On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) (28 page)

She prayed for deliverance from men who exploited every opportunity to pacify their dicks. No divine intervention came.

“Maybe if we can just have sex again, I’ll finally stop wanting you.”

Why did it feel like he’d just punched her in her chest? Because he didn’t want to want her?

She drank the remainder of her juice, hoping to flush the irrational hurt from her system. It would be beyond insanity to share anything with this man besides her body. Instead of feeling hurt, she should thank him for the reality check. When this situation with Kragen was resolved, they would move on and that would be that. Until then, though, he wasn’t going to be the one in charge of when or how often she shared her body with him.

“Maybe I’ve already stopped wanting
you
,” she said, then resumed eating.

“Right. If I slipped my fingers inside your underwear, you’d be wet and ready for me just like every time before. You’ll never stop wanting me.”

“Have you ever been stabbed in the eye with a fork?”

“No.”

“Do you want to be?”

“Hell no.”

“Then I suggest you don’t say another word about me, you, and sex today.”

He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his thick chest. “What if I don’t bring up sex until after lunch?”

So he was going to negotiate with her about her body? She guessed it was a step up on the evolutionary timeline. He could’ve dragged her by her hair, kicking and screaming, to his room, tossed her on his bed, and taken her caveman-style. I am demented, she thought as she pressed her thighs together, stilling the ripples of pleasure rolling through her womb.

“We’re here to hide out so you can keep me safe, Zeus. That’s the only reason we’re here, remember?”

“We’re hiding out. I’m keeping you safe. I’ll even teach you how to use a blade, and we’ll still have plenty of time left for fucking.”

“I’ll consider it,” she said, trying to reestablish a sense of self-control. “But you have to be very good to me.”

“I’ve been good. Was going to handcuff you to the bed, but I didn’t. That was being good.”

“Not good enough.”

He shrugged.

“You teach me to fight with a sword. I’ll be able to take out bad guys in the game
and
in real life. Do you have a sword here?” she asked. She didn’t miss the desperate look in his eyes.

“NO.”

HE STOOD and took his dishes to the sink. He’d lied more in the two days of knowing her than he had since he was a kid—and that had been under the threat of torture and death.

He had swords here, even a katana small enough for her to handle. She wasn’t using his swords.

He cleared the table, ignoring her protests about still eating, and walked to the bedroom to retrieve the knives he would use for her lessons. He passed her still sitting at the table and stopped at the back door. Waiting.

“You said you’d be nice to me,” she said.

He hadn’t said shit about being nice to her. He’d alluded that he would be good. He’d cleaned the dishes off the table and placed them in the sink for her to wash later. He was going to take her out back and teach her how to work a blade. That was being good. Not fucking her because she was conflicted about her desire, that was being good.

“Get dressed, Sabrina. Meet me out back in five.”

Her breasts bounced rhythmically as she stood, the motion testing his restraint.

“Jesus.” She glared, waving at his growing erection. “When will you learn to control that thing?”

Why the fuck should he want to?

Zeus left the kitchen and walked across the clearing to the aluminum shed just beyond the tree line. Unlocking the deadbolt, he slid the double doors open and stepped into the shadowed interior, reaching up to pull the cord on the battery-operated lantern hanging from the roof. A number of blades hung from fixtures on the back and side wall to his left. To his right, his Suzuki V-Storm motorcycle stood beside other items he used for training.

He picked up the circular piece of wood supported by three legs and propped it against the wall. It was the first bull’s-eye he’d bought in the States, its black and red circles of paint barely adhering to the wood’s surface. Grabbing it, he walked out of the shed and closed the doors so Sabrina couldn’t see what he hid inside. If she saw the array of swords, he definitely wouldn’t be having sex tonight.

Zeus set the bull’s-eye up near an old oak tree with a trunk wide enough to hold on to any stray blades that might miss the smaller plank of wood in front of it.

Sabrina stepped outside in a pair of jeans and a torso-hugging purple T-shirt that read
F*#@ Barney
, with a T. rex dripping purple goo from its clenched teeth.

Liked the T-shirt. Liked the sweet, chocolate-skinned woman with wild, multihued hair more. Waving her over, he watched as she stepped forward, her gaze scanning the treetops nervously. Probably looking for rabid squirrels and rabbits. A shadow of a smile drifted across his mouth as he met her near the bull’s-eye.

“We start here,” he said, pointing to the bull’s-eye.

She frowned at the pockmarked wood. “I thought you were going to show me how to protect myself, not play some childhood game.”

“You know how to throw a knife?”

“Of course.”

“Okay,” he said and pulled her back about twenty-five feet. “Show me.”

She threw the blade, and it landed at least ten feet short of the target.

Pathetic.

He shook his head and went to retrieve the blade from what he considered the funeral pyre of leaves beneath it. He asked the blade’s spirit for forgiveness as he walked back to Sabrina. To go wide of a target was one thing, but to fail to even get your blade past the halfway point…well, that was just embarrassing.

He reluctantly handed her the knife again. “This is a knife, not a baseball. Stop acting like your wrist is broken and throw harder.”

She did. The blade landed about a foot in front and to the right of the last throw.

“This is the reason you die in
Insidious Realm
. You throw your blade like that at a real enemy, and you’re dead. Life bar completely red. Dead.”

“What’s the point of this little rant, Zeus?”

“Point is, you don’t stand off against a target and think you’ve got the ability to take it down when you have no fucking clue about how to use your weapon. Never pretend you have a skill when it can easily be proven otherwise.”

“So, you gonna talk me to death or show me how to hit the damn target?”

He dusted off the blade, feeling perplexed. When was the last time he’d been accused of talking someone to death?

Not ever.

Drawing back his arm, he flicked his wrist and the knife flew, striking dead center with a
thump
. He lined Sabrina up in front of him, lifted her wrist and arm, and played out the correct motions dozens of times, displaying wrist motion, elbow placement, arm positioning. Once he was satisfied with her technique, he stepped back and gave her the blade again.

“Throw.”

She let the blade fly free and whooped when it struck wood. It didn’t seem to matter to her she’d just penetrated a tree two left of the target.

Her smile was radiant. “It went a
lot
farther this time.”

Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be an instructor.

Zeus rubbed a hand back and forth over his head, holding back words that would have crushed her joy. Yes, she had the distance, but she’d be just as dead if it was a live target. He suddenly felt as if he had agreed to do the impossible. How was he going to teach her how to use a blade without being rude, offensive, and truthful? By remembering if she was mad at him, he wasn’t going to get laid.

“Good,” he lied. “This time think ‘hit the target.’”

“How hard can it fucking be?” he mumbled as he went to retrieve the blade for a second time. Playing a golden retriever was going to get old. Quick.

Chapter Fourteen

“Hey, Briana, I got some mail for you,” Mrs. Aria called out.

Seven-year-old Briana jumped off the couch and sprinted to the kitchen. The only time she got snail mail was when her mother wrote her. For almost the last three years no letters, cards, or gifts.

Mrs. Aria had told her that her birth mother had died in a fire down in New Orleans. That was where Briana had been born, and where her mother had lived. That was where Mrs. Aria Jace and her husband, Mr. Leman Jace, had met Briana’s mother days after giving birth to her and promised to raise her and keep her safe until her mother came for her. Her mother would never come. At first Briana told herself she didn’t care; she’d never even known the woman, anyway. But she did care. She still had all her mother’s presents and letters, with envelopes, folded in a box she’d decorated in glittering letters. It was named the “Your Mama Loves You” box because that was how her mother had ended all her letters. Each letter Briana had ever gotten was pressed one against the other in the order they had been received. None of the gifts had ever been used because she was saving them.

“Who’s it from?” she asked as she crashed into the wood-and-granite-topped island Mrs. Aria was putting groceries on.

“Well, you’ll just have to open it and see, won’t you?” Mrs. Aria smiled. But it was a sad smile that crossed the elderly woman’s wrinkled brown face. She hadn’t been the same since Mr. Leman’s stroke six months ago. And it scared Briana.

This package couldn’t be from her mother, but that didn’t stop Briana from hoping. Maybe there had been a big mix-up and her mother had survived the fire but was too injured to tell anyone before, and once she’d healed enough, she would be desperate to see Briana, come for her, and never let her go again.

Briana reached for the large stuffed package. The writing looked identical to her mother’s writing. It was the one thing she knew intimately about her mother. She knew every loop and slant of her mother’s writing. She’d learned to tell when her mother was sad or excited or rushed by how she wrote. This was her mother’s writing, and she’d been sad when she wrote it.

Briana stared at the package, afraid to open it.

“I can open it for you, tell you what’s inside,” Mrs. Aria said, using the gentle I’m-always-going-to-love-and-care-for-you voice that helped to soothe Briana.

“Can I take it to my room?” she asked.

“Course you can, Bree. I’ll be up to check on you as soon as I can put the groceries away.”

Briana grabbed the package and ran up the stairs, closing the door with enough force that the loud
bang
shook her up even more. Walking across her room, she squeezed into the small space between the nightstand and headboard, leaning her back against the wall and drawing up her knees. Her heart was beating fast-fast, as if she’d been running from monsters. If monsters were real. But she knew they weren’t.

She held the package in front of her face and turned it around, stopping when it came full circle. Why did she get this today? She shook the package, but nothing rattled around inside. Maybe it was a whole stack of letters, all the ones her mother had written but never sent because maybe she didn’t want Briana to get more attached.

She continued to suspend it before her a long time, reluctant to open it. She didn’t want to lose the dream that her mother was alive and coming to get her. She didn’t want to let go of her mother’s promise that one day, when things were safe, she would come and bring Briana home to her. She’d made the promise every time she wrote to Briana.

When she was old enough, Briana had wondered who, or what, was so bad her mother would give her baby to near strangers to raise. Lucky for her, the Jaces were the best people in the world, but they were older than most of her friend’s grandparents even. After the stroke that left Mr. Leman bedbound and Mrs. Aria sad and tired all the time, Briana was always afraid they would die soon, leaving her alone in the world.

She stroked the seams of the package, her fingers gliding over the ink.

Then she cried, because somehow she knew this would be the last time her mother ever spoke to her.

* * * *

After five days of cohabitating with Zeus in his cabin, Sabrina was finding it difficult to imagine life without him. They just seemed to fit, in both temperament and outlook. They were both no-nonsense people with strong personalities. They were both minimalists—Zeus because he couldn’t tolerate clutter and Sabrina because she was accustomed to not settling in one place for very long. They both had strong passions they shared with each other. Repeatedly. Their biggest difference came from the fact that she
really
wasn’t good with a blade. It didn’t make sense. She picked up most new things pretty quickly. It was a survival skill. Adapt, keep a low profile, move on.

It was late afternoon, days after she’d first started practicing, and she still hadn’t mastered any aspect of this crap training. Her arms felt like lead, and it seemed each day Zeus added some new element that kept her from adjusting to anything he had shown her before.

Why the hell he was focused on knife throwing instead of blade wielding was a mystery he refused to explain. It was senseless.

“I’m done,” she declared, sheathing her blades against her sides and back.

“You haven’t hit the target once today. You’re not done,” he said, tossing her another blade, which she caught with ease. “I don’t even need you to hit the rings on the bull’s-eye anymore. Just hit the fucking wood it’s drawn on.”

“I. Am. Done.”

Zeus proceeded to curse her nonexistent skills and hit his head against a tree hard enough to shake a few leaves loose. To his credit, he’d used his body and hands over and over again to help her understand what the motions should feel like. He’d brought the target closer and still she couldn’t hit it. She was useless at throwing a knife, but hell, she wasn’t training for a circus act, so why was this so fucking important? Nothing since being unable to save her sister had made her feel so incompetent.

And Zeus’s constant criticisms hadn’t helped.

He could stay out here all night breathing in tree spores and squirrel shit for all she cared, but she was going back in the house, taking a bath, and lying down for a long nap. She was walking away when something hard struck her on the ass.