I was finally going to murder a sol, and it wasn’t even going to be an accident. I marched back into the supply closet, hunting through the small, glass bottles of chemicals until I found one that smelled particularly bad, and was labelled with a warning sticker. Armed as such, I marched toward the closest room, kicking open the door. Empty. The bed-sheets were still tucked in firmly, and the room was swimming in darkness. I moved around with my chemical weapon, lighting the wall-lanterns. Still no sign of Siret—not that I really expected him to be huddled up in a dark corner or anything.
Leaving that room, I entered Yael’s in the same fashion—throwing open the door and marching in as though it was my right. After a moment, I realised that I had my eyes closed. I forced them open, just a tiny crack. When I didn’t immediately see a sex-party, I allowed them to open fully, taking in the cold, dark space. Neither Siret nor Yael had been in their rooms that night. The sigh rushed out of me, making my legs feel a little weak. I had no idea how my body was going to handle the adrenaline of checking all five rooms, but I forced myself on to Aros’s door anyway.
I paused there, my hand curled around the handle, as the dread rushed back into me with a renewed vigour. The pain in my chest from our strained mental-link was almost gone. At least one of the Abcurse brothers was on the other side of the door. I braced myself, pushed it open, and stepped into the room.
The first thing I saw was my own naked ass.
Not that I knew what my naked ass looked like, but the wild blond curls falling down the back above the ass were unmistakable—as were the boots on my—her—feet. She was completely naked, except for the boots. For some reason that struck me as funny—and this was so not a funny situation. I had to stifle a kind of panicked laughter as it threatened to burst through my lips. Of course, as she leaned over a sleeping, golden god, all mirth deserted me and I was back to murderous.
Aros was reclined on the couch, one arm tossed up over his face. His wide, bare chest was rising and falling in a soft rhythm, one of his feet still planted on the ground as though he hadn’t planned on falling asleep there.
Scar was going straight for the crotch like a lady, and Karyn had called me a slut. She was fast too, her hand slipping beneath the waistband of his pants in a click. Aros grunted in his sleep, and my whole world darkened with rage. I unscrewed the lid of my … whatever I was holding, before jumping forward and splashing it into her face. She screamed, pulling back from Aros, her hands scraping down her face. The illusion flickered—the wildness leaking out of her curls, the blond colour darkening. Her features shifted, giving me a glimpse of a wider nose and a wider mouth, before she was sprinting for the door.
She was laughing and swearing in pain. One after the other. Ha! Shit. Haaaah! Fuck!
I looked down at the glass bottle in my hand. “What the hell is this stuff?” I asked nobody in particular. It was like I’d hit her with something that both burned and tickled unbearably all at the same time.
The door slammed on my question and a golden hand gripped my wrist, drawing all of my attention. Aros was pulling himself into a sitting position, his eyes on the now-closed door. “Did I just see …?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed, settling my eyes on his face. Which was extremely difficult when all of that golden chest was on display. “Fakey strikes again … or more accurately, Fakey The Second. Apparently there’s another girl with the same creepy disguise-ability. Just a … more confident version.”
His frown deepened and he stood, darkness pulling around him. “Did she touch me?”
“Er … touch you how?” The falsely innocent question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I wasn’t sure why I was pretending not to have seen Scar trying to sneak her hands into Aros’s pants.
I probably didn’t want him knowing the reason why I had thrown some kind of cleaning acid into another girl’s face. In fact, I definitely didn’t want him knowing that, because my free arm—the one he wasn’t holding—was twisted behind my back, hiding the glass bottle from him.
His eyes swung from the door, slamming into me. I almost dropped the bottle.
“Willa.” He released me. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
I inched my way back a little, hoping that I would get near the basket where the trash went. If I could drop the bottle there, he might not realise exactly how close that crazy sol had been to him. Before I could even take a single step, Aros’s hand snaked out and re-captured the same wrist that he had been holding before.
I scowled. “So not fair using your god powers on me.”
My complaining would distract him. Right?
He shook his head at me, before slowly easing me closer to him. Inch by inch he pulled me into his heat. I tried hard to resist him. I even shook my head once, and the word no might have slipped out. Then the glass jar fell with a light thud to the ground and somehow my hands were pressed against his chest.
“Willa …” his tone held a warning, but his arms were already around me. Somehow our bodies were pressed together, and since he wore nothing but a pair of soft shorts, and I was in my usual—almost nothing—there was a lot of bare skin touching. He leaned down into me, and my breath pretty much choked out of me as my head got light and dizzy.
Then the sneaky ass ducked behind me and snatched up the glass, leaving me to collapse in a heap on the thick rug. Groaning, I flopped over onto my back. “I want my soul back. Give it to me. You don’t deserve it any longer.”
Aros’s goldenness increased as he loomed over me, shiny teeth assaulting my senses as his grin spread even further. “You don’t mean that, Rocks.”
He was probably right. But I would die before I admitted it. He reached down and lifted me up with his free arm, the other holding my chemical bottle. He then dropped me down onto the end of the bed, taking a seat beside me. “Tell me everything, and I’ll fill you in on where the others are.”
Shit! I’d totally forgotten about their empty rooms. What if Fakey got to them?
Aros shook his head, answering my thoughts. “Karyn can’t touch us.”
Uh, yeah … sort of not true.
His gaze was back to being dark then, and I realised he wasn’t going to let it go again. “Tell me what happened. We would never have left you alone if we thought she was going to come back so soon. We were giving you space.”