Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
She spins around to me. “Remus never lied to me once.”
I scoff at that. “He obviously didn’t tell you about me.”
“I knew you were there. Just sleeping.”
“I never sleep for long. We swap back and forth all the time. You couldn’t have spent much time with my brother. So you’ll forgive my assumptions.” I glance toward the bed. “But I can’t imagine anyone who wasn’t getting paid for the effort sleeping with him after only knowing him at most a few hours.”
Again, she looks furious. “I’ve known him for—” She looks pissed, but her cheeks also get pink. “Three days. But they’ve been a really long, intimate, intense three days.”
I frown. “Three days.” I shake my head. “That’s not possible.” I mean, there was once a tense forty-eight hours during the Battle of Thebes with Alexander the Great where he held me back so he could unleash chaos and hell on the enemy, but beyond that, the most we stay ourselves is usually twelve hours at a time.
She arches her eyebrow, hand on her hips. “So now you’re calling me a liar in addition to a whore?”
“I don’t know,” I bark, dragging a hand through my hair again. “I mean, no. I just don’t know what’s going on. If you aren’t a call girl, where on earth did my brother find you?”
She throws out her hands. “He flew down to a fountain in the center of my city and, ya know, asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to be his consort.”
“He did what? Flew down? In front of humans?”
“Yeah, it really freaked most of them out. They ran away. Well, a lot of them pulled out their phones,” she waves a hand, “but most were running away in fright.”
“Including you?” I ask.
“Oh, well, I. . . didn’t run.” Her cheeks turn pink again, and not for the first time, I notice how incredibly attractive she is. My pants are tight, responding to her in ways I never respond to females. Not that there are ever females around to respond to. But I certainly don’t react to my other brother’s consorts this way.
Which reminds me of what she just told me.
“Wait, you didn’t run?” I blink in confusion before I finally get it. “Are you telling me you actually volunteered for my brother’s madness?”
I’m sure she’ll laugh off my statement and tell me that my brother chased her as she ran, kidnapping her and bringing her here.
Instead, to my utter shock, she just nods. “Exactly. I didn’t run. I volunteered. I’m Lauren by the way.” She holds out her hand.
“Why would you volunteer?” I ask, completely befuddled. “Couldn’t you see what he was?”
“Well, I couldn’t tell you were on the other side of his head at first. He was wearing a hood. But I could see the wings and tail. I was,” she shrugs, “intrigued.”
“Intrigued?” My voice leaps an octave. “A terrifying, half-mad being drops from the sky—”
“He said he was a god,” she pipes up.
“Even worse! And you volunteer to be his consort? Did he even wait to get you back to the castle before ripping off your clothing and molesting you?”
I’m horrified as I take in the crumpled bedding and disheveled hair. Have they been abed the entirety of the last three days? Is that what kept me asleep for so long?
Her hands are at her hips again as she stands tall, glaring at me. “You sure make a lot of assumptions. And you know what they say about people who assume things.”
I just look at her, bewildered. “No, what?”
She narrows an eyebrow. “You just make an ass out of u,” she points at me, and “me.”
I smirk without amusement. So she’s clever. Or thinks she is. She has no clue what she’s volunteered herself into the middle of here.
“My brother broke about a hundred rules. We don’t reveal ourselves to mortals.”
“Why not? If you are gods.”
“Because we like our quiet. We’re retired.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t our world. It never was, and we have no business affecting the mortals or their affairs.”
She huffs out a breath. “Wow, how noble of you. ‘Cause the way Remus tells it, you used to get all up in human affairs. Running our wars and secretly guiding empires for like. . . thousands and thousands of years.”
Reckless! Sharing so much with a human. I’m going to kill my brother. If there was a way to slice his face off the other side of my head without killing myself in the process, I would have done it long ago.
He really thinks he can just go steal himself a consort. Even if this one volunteered, I share half this body, and a consort is an absolute impossibility for a creature like us! Something my brother knows very well.
“What else happened at this fountain? You volunteered, and then he brought you here?”