Page 37 of Let Me Win You

No wonder he’d never even bothered with his own orgasm when he was with me. I was just one person, after all. How could one compete with three hundred and fifty?

“Absolutely not,” he protested. “I don’t need hundreds. And it happened just once. One night. A few centuries ago.”

“But it happened. Why?” I tried to understand, I really tried, but it remained behind my human comprehension. “Really, Invi? Three hundred and fifty people at once?”

“Not at once,” he said. “It took me a few hours to please them all. And after about three hundred and three, I was so tired, I didn’t even care about my own pleasure anymore.”

“Justa few hours?” I laughed sarcastically to mask my hurt. “I mean, I know you have two dicks, but still… Why did you do it?”

He raked his fingers through his hair, teasing out a few long strands from the knot he’d made.

“I learned that Lux had bedded hundreds of thousands of souls over the centuries, and I wished to beat him at that.”

“Is Lux?—”

“Luxuria, the Sin of Lust. He makes it look so effortless. And he seems to enjoy it more than anyone.”

“So, you got jealous?”

“Envious,” he corrected with a soft smile. “I calculated that if I had sex with three hundred and fifty souls every night, I would eventually catch up with his number and then beat him. But I lasted just that one night.”

“You quit after just one night? Why?”

“Everything we do here in Purgatory is ultimately for pleasure,” he explained. “Otherwise, why even bother with the existence, right?”

“Um…” I wasn’t sure how to reply to that.

Thankfully, he didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, after that night, I realized that for me, pleasure comes from quality not quantity. Scarcity ultimately makes my joy that much more intense.”

“And ‘scarcity’ for you would be like what? A dozen instead of three hundred?”

“One, Nic. Just one. All I want is you. As often as you’ll have me.”

With a finger under my chin, he lifted my face to his and paused just long enough for me to protest, but I didn’t. I let him kiss me.

“Do you believe me?” he asked, searching my eyes after the kiss. “Who told you about that night?”

“Kindness. Only she said you did it every night, not just once. She also said you were a liar and a murderer. And…well, many other bad things.”

He winced as if having bitten into a lemon. “Please don’t believe everything Kindness says. She lies a lot. In fact, it’s safe to assume that everything Kindness says is either partially or completely untrue.”

“How can she lie? She’s a virtue.”

“Do you think the virtues are infallible? That they can’t lie?”

“Maybe they can. But they shouldn’t, should they?”

“My sisters are queens of hypocrisy, but they often act like they have no faults. They would commit the gravest of atrocities as long as they can justify it somehow that it’s necessary for a greater good. Kindness believes that lying is perfectly acceptable as long as it’s done with the best intentions. She is the cause of most white lies and often of lying by omission too.” He lookedat me carefully. “Did you, by any chance, make Kindness believe that her badmouthing me would make you feel better?”

I thought back to my conversation with the virtue.

“I’m afraid I did…” I admitted with a pang of guilt.

“Were you that angry with me, sweetheart?”

It wasn’t the anger, but my desperate attempt to fight my attraction to him. It scared me how easy it was for me to like him. Even back when I was afraid of him, I still felt attracted to him.

“I hoped to discover something terrible about you,” I explained, avoiding his eyes. “Something that would help menotlike you as much as I did.”

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