On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) (18 page)

Zeus and Bride had already consumed a third of the food, and she and Randy were too intimidated to nibble on the broken piece of tortilla chip that had fallen near their feet.

Damn, Sabrina thought as she watched Bride. How could someone so tiny eat so much?

“I’m getting hungry,” Randy whispered to her.

She nodded toward the food, indicating he should be brave. Eat.

He shook his head. “You first.”

This was ridiculous. It wasn’t like they were trying to steal food from a starving pack of wolves.

Yet it was.

What was the safest way to get food from a starving wolf?

A bitch has to make nice with the alpha, she thought.

Sabrina slid from the futon and crawled until she sat on her knees at Zeus’s right. Bride was on his left. Sabrina looked over at Randy, and he nodded at her encouragingly. She leaned into Zeus’s upper arm and rested her temple close to his shoulder. Zeus froze for an instant, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey, Zeus. What does a girl have to do to eat a meal at her own table?”

He didn’t hesitate as he placed a salsa-dipped chip in his mouth and mumbled, “Kiss me.”

Her stomach growled. She rose on her knees and kissed him on the cheek.

He snorted and pick up another steak burrito, peeling back the foil. Was he really not going to allow them to share in their dinner? “Okay. I promise to give you a proper kiss good night when our company leaves.”

Zeus looked over at Bride, who shrugged with indifference.

“What do you want?” he asked as he picked up a plate and loaded it with the items she indicated until Bride held her fork perilously close to his Adam’s apple.

“Touch the quesadilla and I will hurt you both.”

Randy chose that moment to fill his plate, smartly avoiding said quesadilla. When his plate was filled with food, and after he’d dug in, he turned to Sabrina. “And exactly how long do I have to have the emo chick cooped up in my place?” he asked, brave now that he was sitting out of Bride’s reach with a plateful of food settled on his lap.

She shrugged. Hopefully they’d have them out sooner than later.

Zeus held a piece of burrito close to Sabrina’s mouth, and she bit. She moaned as the cholesterol-laden goodness filled her mouth. She tried to steer Zeus to the enchilada next, but she was forced to grab her plate when he ignored her to feed himself.

“Well…” Randy said after a while. “Isn’t this cozy?”

What it was was tight. Zeus alone seemed to take up half the space in her living room. Add three other bodies and it was almost too tight to breathe.

“We haven’t had a party like this since you moved in, Bree. I think you were past due.”

Bride looked at Zeus and pointed a forkful of quesadilla at Randy before eating it.

Zeus nodded at her. “Duct tape works,” he muttered, low.

Randy raised an eyebrow at Sabrina as if to say,
What the hell’s wrong with your boy?

“Duct tape works for what, Zeus?” Sabrina asked.

“He talks too much,” Zeus clarified. “That’s my solution.”

Sabrina looked from Zeus to Bride. “You two are guests in our homes.”

“And I don’t talk too much, bitches,” Randy said. “I conversate. Learn the skill.”

“I’d rather use my eyeballs as pincushions,” Bride mumbled around a mouthful of food.

“Don’t worry,” Randy said to Sabrina. “By the time she leaves here she’ll be saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and speaking in full, grammatically correct sentences.”

Sabrina silently wished her friend luck because Bride seemed to have more disdain for human interaction than Zeus. But if anyone could wear down a person’s defenses, it was Randy. He had a way of breaking through walls, sandblasting them with the force of his unwavering attention until he created a space big enough for him to crawl inside and eventually pull you out. Grateful for him choosing to be in her life, she leaned over and kissed his food-puffed cheek.

He tsk-tsked. “Don’t thank me just yet. That one is going to be a piece of work. I make no guarantees; I can only work the strongest magic in my bag and pray it works.”

“You try working anything on me, pretty boy, and I’ll knock you unconscious and tat and pierce your body as I see fit.”

Randy smiled that demon-possessed, Cheshire cat smile.

“She’s workable. At first I thought she was kinda slow, but with a bad attitude and weapons. But now…” He waggled his eyebrows.

At least Sabrina had the distance of a whole floor and locked doors to protect her from Randy’s mothering. With Bride staying in his home, things could turn tragic.

Sabrina shifted her gaze to Zeus when he mumbled something while focusing on eviscerating a second burrito down the middle. His gaze glinted toward Bride as he lifted the knife from the abdomen of the crammed-together ingredients. “I can make him disappear,” he told Bride. “Permanently.”

Sabrina felt a spike of fear and protectiveness for her best friend.

“Day I can’t handle some normal, you got permission to disappear
me
. Permanently.”

Zeus nodded, his gaze taking on a faraway look as if he imagined that in Bride’s words he’d been gifted with a double-sided blade that allowed him to stab Bride with the right side and Randy with the left, and never the two blood flows would meet.

“No disappearing anybody,” Sabrina said. As if she had any influence over him. “No killing.”

“There’s always killing. Thou shall not be the one being killed. That’s a commandment I live by.”

After about twenty minutes of them eating in near silence, Zeus took the remains of the meal from the table and walked toward the kitchen. Sabrina and Randy settled back on the futon in their usual spots and quietly debated over which DVD they would watch.

Zeus returned and waved a hand at Randy and Bride. “Get out.”

Bride stood while Randy crossed his arms over his chest and pulled his legs into lotus position, looking up at Zeus like a defiant mystic.

Zeus’s face became blanker. His fingers tapped a quick rhythm against his thigh.

“Uhm, Randy, it has been a long day for us. Let’s let Zeus get some rest, and I’ll see you in the morning,” Sabrina said.

“He’s ruining movie night,” Randy said as he unfolded his body and stood, following Bride to the front door. He paused to kiss Sabrina on the forehead and whisper, “Don’t give him none, Bree. We’ll never get rid of him then, and I can’t have him hanging around messing up our groove.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not giving up anything but a space on my futon.”

“Good girl,” he praised as he left the apartment.

After locking the door, Sabrina turned to see Zeus standing behind her. His hand wasn’t empty anymore. His fingers were engaged in a rapid dance with a blade she was coming to recognize as one of his favorites. “You promised me a kiss.”

“Calm down. You’ll get your kiss.” The pace of his fingers slowed. “I was just trying to get through the night without bloodshed.”

He gripped the blade and stared at her for over a minute before he blinked and resheathed it behind him.

“Go take a shower. I’ll get the futon ready.”

“You should come with me.”

She squelched the image of them soaping each other’s bodies in the shower. “Don’t think so,” she mumbled, turning to the basket next to the arm of the futon. She pulled out the bed linen, regretting that she only had the limited space of a studio. “Towels are in the upper closet,” she said as she avoided looking at him.

Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest at the idea of sleeping with him. As she let out the futon, she realized Zeus’s body was possibly longer than her mattress. He’d either have to sleep with his feet dangling over the bottom, or he’d have to draw his legs up.

The image of him spooned behind her, large hand reaching over to her front, stroking her breasts, abdomen…lower. She groaned in frustration as she snapped the sheet out over the mattress.

By the time she was finished, he walked into the room wearing only a pair of white boxers. She quickly averted her gaze from his body and slipped silently past him as she went to take her shower, hoping she could wash away all the indecent thoughts and images of him playing through her mind.

The warm spray of water only intensified the responsiveness of her body. She hung around the bathroom well beyond the time it took to shower, groom herself, and put on her nightshirt. She had to achieve a sense of calm before she dealt with Zeus; otherwise there was no hope.

Walking back into the living room, she realized what a fool she’d been to waste her time fretting over how she would deal with the sexual energy between them. Zeus was propped up on all three pillows with an arm behind his head watching a rugby match. While she had been in the bathroom agonizing over what could happen between them during the night, he had assembled the flat-screen television, placed it on her wall, hooked up the illegal cable box, and forgot she existed.

I am an idiot, she thought as she turned out the hallway light and crawled onto the mattress, snatching one of the pillows from behind Zeus’s fat head. She settled on her side with her back to him and closed her eyes, refusing to acknowledge her disappointment.

Not sure if it was Zeus’s calm silence, the drone of the television, the weight of the day’s events, or a combination of the three, she found herself lazily sinking into the world of sleep. It wasn’t until she felt her body being pulled from her side to her back that she realized how deeply she had fallen asleep. She opened her eyes to find all the lights turned off and only the faint light from the side window filtering into the room, creating shadowed spaces in the dark.

Zeus’s body shifted on top of hers, his forearms planted near each shoulder as he held his face only inches from hers. His warm, mint-tinged breath fanned across her right cheek as he inhaled and exhaled rhythmically. Sabrina reached up and stroked her thumb from his jawline to the fierce cut of his cheekbone. His gray eyes gleamed freakishly, almost iridescently, in the dark of the room.

“I want my kiss,” he said.

She lifted her head and pressed her lips to his once, twice, three times in precious touch and retreat. The gentleness of the encounter ended quickly as Zeus lowered his head and pressed hers deep into the pillow as his kiss devoured her. He shifted against her, forcing her legs wide and sinking his lower body into the space between. He molded her trembling inner thighs against his outer thighs. It was both the wrong spot for him to be in and the perfect spot for him to be in, as the length of his hard flesh, separated from her only by her thin cotton panties, stroked against her clit. Sabrina groaned and spread her legs wider. They ground into each other with a desperate need that couldn’t be satisfied with anything less than him burying himself deep inside her over and over again.

Zeus grabbed her nightshirt and pulled it up and off her body in a single motion. Cool air caressed the heat between her legs as his lower body retreated from hers. Her panties were pulled from her body so roughly she feared she’d have friction burns running down her legs in the morning. Zeus shifted his weight and lowered himself back down, the length and width of his thick penis hot against the wetness pooling between her legs.

Zeus’s mouth tasted hers, then moved to the hollow beneath her ear and down the side of her neck in a mixture of kisses, licks, and bites until he found the bud of her nipple. He sucked at her nipple, hand squeezing it so hard it was nearly painful. Sabrina cried out from the intense pleasure running from her breast to her core. She pressed him more deeply against her folds as he sucked harder. Zeus grunted as he fed from her in desperation. Need spasmed through her womb when his mouth found her other nipple as his thumb played in the wetness he’d created on the other one. Her body convulsed in mini orgasms.

Zeus’s head dipped lower down her body, creating a hailstorm of anticipation.
Please God, let him do it. Pleeease God.
Zeus paused at the crescent-shaped rod of metal in her navel. She thought she would scream in frustration, but then his tongue played with the belly ring. His lapping and tugging placated some of yearning, lulled her senses, accustomed her body to the feel of his mouth. The tip of his tongue burrowed deep into her belly button, as if this were a way to reach the cradle of liquid pooling in her womb, catching it before it trickled down the swollen passage of her vagina.

Sabrina undulated her hips, skimmed her hands over his head. She couldn’t believe any part of this man could be so soft, but his hair was like down.

Zeus’s hands gripped her hips, controlling them to stillness. His shoulders spread her legs wider, and he went still again, his face only inches away from the place where she was weeping for his attention. She tried to guide his head into her center, but his neck was strong; his head wouldn’t move. The bastard chuckled, and she knew for sure he was a demon sent to torment her.

Sabrina tried to take what control she could and arched her pussy toward his waiting mouth, only to have him force her hips back into the mattress.

Zeus blew a cool stream of air against her clit, and her eyes teared.

“Please,” she whispered, pathetic and weak in the grip of demanding need. “Please, Zeus.”

His tongue lightly stroked the tip of her protruding clit, and her hips bucked within his grip. Breaking free from his own chains of restraint, Zeus growled, spread her legs wider, and pushed his tongue into her trembling flesh over and over, fucking her with his tongue and fingers as ferociously as he had latched on to her nipple.

She arched her head back, her ragged screams filling the room as he took control of her body and fucked her with his mouth as effectively as any man had fucked her with his dick.

Sabrina felt hot tears trickle into her ears. Zeus did just enough to get her to the edge but not enough to send her over. He chuckled again, and she groaned in frustration. He was playing with her. He knew she wanted release more than she wanted her next breath. She was on the verge of wrapping her legs around his head and putting him in the most intimate form of a headlock when he lowered his head and gave her exactly what she needed but was too far gone to verbalize. God, his fucking mouth was amazing. He fed and sucked and licked and filled her with fingers pressed deep into her with no gentleness, only domination.