Sure enough, when I got to the top of the stairs, Ciarah stood there inspecting a particularly amazing snap of me as a six year old, stark naked and running through a sprinkler on the lawn.
“Did you get lost?” I snapped, folding my arms over my chest and glaring. She jumped at the sound of my voice, obviously not hearing me arrive.
“No.” She turned to face me, her sapphire blue eyes alight with mischief that made me want to drag her into my childhood bedroom right there and have my way with her. “Just admiring the décor. Do you have a brother as well?”
I frowned. “What? No. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I just wondered who the cute little kid was in all these pictures.” She shrugged and tossed her silky hair over her shoulder. She was dressed in a low-cut white tank125and the most delicious looking leather pants I'd ever seen on a chick … so damn sexy.
“Very funny,” I sneered, lest she catch me checking her out. “You know full-well that's me.”
As if the picture of a grinning eight year old with shimmering silver skin and white horns wasn't obvious enough for her.
“Hmm,” she hummed. “Maybe if I'd ever seen you smile it might have been clearer.”
“What?” I scowled. “I smile all the time.”
She raised an eyebrow at me, her lush rose red lips pulling up at the corners slightly, like she wanted to laugh.
“Seriously?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in the cutest fucking way I'd ever seen.
Fucking Veil Keeper.
“Whatever, come on. Coffee is getting cold and I found some cupcakes that Linda made.” I rolled my eyes, knowing perfectly well that my current facial expression was confirming her theory that I never smiled.
She cocked her head to the side in a way I'd come to realize was her searching her scattered memories.
“I don't know if I like cupcakes. How weird is that?” She blinked up at me and my heart constricted painfully. Damn it. Her question was innocent enough, more of an observation than anything really, but it only served as a reminder of the horrors she'd endured before finding us.
Finding me. I'd never forget the fact that I was the first man to find her, after she'd shown up in the alleyway outside Caley's work. That surely wasn't a coincidence. Right?
“Come on, you can find out now.” I jerked my head back toward the stairs and she nodded thoughtfully. As I began down the steps, she fell into stride alongside me and slipped her small hand into mine, twining our fingers together.
The move surprised me enough that I almost tore myself from her grip.
Holding hands?
When was the last fucking time I held anyone's hand?
I scowled again, but I didn't mean shit by it. It was just sort of my thing. It didn't really work for a man's reputation to walk around grinning like an asshole all the time—look at fucking Reece. He was a goddamn caricature.
“Well, look at that,” Mama said as we rounded the corner and our ridiculous hand-holding suddenly seemed like so much more. “You really did capture my boy's heart and his cock, didn't you?” she asked, rising to her feet and looking way too goddamn young to be anyone's mother—let alone mine. Problem was, when my dad knocked her up, she was only sixteen years old, so in reality, she was too young to be my mom.
Didn't stop her from acting like it though.
“I doubt I've captured either of those things just yet,” Ciarah said, in that strange lilting voice of hers. Half goddess, half snarky ass young adult. It was weird as fuck, a combination I didn't know quite what to make of.
Thing was, she was only half right.
At the sound of her voice, the feel of her fingers on mine, I felt my cock rising to attention.
Even my damn mother didn't miss the bulge in my pants.
“At this point,” Ciarah continued, dragging me over to the sofa and sitting in the center cushion with Killian on her left. I took up the right side and for a moment, we just listened to the frantic whir of the air conditioner. “I seem to have captured his interest, but that's all I can really speak to.”
“Seems to be enough for him to have committed his life to you,” Mama said, glancing over at me with her blonde hair curling around her shoulders, her face still stunning despite the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. She was young, sure, but this was a hard fucking life. Being a biker's wife was tough enough, but to have to hide her children from the world? To keep a secret as big as the fae … it'd damn near sucked the life out of her. “You understand I'm not happy about any of this.”
“Why not?” Ciarah asked, tilting her head to the side, shiny dark hair sliding over her shoulder. She looked at my mother with genuine curiosity, beams of buttery yellow sunshine cutting through the white shutters on the windows, cutting across my mother's face like stripes.
“I wanted Arlo to find a nice girl and settle down, have a family, not get mixed up in all of this shit. He'll never have those things now.”
“Why not?” Ciarah repeated, head still tilted. “I'm a nice girl. If he wants to settle down, nobody is stopping him, and the Veil Keeper can bear children if she wants.” She smiled and flicked her eyes over to mine. “If she wants. You haven't come close to earning that privilege. Besides, I swore I wouldn't have babies until I was thirty. Maybe thirty-five. Hell, now that I'm in this body, I can wait as long as I want.” Ciarah put her hands on her waist. “These hips aren't going anywhere.”
“You'll give my Arlo babies?” Mama asked and I swear to fuck, there I went scowling again. If these people wanted me to smile, they best give me something to smile about.
“I don't want babies, Mama,” I said with a long sigh. The last goddamn thing I needed were rug rats running around and getting underfoot.
“Nonsense. You're the Horned God. Fertility and the natural order are your domain. You spit on the earth's spirit itself if you refuse to breed.”
“It's his body, his choice,” Ciarah said, blinking like she was coming out of a haze and glancing over at Killian. He looked like he was trying ridiculously hard to hold back a smirk. “Well, it's true. I wouldn't want to be forced to have babies, even if I were just a man.”
“Just a man?” Reece asked, throwing his head back with that awful guffawing laughter of his. The shitty thing about it was that it made Mama blush which drove me up the fucking wall. I knew she'd bed him in a New York minute if she had the chance, too. Well, maybe that was another reason she didn't much like the Veil Keeper. “Oh, ‘tit fille, you a real cutie, you know that?”
“Well, it's not like men do any of the work with the baking,” Ciarah said and this time, Reece, Killian, Caley, and my mother laughed. I was the only idiot in that room that wasn't chuckling.
“Not like you could make babies without us,” I said and Ciarah turned a glare on me. “What? You have your role and we have ours.”