The Nine (Foxfire Burning #1)

"Oh for fox sake, put your damn clothes on; you're giving me a serious slippery kitty-cat and some blue ovaries over here." Revel pushed me aside and then hit a button on the control panel. "Who are you?"

Chris, dressed in a tight black t-shirt with a rainbow depiction of the White House that read Make America Gay Again cocked his hip out and put a fist on it.

"My question, honey, is who the hell are you?" he asked, his wings on full display. Some faeries—literal faeries and not just gay dudes, okay—bought special shirts to accommodate their wings. Not Chris. He just chopped the back off with scissors and called it golden.

"Revel Jones, Thea's mail-order bride." I was already groaning as I pulled my pants on and buttoned up my shirt. Fae-Bitch was not good with others of, um, strong personality. He tended to squabble a bit. I could see this going very badly for me.

"My Thea?" he asked as he put a hand to his chest and then glanced over at the metal gate that led up the driveway. "My Thea? Miss Dick Addict? I'm sorry, but I find that particularly hard to believe. Since when did the menu get switched from hot dogs to fish tacos?"

"Maybe she likes a little bit o' both? Could be she’s a surf ‘n’ turf kind of girl" Revel said, hitting two buttons simultaneously. One of them shut off the two-way camera and speaker for the intercom and, from what I could hear, the other opened up the gates. "You didn't tell me you were a fag hag," she said with a grin as she turned to face me. "That's hot. I like girls who help twinks get laid." Revel made a sexy little swish of her hips and then gestured with her head in the direction of the window. "I'm assuming it was alright to let him in? Unless you have enemy assassins who dress in political LGBT attire that regularly refer to your addiction to cock?"

"Assassins?" I asked, going stiff, but Revel just rolled her eyes and moved over to sit on the end of my bed, leaning back and swishing her ruby red hair over her shoulder. As she reclined, I could see a tattoo crawling up from her pants and over her hip, just like the cherry blossom ink on my own body. Hers, though, was a red, red rose covered in thorns. Sexy, but deadly. I liked it.

"I work for HASR Group," she said with a sideways grin and a twinkle in her green eyes. "We're worth more than the GDP of the fifth through tenth richest countries combined. Sorry, but RADOPA is so low-rank, I know exactly who you are and what you do."

"And that's not creepy at all," I said as I readjusted Ziff's position on my satin-y sleeve and tried to feel ... anything at all when I looked at Revel. Talk about confusing. Not only was I not sure what men in my life I might have a crush on, but I was also not sure if I even liked women at all. Did I? Could I have been wrong for thirty years? I mean, I'd read so many articles about how women are subconsciously trained through society to suppress any bisexual urges they might have, and how much importance our culture places on finding a man in relation to a woman's worth but ... I was a fucking feminist, and a strong ass bitch, and I loved dick. But I was also, maybe, just a little into Revel, too?

HASR Group, Revel's employer, also known as the Human And Supernatural Relations Group, was a scaled up PR firm with a frightening amount of resources, fingers in every pie imaginable, and footholds on every continent.

I would most certainly not want to piss them off.

"Alright," Chris said, sauntering into the room with a look of sheer determination burning in his purple eyes. "Who the fuck is this bitch? Why is she so damn hot? And did you seriously have sex with her? If so, then I claim that hottie boss of yours if you're done with him."

"Dude, you need to chill out," I said, but I was already smiling. There was something about Chris that just fucking cheered me up when I needed it most. You shot a kid, Thea, my brain whispered, but I blinked several times and it went away. I would take that awful feeling, ball it up, and shove it into the deepest, darkest recess of my mind if I had to. "Nothing has happened between me and Revel."

"Nothing yet," Revel corrected as Chris cocked a perfectly manicured brow.

"Five G's: good god get a grip, girl." My bestie lifted his hand and ticked off his fingers. "Explain the sitch, please."

"Apparently little miss sexpot over here checked the, uh, I am a woman seeking a woman box on the dating site and ended up with me as a present for her ex."

"That's not exactly—"

"She did not," Chris said, totally scandalized and loving it.

"But we have a connection whether she likes it or not," Revel continued, trailing her bright red nails down the pale skin of her throat. Her orange tails swished behind her and she swiveled one ear in my direction, just in time to hear the small exhale I let out. "So, yeah, while I'm disappointed I didn't come over here and find a willing little gold star waiting for me, I think this could still work."

"Gold star?" I asked and this time, it was Chris who laughed.

"Oh, Hunt-y," he said, mixing my last name up with a common drag queen term of endearment. "A gold star is a lesbian who didn't have to let a boy change her oil to find out her sexuality, if you catch my drift."

"So you're a gold star gay?" I asked, and they both laughed at me.

"Thea is like ..." Chris started, lifting his purple eyes up to look at the ceiling. "A penis pointed star, you know? Like maybe there's a vagina in the middle, but there are five dick points on the edges, right?"

"She's bisexual, I figured," Revel said, looking back over at me. She had a way of making eye contact that I'd never experienced before, like she was drilling directly into my skull.

"Wouldn't I have known before the ripe old age of thirty?" I asked them both, putting my hands on my hips and wondering if I was making a total asshole out of myself. "I've never been attracted to a woman before, not really."

"Sexuality isn't an either/or thing, sweetie," Chris said with a sigh. Both he and Revel exchanged a look that probably communicated something like look at this stupid cisgendered straight white bitch.

"It's a sliding scale," Revel explained, standing up and moving over to one of my dressers. She pulled it open without even asking, looked around inside for a moment and then closed it before going for another. She continued on until she found my swimsuit collection. "You can be like ninety-nine percent straight and one percent gay, you know? I might be the only woman in the country you'd find attractive." She paused and glanced over her shoulder, artfully flicking her hair in the process. Wish I could do that, that shampoo commercial bullshit. "Maybe the only woman in the world? Now, are there any bikini tops in here that aren't made for preschoolers? You have a heated pool outside, so why the fuck aren't we using it?"

Revel lifted up one of my tops and shook it in my direction.

"If you're so attracted to me, lay off the small tit jokes," I said, snatching it from her hand. "And whoever said you were invited to use my pool?"

"Uh, I came all the way over from Japan to see your ass and all along, you'd planned on giving me your sloppy seconds as a reward. Gross. Don't you think you owe me a swim?" As I stood there, Revel pulled her top off and tossed it aside.

Jesus fuck.

Not only was I surrounded by alpha males, but an alpha female, too? Fantastic.

She reached back to undo her bra, and I found myself turning away to look at Chris. His nose was wrinkled slightly, but he was more interested in finding us a tune on his phone. He said hanging out without music was like sex without orgasming. I still liked sex without orgasms, but whatever.

"You guys'll love this one," he said, putting on a song I'd literally heard about ten billion times. It was Kitty Girl by RuPaul. "I've got a suit in the spare bedroom—it's my room, bitch, so if you're staying here, please pick another. Anyway, I'll put it on. Meet downstairs in five?"