“He’ll cock it up too,” Damien says confidently. “Then I’ll swoop in and niggle my way back into her life.”
“She puts her guard up a lot higher when you’ve fucked up,” I tell him as I watch Violet’s head tip back, her lips parting as if forced to do so.
Emit makes a sound that should terrify her, but she only turns her throat, like she’s the perfect little submissive thing in his arms.
“She’s absolutely nothing like Idun,” I mutter, annoyed when Emit flips her like a rag doll and starts fucking her from behind.
“Rub it in, dick,” Damien mutters for no reason at all.
I’m twice as annoyed at the fact Violet seems to really enjoy the savage way he’s taking her, simply because it makes it hard for me to tell him to take it easier.
“You’re both reckless with her, as if you’ve forgotten how fragile mortals can be,” I say as I lean forward on the railing, viewing the way her breasts swing with each of his thrusts, while she pushes up on her elbows.
“She’s a Portocale gypsy. They’re tougher than they look,” he says dismissively.
A roar tears through the air, and Violet cries out, as her entire body shudders in his grip.
His hips slow as he tenses, and his roar tapers off, as Violet pants heavily beneath him.
I see a familiar expression on Emit’s face as he turns and narrows his eyes at us, but still…he’s got that questioning gleam in his eyes.
“It doesn’t feel natural when something that good comes along so easily,” I say quietly to Damien, as Emit’s eyes drop back to Violet.
He runs a hand up her back as she smiles to the side, eyes closed like she’s too tired and too sated to open them.
“She’s too young to understand that,” Damien tells me quietly. “And he doesn’t understand how quickly she can just cut strings and move on. She truly is nothing like Idun.”
“What’d you do to cock it up?” I ask him idly, as I turn and walk back inside, leaving her alone with Emit.
Damien doesn’t budge as he becomes visible, letting her know he’s here, in the event she musters up enough concern to look this way again.
“Something that proves how stupid I am,” he says, seemingly more to himself than to me.
He turns and strolls into the room, and I take a seat, still wearing my towel, as I lift my phone.
“I don’t remember extending an invitation to you,” I point out.
“You left her here all alone while you went hunting. Be glad someone had the sense to come look after her while you were away.”
I cut my eyes to him, inwardly annoyed that I only just noticed his scent. Despite the wet wolf stench and the sweet Portocale blood in Violet’s veins overpowering the senses, Damien’s clearly allowed too many people to fucking forget him if his scent’s this damn weak.
“You being here will only antagonize Arion. He hates feeling left out, and he’s even more insane than usual where Violet is concerned.”
“Something we’ve yet to discover the true reasoning for,” Damien says tightly. “It’s starting to bother me now.”
“All the more reason to keep him away.”
“Or let her play along with him. We learn so much more about Arion’s agenda when we play along,” he tells me.
I lean over, putting my elbows on my knees, as my body aches from the punishing speeds I put it through tonight. I have to get quicker to deal with Arion when the time comes again.
“She’s not playing along with anything.”
“Sure she is. She’s had three out of four now, and it’s clear there’s some chemistry that she tries to deny with Arion. Why not let her give it a whirl?” he muses.
Already exhausted by this conversation, I give him a wry look. “She’s a mortal gypsy, who fails to understand the magnitude of the gift she’s offering by trying to tackle this curse very seriously, despite all we’ve told her. She wants to do it as much now as she did yesterday, before she knew the facts. She makes up her damn mind and doesn’t budge from her stance once a plan has been formed.”
He makes a sound I find suspicious, but he doesn’t meet my eyes, and his face is stoic when I look over at him.
“We don’t particularly do well with losing the women we fall for. I don’t think purposely attaching ourselves to that extent is good for any of us, given the obvious,” I go on.
“We’re older and wiser,” he says with a careless shrug. “And she’s very unique.”
“She’s still only mortal,” I mutter, even though I’m struggling to let it be the smart deterrent it should be.
He says nothing for a long minute, and I glance over to see him tilting his head as though he’s listening for something.
“Is she bloody giggling?” Damien asks as though he can’t believe his ears. “Silly-girl kind of giggling?” he says in a slightly more horrified tone, before he stands abruptly and stalks out the door.
I give my drink a look and hate that I can’t take the edge off with her little gypsy drugs. They make me tired, and falling asleep would be endlessly miserable right now.
I walk out, clutching my towel with one hand when it tries to loosen, and drop my glass at the table by the door. Adjusting my towel as I go, I speed up, indeed hearing the sound of Violet’s small giggle.
Fucking wolf.
“So no. Unless it’s a Van Helsing box, I’m not staying in the ground,” Emit is saying, as though he’s finishing a delightful little tale.
I feel like I’m missing something.
“Vance has dug me up twice. You think they’d learn from prior beta mistakes, but they really never do,” Emit goes on, somehow keeping her in the palm of his hand, metaphorically speaking.
For once, I think Damien hates Emit more than he hates me, judging by the murderous look in the deviant’s eyes.
“Ah, Damien, so you are here. I thought I caught scent of you,” Emit says, smirking over at him.
Violet’s spine goes stiff as her smile thins.
Damien is propped up in the far corner, eyes on Violet’s back for a moment, before he returns his glare to Emit.
Violet’s robe is pink and hideous, clearly stitched by herself, though I don’t know if there’s anything else on under it. It annoys me that I can’t just go take a look.
If she’s with Emit after hearing the story, then she could have easily have enjoyed me as well. And I’d take far more care of her than the savage mutt.
“I feel as though a miscommunication has passed between us,” I say as I move by them in the living room and into the adjacent kitchen.
I stare over at them from the counter as I pour myself another glass of whiskey.
Emit sighs as though he’s exasperated with me, and Violet turns like she’s about to move out of his lap. His arm clamps around her just as she gets turned around, and he holds her there.
Not that she struggles. Seems she’s comfy.
This is maddening.
“You heard the story today, yes? Sure, Idun tricked us, but I think you’re quick to dismiss the biggest part before you even hear it,” I continue.
“Let it die for tonight,” Emit says like he’s warning me.
I narrow my eyes.
“You want to give me the gory details, but I already told you I was a C-student,” Violet cuts in just as I open my mouth to speak.
I stand abruptly and jog up the stairs, cursing as I go.
“Something I said?” Violet asks as though she’s genuinely confused.
“I’m going to find my phone and look up what the fucking hell this C-student business is that you keep referring to,” I snap.
She snorts, and Emit outright laughs.
Maybe I shouldn’t have pulled out of check with the world for so long, but it’s easier to only take in the bits that benefit me.
Usually.
Violet is making me feel like an idiot, because Emit seems to understand the shit that spews from her mouth far more effortlessly than I do.
“It means I get the gist, and I don’t really want the gory details. I’m not even close to the same person I was at thirteen. I can only imagine what it’d be like to live for as long as all of you have,” she elaborates.
I head back down, bristling after hearing that shitty excuse for an explanation. She’s making herself sound entirely too simple.
“It’s just a number after a while. Every day seems exactly the same, like you’re stalled instead of moving forward. It doesn’t feel like you’ve aged so much as you’ve tired,” Damien tells her as he takes a seat on the other end of the couch from them.
“The devil is always in the details, Violet,” I press on. “Why is it you think we’re cursed? Why do you think achieving immortality turned us into the monsters we are now?”
Emit and Damien both glare at me this time.
“Like I said, I get the gist,” she tells me seriously. “I heard about Arion drinking blood from the fallen while he was still a man. Now he’s a very powerful vampire. One plus one equals two,” she says with the same thick condescension I just used.
It’s as though she’s already been collecting facts and is now haphazardly stitching pieces together with what we’ve told her.
Emit’s other arm comes around her waist, and she sits contently in his lap. Something occurs to me, and I have no idea why I find it as amusing as I do.
Her phone rings, and she gets up to answer it, holding her robe shut like there’s nothing under it at all.
“Why are you grinning?” Emit asks me, a confused/concerned expression on his face. “That’s supposed to be me. She’s not at all what I expected.”
“She’s very different with you,” I say as my eyes track her movements toward the far back, her finger in her ear like whatever we have to say isn’t as important, because someone else has her undivided attention.
I make a point not to listen in on the other side of the conversation, though the other two more invasive monsters are probably hearing every word.
“Why the fuck are you still grinning?” Damien asks me in a slightly wary tone.
“It occurs to me that Violet seems to treat a person the same way they treat her,” I murmur distractedly.
“I can assure you she doesn’t. She’s very submissive,” Emit argues with a smugness to his tone that I don’t appreciate.
“You’re touchy and possessive, and she likes it, so she’s submissive,” I explain with a slight glare, as my uncontrollable grin starts to annoy me as well.
“I talk down to her, and she’s quick to talk down to me. Damien was cold and dismissive of her that night with your wolves, and she’s barely spared him a glance.”
Damien bristles, Emit grins like it makes perfect sense for some reason, and I get all the more agitated.
“If she likes the way you treat her, she wants to stick around. If not, she ignores you or tunes you out when you’re trying to make her prove you right. She doesn’t hate us, so now you’re a dick for being a dick,” Emit says like he’s concluding the same thing. “I don’t feel like the stupid one today,” he adds as he stands, still fucking naked.