(ZANE)
Blaine leads me down a hallway and to a winding staircase. Light filters into the mansion from the many windows, and it takes all my willpower not to stop on the steps and gawk at the beauty of the place.
"You'll have plenty of time to admire everything later." Blaine smirks at me.
"But I can hear your stomach growling from here. Food first."
Heat creeps to my cheeks, and I avert my eyes. How can he read me so easily?
We reach the ground floor, and my mouth waters at the smell of bacon. And yeah, he is right. My stomach grumbls.
Voices drift from the other room, followed by a few chuckles and the sizzle of cooking meat.
"I should warn you," Blaine says. "Things can get… rowdy. And loud. Too goddamn loud."
"I went to a ton of frat parties in college. I can handle it."
"Yeah, well, they're like frat boys on steroids." He glances at the open archway. "If they annoy you too much, let me know and I'll strangle them."
I laugh, then stop when I see his serious expression.
"You're not joking."
Humor sparks in his eyes. Whether he'd strangle them or not, I have no idea. Probably best for them not to test him though.
Entering the kitchen, I see four men. Three I recognize, because they'd been in my room when I woke up. The other man was fucking beautiful. He has a head of wavy blond hair and a perfect balance of masculine and feminine features: a strong jaw, pouted lips, long lashes, bedroom eyes, and high cheekbones. He smiles at me, and I look away, my face heating.
Loki is sitting on a barstool, legs crisscrossed on the seat and head resting on the counter. He looks sleepy, all the energy he'd had earlier gone.
He opens his eyes long enough to give me a tired smile, and then he closes them again.
"Can't believe you let a shade make you its bitch last night, Kaiser," the guy with vibrant red hair said to the man at the stove.
"I thought those claw marks were because you got kinky. Not because you got your ass kicked." "Shut your ugly face, Theo or you won't get any of my food," Kaiser says, scoffing. He notices me standing by the archway.
"Hey, mortal. You hungry?"
"I never say no to bacon," I say, hating the shake in my voice. Being nervous was normal, right? Anyone would be freaked out in my situation. Considering everything, I am holding myself together pretty well.
"Me either." Kaiser winks, then turns back to the stove.
"He's Gluttony," Blaine tells me. "He eats to excess and drinks all the time."
"But he's so…" I trail my gaze up and down Kaiser's muscular form. "In shape."
"Working out obsessively is part of his sin too," Blaine explains. "He can never have enough. Food, drink, muscles, sex. He overindulges in it all."
"Speaking of sex," the guy I didn't know says, grabbing my hand and kissing the top of it in a total Prince Charming style. His hazel eyes shift to light Loki. "I'm Valerian."
"Your eyes changed color," I point out, shocked.
"He's Lust." Blaine's voice is more gravelly than normal. He shoves Valerian's hand away from mine. "His eyes change depending on who looks at him, becoming the color the viewer finds most attractive."
"Interesting that yours is Loki," Valerian says with a smile, looking from me to Blaine. "The same shade as yours. Imagine that."
Okay. Now I want to crawl under a rock and die.
"I'm Thereon," the red-haired one says. Both ears are pierced with silver studs, and he also has a nose ring and eyebrow piercing. "Greed personified. Bow down to your new master and don't forget to give me offerings of gold. Or anything shiny and expensive, really."
"Um." I look at Blaine. Blaine rolls his eyes at Thereon. "Ignore him. The only thing he's a master of is being a pain in all our asses."
"Don't forget you used to like me being a pain in your ass."
Thereon sticks his tongue between his teeth and suggestively wiggles his eyebrows. "I sure liked you being a pain in mine."
As his meaning becomes clear, a weird ache pierces the center of my chest, one that has nothing to do with my wound. I am in fact jealous. Which is stupid as hell. I don't even know Blaine. How canI be jealous?
"That was centuries ago," Blaine says. "Biggest mistake of my life."
The silver lining in this slightly uncomfortable conversation? I now know for certain Blaine likes men. Not that someone like me would ever have a chance with him. He is way too far out of my league.
I couldn't even get Brandon, a dickwad with incredibly low standards, to stop eye-fucking our waiter long enough to say two words to me. My chance of being with someone as hot as Blaine was like negative thousand percent.
Also, my life has just been turned upside down. The last thing I need is to lust after the six-foot-eight Nephilim who'd basically kidnapped me.
A loud snort snapped me out of my head. Loki flings upward, shocked awake by the sound of his own snore. Blaine lightly chuckles.
"Loki is Sloth. He has small bursts of energy, followed by drowsy spells and utter laziness." "Why does he look so much younger than the rest of you?" I ask. "And he's so short." I'd say he was five foot eight, maybe five nine tops.
"Just how he is." Kaiser piles scrambled eggs and bacon onto his plate and sat at the table. "We like to joke and say he was too lazy to keep growing, so he stopped."
I laugh at that. Loki cracks a smile too before sliding off the barstool and stealing a sliver of bacon off the plate on the counter.
"What about the other two?" I ask, noticing only five of them are in the kitchen. I tick off the list of sins, counting them on my fingers. "Pride and Envy."
"Cassius, holder of Envy, keeps to himself," Blaine explains, resting his hand at the small of my back and leading me toward the table. I kind of like him touching me.
"Kian should be down soon."
"They're not as fun as us," Thereon says.
"Kian is like the grandpa of the group, and Cassius is the emo kid who hates everyone."
"Who are you calling a grandpa?" a silky voice asks before a man with pale blond hair walks into the kitchen. He is stunning. Though not as muscled as Blaine or Kaiser, he exudes authority and a cool confidence not easily matched. His icy blue eyes land on me.
"Zane. Good to see you upright. I knew you'd get back on your feet quickly."
"That's Kian," Blaine tells me. "Pride."
"Nice to meet you," I say.
Knowing he isn't happy about me being there makes me feel awkward. Like a trespasser.
But it not like I forced myself on them. None of is my fault.
"I'm sure it is," Kian responds before grabbing a kettle from the bottom cabinet and filling it with water.
Arrogant son of a bitch.
Then again, he is Pride.
"No offense," I say, glancing between all six of them. "But I don't know if I actually believe any of this. I can't explain what attacked me in my shop or how quickly I healed from said attack. But demons? The seven deadly sins? It's crazy talk."
"Your belief doesn't matter," Kian says. "The truth is there regardless if you believe it or not. So. You can be a whiny little mortal and waste all of our time as you try to wrap your head around all of this, or you can just accept it."
"Damn, Kian" Thereon shakes his head. "That's a little harsh.
The guy got attacked by shades and woke up surrounded by all of us. Give him some time to process things."
"We haven't the time," Kian snaps. "We need him to open the box so we can figure out what the hell we're dealing with."
Open the box?
"Yeah, but—"
"That's enough," Blaine says, his gruff tone cutting through the noise. He looks at me. "Eat. Rebuild your strength. We'll talk more later."