“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.
“Mimicry of that degree around alphas would make her slightly empathic,” Damien states as though he’s lost in thought.
“Empathic gypsies are a dime a dozen,” Emit adds with a careless shrug of his shoulder, though now I have the distinct feeling he’s holding out.
He’s too dismissive of something like this. Damien seems lost inside his own head, clearly scheming something.
What are they hiding from me?
Or is the lack of rest, the looming nightmarish curse, and the unfound unregistered wolves making me slightly paranoid?
Emit walks toward Violet, and she grins when he bends to kiss her. She’s happy to let him manhandle her, so he lifts her up his body until her legs wrap around his waist.
“He’s bold enough to do that in front of us, and she follows his lead. That’s not her,” I add in annoyance.
When Damien doesn’t chime in, I look over to see him smirking like he’s decided on a diabolical plan.
“Unless you hurt her and she puts her guard up higher. But that could mean there’s still a work around,” he drawls.
“You’re going to drive her insane,” I tell him very seriously.
He doesn’t even spare me a glance. “She doesn’t stalk me,” he says more to himself.
“Because she doesn’t like your stalking.”
“She does like it. She rewards me for it.”
“Damien, when I said she treats us like we treat her, I didn’t mean for you to over analyze it to this point,” I tell him. “I was making an observation.”