I shook my head, hair flying around everywhere. It must have come out of its tie at some point through the night. “This world has been trying to break me for eighteen life-cycles. I’m not that breakable.”
I leaned in closer, needing to touch him again, but before I could, he was up and out of the bed. For the first time, I got a good view of his body, clad only in a pair of soft sleep shorts. Holy crap … the twins were beyond huge, bigger even than all the gods I had seen. This morning Coen was tense, which for some reason made each of his muscles pop out a little more. I followed his abdomen down, taking in each muscled ridge before his pants cut off my view.
“Willa.” That one growl sounded a lot like a warning. He reached out and snagged a shirt, pulling it on.
I actually pouted when he was covered, and a smile tilted up one corner of his lips. “You test my control, Willa. Which is something I have spent many life-cycles developing. One little dweller is going to be the one to completely undo us.”
I kind of liked that. Liked that I could be the one to make a difference to the Abcurses. To affect them more than any other. I knew they were old, they were almost as old as the Original Gods, and no doubt in those life-cycles they had loved and lost. Maybe they even …
I was up and standing on the bed as questions burst from me. “Can you five have kids? A little monster set of your own? Are you like the other gods in that way? Wasn’t it a rule that Staviti’s Original Gods couldn’t pair up together? Didn’t someone tell me that?”
Our association was new, this life was new, and it was probably too soon to ask them these personal questions, but for some reason I needed to know. What if they had loved other women? Maybe they had god-girls back in Topia, just waiting for them, hating that they’d have a soul-damaged dweller who had to tag along at all times. But they weren’t allowed to have women, right? Or maybe they were allowed to have women, but they weren’t allowed to get married.
If I had listened in class back in the seventh ring, would I already know these things?
Did they teach anything about the god’s sex lives in schools?
Coen’s expression didn’t change. He took a step back from the bed, and then another. His eyes didn’t shift from me, but he bent down and dug his hand into a drawer, coming back and handing me a bunch of fabric. I took it from him, shaking it out to reveal yet another pair of stretchy sleep-shorts. It was my staple outfit, now. I deliberately set it aside, because it was time I begged Siret for another change of proper clothes—either that, or I could beg Emmy for some hand-me-downs. Maybe I should start calling in those wishes I apparently had. Asking the guys for things that I needed.
“Put them on.” Coen had his eyes still fixed on my face, but he was suddenly standing right in front of me.
It hadn’t escaped my notice that he hadn’t answered my questions about babies and women, but it felt like a bad idea to push him for answers right then. He leaned over me, snatching the shorts off the bed and stuffing them back into my hand. He had his scary face on, but I wasn’t paying attention because said scary face was only an inch away from mine, and my body was choosing that moment to remember exactly how I had woken up.
“When you five idiots gave me the sex talk, you only said that I couldn’t walk around naked.” I was inching my knees forward as I spoke, trying to bring our bodies closer. “Not that I couldn’t walk around without pants on.”
My arm brushed his, the first point of contact between us since he had jumped from the bed, and the ever-constant pain inside my chest disappeared altogether. It was completely unfair that the only time I ever really had the potential of a clear head anymore was when one of them was touching me—which essentially ruined every moment of clear-headedness. Because when they touched me, a whole other sensation took over my body. Pain in a different way.
“Willa,” he warned quietly.
“One,” I warned right back. I mean, yeah, I was bluffing. But he didn’t know that—at least I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t know that, unless he was reading my mind.
He smiled at me then, a chilling twist of the lips, and then his hands were on my shoulders, pushing me back to the bed without warning. I hit the mattress with a bounce, and Coen loomed above me, his eyes burning. I thought maybe he was going to kiss me, or possibly smother me with a blanket until I couldn’t challenge him anymore.
Until he ducked down, and I felt the shorts sliding up my legs.
“One!” I made a somewhat embarrassing squealing noise and attempted to kick him off, which resulted in my toes almost breaking. I could have sworn I even heard him rumble with a laugh.
I bucked my hips up, somehow managing to knock myself into him, and he fell on top of me. I didn’t even get any time to appreciate the feeling of an Abcurse draped all over me before the door opened, and I heard Aros’s voice.
“This better not be exactly what it looks like,” he declared sharply.
I turned to the side, my eyes catching onto his. “Well that depends. What does it look like?”
Coen had his face buried in my neck, and this time he did rumble with a laugh.
“It looks like my brother is between your legs,” Aros replied, his eyes turning into golden fire.
I flexed my thighs, and sure enough, there was a heck of a lot of muscled torso between my legs. “Alright,” I relented. “No illusions there.”
“And …” Aros wasn’t stopping there. He stepped forward, letting the door fall closed behind him. “It looks like he’s taking your pants off.” The last word rolled off on a growl, and I tightened my legs again instinctively.
Coen shifted back an inch, and that was when I realised his hands were on my thighs, a few inches below my hips, and the waistband of the shorts was resting halfway over his fingers. He must have released them after he fell. I could feel his eyes on my face as he pulled away. He wasn’t even paying attention to Aros. He was enjoying the heat that was starting to bloom over my face, and the panic that was beginning to trip into my chest.
“Well now you’re wrong about that,” I quickly stated, as Coen moved his hands, slipping the shorts down an inch. “Until now,” I added dryly.
Coen laughed again, and Aros shot forward, grabbing his shoulder and hauling him back.
“Pact!” Aros shouted, as Coen fell to the side, dragging the shorts halfway back down my legs as he went.
I quickly jumped up, the shorts now hanging around my knees as I shuffled between Coen and Aros, holding up my hands up in a warning gesture. It wasn’t a good idea to jump in between them when they were fighting, but maybe if I got in there early enough I’d be able to prevent the fight from breaking out in the first place.
“It was my fault,” I said, trying to catch Aros’s eye again—since he was now glaring at Coen. “I was being a bad girl-brother.”