head,” he said. “For a couple of years, all we could get down below was the classic rock station, and the ‘grass is green’ line always stuck out to me.”

  I grinned as I pictured Hell getting Sirius radio. “Why?”

  There was a beat of silence. “The grass is never green down below, Shortie.”

  My lips slipped down at the corners. “It’s not? What color is it?”

  “Gray,” he answered. “Everything is pretty much gray. Except for the blood. And there’s a lot of blood.”

  A shudder worked its way down my spine. “Sounds lovely.”

  “It’s a weird place. Like I said before, it mimics topside but does a shitty job at it. Everything is shiny at first, almost...pretty. Every single time I go down there, it’s like that—it’s like that for everyone, but it doesn’t take long for things to start to go downhill. It fades. Buildings crumble, the sky looks like it’s polluted with dirt, and the grass...yeah, it’s gray.” He eased the brush through my hair, stopping at another tangle. “Everything is twisted and tarnished down there. Things are real up here. Down below they are sad replicas that fall apart.”

  I remembered when Roth had admitted before that this was one of the reasons he enjoyed coming topside. My heart turned over heavily. “Will...will you have to go back?”

  He didn’t answer immediately, causing knots to form in my belly. “I don’t know, Shortie. If the Boss calls me back, I can only disobey for so long.”

  Closing my eyes against the ache in my chest, I knew this was something we were going to eventually have to face. “Has the Boss called you back yet?”

  “No.” He paused, pressing a kiss against my bare shoulder. “The Boss kind of lets most of us come and go as we please, unless we are needed for something. As long as I stay on the Boss’s good side, I should be good.”

  That wasn’t reassuring. “But I thought the Boss was displeased with you.”

  “The Boss is always displeased,” he replied. “There’s a big difference between him being displeased and me being on the Boss’s bad side.”

  I took that statement to heart, but I couldn’t imagine Roth staying on the Boss’s good side forever.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, returning to my hair. I could feel him separate the now-untangled strands into three sections. “Right now, that’s not the biggest of our problems.”

  I snorted. “True. But I can’t help but worry that one day, you’re going to...that you’re going to just disappear.”

  “I want you to listen when I say this.” He rested his chin on my shoulder, and when I turned my head toward his, he was peering up at me through thick lashes. “Nothing in this world or down below is going to keep me from you. Nothing, Layla. That’s a promise I will never break.”

  A deep, powerful emotion stirred inside me. “I will make you the same promise.”

  Those thick lashes swept down, shielding his eyes. “You will?”

  “Yes.” And I meant my next words. “I’m not going to let anything keep you from me and that includes your Boss.”

  Roth chuckled as he lifted his head, pausing to press a kiss against the side of my neck. “I like it when you get all feisty.” He returned to my hai
r, moving it back into the three sections. Several moments passed. “When I was in the pits, I really didn’t think I was going to get out of there. I figured the Boss would either not care enough to pull my happy ass out of it or would forget.”

  I bit down on my lip as he spoke. Roth had never talked about his time in the pits without being sarcastic about it.

  “I honestly have no idea how long I was in there. Time moves differently down below,” he continued, twisting the sections of hair around each other. “It wasn’t pleasant.” A dry laugh cracked out of him. “Actually, it freaking sucked, but you got me through it.”

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. “How?”

  “Easy. I thought about you. You were all I thought about.” His voice was quiet as my heart squeezed painfully. “I focused on the time we spent together, and as crazy as it sounds, I thought about you being topside with Zayne.”

  I winced. How was that helpful?

  Seconds later he answered my unspoken question. “Knowing that you’d be safe and would eventually be happy made it somewhat more bearable. And I know—I know—that Zayne would’ve laid down his life to protect you. Probably still would. You’d be okay. So knowing that helped when it got...well, when it got hard.”

  A lump formed in the back of my throat. “I wish I could take away the time you’ve spent in the pits.”

  His knuckles brushed along the center of my back as he continued with the braid he was making. “You already have.”

  The lump tripled. “And I wish you never had to sacrifice yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  “I know,” I whispered, closing my eyes again. It took me a moment to find the right words. “You know that I care about Zayne deeply. That’s never going to change. Even though right now he’d probably rather punt-kick me into traffic than talk to me, I’m always going to love him.”

  Pausing, I drew in a deep breath. “I told you this before. I love Zayne, but I’m not in love with him, and I don’t know if that would’ve ever changed. Could I have been with him?” I raised a shoulder. “Yeah, I could’ve been, but it would never be like this—like it is between you and me. I don’t know how long I would’ve stayed happy with Zayne if he and I got together and you never came back. Or if he would’ve remained happy with it himself, but at some point, what I felt for him wouldn’t have been enough. That’s unfair to him. So I’m glad that knowing I had someone helped you get through that, and to be honest, that blows my mind, but I want you to know that it would’ve...it would’ve never been enough for me.”

  Roth reached around me, placing his hand above my heart. He flattened his palm, and I lifted my arm, folding my hand over his. His breath was warm against my shoulder when he spoke. “I know.”

  Drawing back, he flipped the braid over my shoulder. “All done.”

  I reached up and smoothed my fingers over the thick braid. “You’re really good at this. Better than me. Did you practice on your demon friends?”

  “Only on all my dolls.”

  I laughed as Roth tossed the brush aside. It bounced off the foot of the bed and hit the floor. A second later, Fury dashed out from under the bed and pounced on the brush. Its black-and-white hair was raised and its ears were pinned back. The kitten grabbed hold of the handle of the brush, and then dragged it under the bed. I had no idea what it planned to do with it under there.

  Twisting at the waist, I faced Roth. Our eyes met. He grinned. The next breath I took was shaky. “I love you. Just wanted to throw that out there.”

  “I desire you.” Lowering his head, his lips skated up the side of my neck, to the sensitive spot below my ear. “I want you. I need you.” He nipped the fleshy part of my lobe, causing me to gasp. “And I love you.”

  The next thing I knew I was on my back and Roth was settling over me, and those little nips were traveling down my neck and lower, and it wasn’t too long before all the work he’d done on my hair went to complete waste in the most glorious of ways.

  * * *

  I was staring at my reflection again.

  My eyes still seemed too big and my face was flushed, but this time I wasn’t half-naked. Which, honest to God, seemed like a major feat considering—well, once we crossed into that new level of our relationship, Roth really was...

  My face burned even brighter and I lowered my gaze as I tugged on the collar of my sweater. Okay. I needed to focus. Last night and in the middle of the night and this morning were amazing, but today was going to be insane. I would be going into Hell. Nervousness didn’t even touch what I was feeling, and I still had no idea how I was going to distract Roth so he wouldn’t know what I was planning. He thought we were heading out to look for the Lilin. He’d mentioned swinging by another demon-run club in the city. While I was kind of excited to see that, it was not going to happen today.

  And I also didn’t know what I was going to do when I got back—if I got back—because Roth was going be so mad.

  Bambi shifted on my back, flicking her tail along the left side of my ribs, coming close to nudging Robin. As soon as I’d gotten up this morning, she’d plastered herself onto me, which hadn’t been a part of the plan, but it wasn’t like I could pitch a fit about her being on me. Roth would know something was up, which sucked, because the last thing I wanted to do was put Bambi in a precarious position.

  She was practically our kid.

  Twisting my hair up, I shoved a million bobby pins in, and then left the bathroom. Roth was lounging against the wall, his long legs crossed at the ankles, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. I saw him and I might’ve forgotten what I was doing.

  Roth was striking.

  With his black hair falling into amber eyes and the shirt clinging to all the right areas, he was breathtaking, but it was that smile, the one that showed off his dimples and transformed his entire being when he looked at me that—that owned me. And he was smiling at me like that now.

  “I like your pants,” he said.

  I glanced down. They were black. Leather. I sighed. “I’m never allowing Cayman to go shopping for me again.”

  He chuckled as he pushed off the wall. “I hope he shops for you from now on.” Walking past me, toward the door, he slid his hand over my leather-clad legs. “Or at least keep these.”

  I rolled my eyes as I turned around.

  “Mmm.” His gaze traveled over me. “Please keep them.”

  Laughing, I planted my hands on his back and shoved him toward the door. “Only because you asked nicely.”

  “And because your ass looks sumptuous in them?”

  “Geez,” I choked out, shaking my head as he closed the door behind us.

  Out in the hallway, he draped his arm over my shoulders and hauled me close to his side. We started down the hall. “I think that’s a valid reason.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  His hand moved up and down my upper arm as we hit the stairwell and began the long, long journey down to the lobby. “How your ass looks is a very important thing when shopping for pants, Shortie.”

  I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. “I’m sure there are things that are even more important.”

  He scoffed. “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. How about comfort?”

  “Boring.”

  “What about usefulness?”

  He sent me a look. “There is nothing more useful than leather pants. They’ll protect your ass while making it look fine.”

  We were nearing the first floor. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s annoying,” I muttered, glancing at the gray, cement door, and my pulse kicked up.

  “You still love me,” he replied.

  “True.” I squared my shoulders as Roth opened the door.

  We stepped out into the grandiose lobby with his arm still hanging over my shoulders. Like the first time I’d seen the lobby, it was awe-inspiring. I didn’t get to
see it a lot, because we always came in through the parking garage or the basement club entrance and then we stuck to the stairwell.

  An enormous chandelier hung in the center of the lobby, casting bright light into every corner, but it was the mural painted on the ceiling that really drew the eye. Angels. Lots of angels hovering above, engaged in a hard-core battle, fighting one another with fiery swords. Some were falling through sudsy white clouds. Others were raising their blades. The detail was extraordinary, down to the red-orange flames and the grimaces of pain. Even the virtuous glint in their eyes was there.

  I quickly looked away from the painting, unsettled by it when before I’d just been amused.

  Vintage leather couches were everywhere, and they weren’t empty. People of all ages were scattered about, sitting alone or in groups, talking and laughing. Some were chatting on phones. The