On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) (25 page)

“There was nothing to do back here. Cleaned it on my last visit.”

“So why didn’t you come help me up front?”

He waved toward the television. “Because the match is on. My team’s playing in the quarter finals.”

She just stared at him because, one, she was at a loss over what to say, what to do. Of course in Zeus’s world it made perfect sense to let a guest clean his filthy-assed living room while he lay on his butt and watched his team play a rugby tournament.

By the way he kept watching the bucket at her feet, he must have sensed she was about to snap, and he was trying to figure out in which direction she would do it.

“I got steaks and potatoes on the grill out back. That’s got to be worth something.”

For a moment all Sabrina could do was stare at him. She took a few deep breaths and left the room before she did something that would force him to pull his blades. Even though he was likely the most qualified to do so, she would
not
let a crazy man drive her bat-shit crazy.

She walked to the bathroom and stripped, too upset to appreciate the clean simplicity of the space—claw-foot tub, a wide, shell-shaped pedestal sink, and cold stone floors. She bathed with his soap and used his lotion to moisturize her body. She wrapped a large blue towel around her because her clothes were in the small suitcase in his room.

Opening the bathroom door, she jumped, suppressing a shriek when she saw Zeus standing inches from the doorway. He stared at her in that intense, gray-eyed way of his. Without meaning to, her gaze strayed over him, taking in the hard length of flesh pressing against the crotch of his pants. She wondered how long he’d been standing there but couldn’t find enough saliva in her mouth to ask.

She clutched the towel tighter and took a step back, which caused Zeus to take a step forward. Her heart beat faster than the black hearts of any of those demon-possessed rabbits lurking in the dark woods. The area between her legs had grown damp with heated moisture that had nothing to do with the tub of water she had just stepped out of.

Zeus took another step toward her, and she retreated another step back. They repeated the steps to that particular dance two more times until she felt the press of the sink against her butt. He took one last step and pressed the length of his hard body against hers. His arm snaked around her, and she felt its heat through the thick material of the towel. She closed her eyes, fighting the need to spread her legs for him. Her pussy clenched as his hand palmed her ass and squeezed. He ground his heated length against her abdomen. She groaned, her hips rotating to both ease the ache and seek out the erection that caused it.

Zeus lifted her onto the edge of the sink, his hips filling the space between her trembling thighs. The sink was cold against her bare ass. She wanted this. She wanted him, but she wouldn’t reward him for using her to clean. Reaching back to steady herself, her hand encountered the bar of soap close to the faucet. She gripped it like it was a blade and struck Zeus on the side of the head with it as his lips played along the side of her neck. The corner of the soap came back dented. Zeus pulled back, frowning down at her with confusion and lust.

“Back off before I shove this bar of soap up your ass.”

“You would sodomize me with my own soap? Is that how you like it, Bree?” he asked, tilting his head to the side in reflection.

She dropped the soap in the sink and pushed against his chest, scrambling back to steady ground tightening the towel around her again.

“What I’d like is to on put my bedclothes, eat, and go to bed.”

“Don’t you want to…finish? I’ll make it quick.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said, walking around him. “I’m not letting you screw me. Go jack off to your rugby game.”

She walked to his room, snatched up her suitcase, and walked past him again on her way to the smaller bedroom. Slamming the door shut, she locked it, though she knew if Zeus wanted to get in, he would. She put the overlong, spaghetti-strapped nightshirt on and slid into a pair of pajama bottoms so old they looked dingy even though they were clean. There was no TV, radio, or any other form of entertainment in this room. The bed was pushed up against the corner of the far wall. There was a squat, tired-looking wooden dresser, an older end table near the head of the bed, and a junkyard reject of a shadeless lamp placed on top of it. The naked bulb was covered with a layer of dust.

Sabrina’s stomach made a sound so fierce it reminded her of the wild animals outside. She put her hand against it, but it continued to grumble. She heard a screen door open and close. A few moments later it grumbled again as Zeus came stomping back into the kitchen. She moved to the locked door. The promise of charbroiled meat compelled her to open it and walk toward the large square table in the center of the kitchen and sit down, daring Zeus not to serve her.

“There are no sheets on the bed in that room,” Zeus informed her as he placed two sturdy terra-cotta plates on the table.

She ignored him, though he had her stomach’s full attention as he forked a slab of juicy meat onto her plate. String beans were doled out after he placed a foil-wrapped potato next to the steak.

“Where’d you get all this stuff?”

“Meat and beans were in the deep freezer. Potatoes in the yard,” he said, sitting down with the bottle of ale he’d pulled from the refrigerator. There was a lukewarm glass of tap water for her.

“Thank you,” she uttered, somewhat shamed. Okay, so he hadn’t helped her clean, but he’d cooked for her. It meant something.

“You really want to thank me, come over here, pull out my dick, straddle my lap and—”

“Stop.”

“Just saying. You really want to thank me…”

“You’ve gotten all the thanks you’re going to get, Zeus.”

As she cut into the steak and put the first bite into her mouth, she rethought her last statement. She wanted to climb on him and thank him from the deepest recesses of her inner sex. The meat was seasoned to perfection and as tender as love’s first kiss. She moaned, her eyes rolling back in ecstasy.

“And that’s how I fuck you without ever laying a finger on you.”

She ignored him. Smug bastard. But he was right. All her five senses hummed with satisfaction. She took a bite of her string beans and scowled at him. She did
not
get horny over food. At least not before Zeus had cooked for her. The man was nearly a stranger. A strange stranger, at that, but every time he touched her with his body or by proxy via food, she descended into a fit of arousal. She wasn’t shy about sex or her sexuality, but she’d had no idea how powerfully her body could respond until Zeus had shared his own brand of thunder.

Eventually she stopped inhaling her food long enough to notice he had not touched his. He watched her with that immovable gaze. Waiting.

She sighed and leaned back in her chair. Her attraction to him was illogical. Even when he was pissing her off, or ignoring the fact that she was a woman capable of making the best decisions for herself, she wanted him.

“You want to know what’s really silly?” he asked, leaning forward.

“A grown man choosing to make me believe he was helping with the cleaning when he was really hiding away in a room watching some stupid game?”

“First, I wasn’t hiding. Second, rugby is
not
stupid.”

“So say all men about stupid games.”

“Only real men play rugby,” he said, dismissing her as he dug into his food.

“Do you play?”

“When I have the time. Learned when I was a kid living in Marseille with the nuns.”

“I can’t imagine you playing team sports.” She smiled.

“Liked hitting people when I was a kid, and I could take a hit. Also liked how the game is organized.”

“So why not football? American football, that is.”

“Wasn’t born here. They had rugby back home, so I learned rugby. Plus, there’s stuff touching you in American football. Don’t really like to be touched.”

“For someone who doesn’t like to be touched, you sure do a lot of touching,” she said as she reached for her glass.

“I like touching you,” he said, waving the steak knife in her direction. “When something feels as good as you, makes sense to touch. Got the blades; also got you.”

She had to admit there was something intensely addictive about his touch. She had never felt the same intensity with any other man, and after the abuse she had experienced with Ernesto, she shouldn’t feel this way about a man who was so obviously violent.

“So, if you don’t like being touched, why would you play rugby? They touch a lot in that game too.”

He shook his head and looked at her as if she were denser than petrified oak. He stood abruptly and pulled her toward his bedroom, navigating her to the foot of the bed and forcing her to sit. He disconnected the headphones, and the sounds of the rugby match filled the room.

“Look at the players there. What do you see?”

“They’re dressed in all black?”

“Exactly. Not so hard to understand, is it?”

Hell no she didn’t understand, but him treating her like she was developmentally delayed didn’t prompt her to want to ask questions.

“I’m sure this all makes sense in the world of Zeus—”

“Zeus’s world. Mount Olympus. That’s what I should call this place.”

“Whatever. The point is, me recognizing one of the teams is wearing all black doesn’t help me know what you’re trying to have me understand.”

“I don’t like to be touched,” he said, then left. She heard him in the kitchen, finishing his meal, and not ten minutes later he was back in the bedroom.

“I don’t like things pressing on me, weighing me down. American football has too much equipment. Rugby, you got your uniform and your cleats and your cup. Everything else is optional.”

“I used to want to be a dancer.” The words exited her mouth before she’d realized they wanted to come out.

Shut it, Sabrina. You don’t share your life with anybody. Shut the hell up.
She’d made the mistake of opening up a little with Ernesto, and he’d used every bit of knowledge about her to exploit, play on, or prey on her so seamlessly she hadn’t even realized that she was being manipulated.

“Break up? Break up for what, Brina? I was wrong, baby. It won’t ever happen again. You know I love you, would do anything for you. It’s you and me, Brina. I’ll take care of you and make sure you’re never lonely or alone. I’ll never abandon you like your mother and sister did, not even when the times are hard. I love you just that much, baby, and I never want to see you hurt again.”

Sabrina knew Zeus was waiting for her to say more, but she watched the television, watched the hard-bodied men running down the field in a formation she didn’t understand.

“I like that one dance move where they twirl down from the pole while hanging upside down. Did you ever learn to do that?”

It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. When she did, she snatched a pillow from behind her and swung at him, connecting with nothing, he was so fast.

“I said dancer, not
stripper
, you idiot.”

“I prefer the lap dance, but Big Country swears the—”

“That is not dancing,” she gritted out, trying to regain her composure. “Jesus, men are such idiots. I said I wanted to be a dancer. For sane, somewhat well-adjusted people, that means a trained dancer—modern, jazz, ballet, West African, take your pick. A stripper takes her clothes off to music, and though some of them are good, even trained, stripping is not dancing.”

“You say toh-may-toe, I say toh-mah-toe. Who knew you’d be such a dance snob?” He leaned back on the bed. “You ever strip before?”

“No.”

“Not even for your man?”

“No, not even.”

“You ever want to? Strip for your man, that is?”

She shrugged. The only man she’d ever wanted to please so desperately had been Ernesto, and he hadn’t liked her taking too much control in the bedroom. To him, a little striptease would have been proof she’d been cheating on him. He would’ve said the only place she could have learned such behavior was in another man’s bedroom. He liked to believe she was some naive thing that needed to be kept away from the ugly desires of other men. A striptease for Ernesto would have ended in violence. Him accusing her and lashing out, and Sabrina, never one to be cowed, always defending herself. Toward the end there had been too many bloody nights sparked by his insecurity over her fidelity. The irony was that, for as long as they’d been together, there had been only him.

“Would you strip for me?”

She felt the familiar heat churn low in her belly. He was watching her in a cool, contemplative way, but his eyes, polished silver, gave proof of the desire burning inside of him.

If she extended her foot, slipped it between his legs, she knew she would find him hard and ready; she knew this.

“Possibly,” she dared. “If you asked me in the right way.”

“Strip for me,” he gritted out as if she were causing him physical pain.

She smiled and straddled the bed on her knees. She rolled her hips in a dirty wind, inching her nightdress up her thighs as she did. Then she cocked an eyebrow and plopped down on the bed, propping the pillows against the headboard and leaning back against them to continue watching the match, cutting the cord on whatever degenerate fantasy he was having.

“No, I won’t strip for you, because first you have to learn to
ask
.”

His jaw clenched and unclenched many times as she smiled over at him. He eventually broke eye contact and rubbed a frustrated hand over his face.

“Well, will you at least dance for me?” The way he said
dance
made it clear he thought little of the art form.

She snorted. “Oh no, poor man. That’ll require even more good behavior than a striptease.”

“Tease. That describes you perfectly.”

She continued to smile. It was nice seeing him disgruntled. And he hadn’t reached for a single blade during the entire discussion.

“What’s so special about dancing, anyway?”

She rolled to her side and hugged the pillow against her head as she spoke to him. “Lots of things. Like when you dance, you feel strong, but you also feel fluid. You flow. But mostly, most importantly, when I danced, I never felt alone. It was like being connected to everything by rhythm and movement.”