Descent (Black Heart Romance presents Heaven & Hell)

He smiles. “Of course, a very big deal. I’ll make sure you get your phone at least once a day so
you don’t lose it.”
He knows I’m not really that concerned about a mobile game, but the levity feels nice for a
moment considering this is actually quite a heavy conversation. “All right. I also need to know you
won’t hurt anybody else. Lance and I had a terrible date, if you want to know the truth. He reminded
me why dating was exhausting and disappointing and just… not much fun at all. But he didn’t deserve
to be shot, and if you were mad at me for going out with him—even though you had no right to be—
you should have taken that up with me. It should have been a discussion or something, not a bullet
pumped into that poor man’s body.”
“I make no apologies for what happened that night,” he states, calm, but immovable. “I warned
you not to go on the date, and you disobeyed me.”
My eyes widen. “I didn’t know the stakes! If you had communicated them to me, then I wouldn’t
have gone.”
“Well, I’m communicating them to you now. You’re mine, and I don’t share. If it crosses your
mind to go out with another man again, it should follow logically that I’m going to take retribution on
the sorry fucker.”
I manage to keep my aggravation reined in, but just barely. “We weren’t dating.”
“We are now.”
I sigh. “Fine. I’m obviously not going to go out with anybody else right now, while I am… tied to
you,” I say, for lack of better word. “But I didn’t then, either. I did what I said I would. You and I
were over as far as I was concerned.”
“Obviously, you were incorrect.”
I meet his gaze dead-eyed, but I don’t swallow the bait. “I need to know you won’t do it again.”
“I promise not to do it again without warning you—explicitly—first. There. How’s that?”
I narrow my eyes at him, not altogether satisfied, but I suppose that’s good enough. “All right. I
guess that will have to do.”
“Mm-hmm. Anything else?”
“Um… exclusivity. We’ve covered the need for mine, but not yours.”
I’m tentative to bring this up, knowing I don’t have any real currency to barter with. He’s put me
in a corner with the stuff he has on Charity. This isn’t a normal situation where I have the option of
leaving or saying no, and that makes me pretty powerless in this whole relationship. He can do
whatever he wants, apparently, but there are practical things to consider. The man will not put a
condom on his dick, so if he’s shoving it in other women when he’s not with me… well, I have a
problem with that.
“Exclusivity isn’t an issue,” he says. “I wouldn’t go to all this trouble if I wanted to fuck anyone