“I said what I said!” he shouted, causing her to crack up. His smile didn’t come close to expressing the joy he felt inside at seeing her laugh so hard. “Fine, I’ll play your dick emporium games.” Though a straight-up hard fuck was all he really required.
She typed in their second item, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
“Third item,” she said. “There will be no monetary exchange for our time together. If either of us is inclined to get the other a trinket, it can’t be over fifty dollars.”
He rolled his eyes but agreed to the third item, knowing full well it was encoded in a woman’s DNA to want to have the finer things. Some women just had to feel a man was fully committed before hitting ’em up for the expensive stuff. He’d be paying for something big by the end of their time together, but he wouldn’t bow out on that one point when he knew it was bound to happen. He wouldn’t hold her limited understanding of her nature against her.
Stormy gnawed on her bottom lip. “The final issue for me is that we have to agree to have fun. If it’s no longer fun, if it causes us pain and unhappiness to be together, we agree to end it. And we should assess how things are going in, like, two weeks.”
Big Country nodded, feeling as if they had come up with a workable agreement. Usually he laid out the terms and the women agreed, so in essence, this was the first real negotiation that had actually taken place.
“Two more things on my end, darlin’,” he said. The two issues usually didn’t need to be stated explicitly because his liaisons were never more than sex. “First, we got to be who we are, accept each other for who we are. No trying to change each other; I’m set in my ways. No trying to change ourselves thinking it’s gon’ make the other happy.” He’d heard how much it cost her to bury her nature for Chad, and he didn’t want an imitation of Stormy—he wanted the woman sitting right here beside him.
She nodded as if impressed, then typed the item into the tablet.
“Very good, Big Lug. I wholeheartedly agree to that point.”
He ignored the misuse of his handle.
“Secondly,” he said, a point also for her benefit. “Andthemost important of everything we’ve agreed upon today: no falling in love.”
Her eyes got owlish and she blinked at him, a smile blooming on her face in Grinch-like increments. The way she collapsed into full-on, indelicate, snort-filled laughter was neither amusing nor attractive.
He dragged a hand over his jaw and clenched the steering wheel. Eventually, her conniption abated, and she recovered enough of her composure to speak.
“Yeah Lucas, you don’tneeeevvverhave to worry about that. You’re the jump-off, my friend; love is not a possibility, on that much we can both completely agree.”
Directing his gaze back to the road, he forced himself to relax. He didn’t want or need her love, but the depths of her mirth, her conviction that she couldneeevvverfall in love with him rankled.
All women loved him; they couldn’t help themselves. Stormy would love him, too, if that’s what he’d wanted. But it wasn’t. He side-eyed her as she happily added his final item to their contract.
You’ve negotiated good terms, ol’ son. That was all that really mattered.
Zeus stood in the shadows watching and listening as Sabrina and Mama talked and smiled and laughed about Brianna. While conversing, they folded a cream-colored sheet into thirds and placed it on the bar’s wooden surface.
He grunted. His woman had no problem helping Mama around the house but every morning when he reminded her that their bed needed to be made before they left the room, she’d either smirk at him and leave, ignore him and leave, or call back over her shoulder, “Man, I’m not thinking about that bed,”and leave.
She had a bitter disdain for making beds but had no problem sleeping in them, reading in them, or fucking in them. He didn’t understand it.
Lowering himself into the booth seat, he never took his eyes off her. It wasn’t just because he liked to see her body in motion, or because he liked the expressions that flittered across her face…she had so many emotions. It definitely wasn’t because he was saving every part of her to memory for those moments when they weren’t together, or because his blade spirits were mesmerized by her. They worshiped her.
No, Zeus watched Sabrina because he was strategizing, trying to figure out the best way to make her comply with his request because his last tactic—notreminding her to make the bed—hadn’t been successful. Beds needed to be made after rising, that’s what the nuns at the orphanage had taught and that’s what he believed, not because the nuns were always right, but because a made bed brought order to the day and order helped combat the chaos of humanity. He didn’t understand why she didn’t just take his word for it.
As Sabrina and Mama straightened the sheet over the bar, the rest of the Brood-in-residence brought up large aluminum pans of steaming food from downstairs because they couldn’t take the saint below to eat. He frowned as he gazed at all the food. His woman had helped Mama cook breakfast this morning and Sabrina hated cooking almost as much as she hated making beds.
That’s how he knew he just had to find the right motivation with her.
As the pans were placed on the covered bar top, Mama ducked beneath it and brought out dishes and utensils. Zeus’s stomach rumbled at the late morning meal. He’d been up for hours contemplating the saint before he and Cizan had come up with the plan of having Bride interrogate him. They were both from Ireland, and it made perfect sense until Bride snapped. She’d been doing better since she’d been staying off and on with Sabrina’s best friend Randy.
Though the saint appeared weak and harmless, Zeus had lived with nuns and priest most of his childhood. He knew what could exist beneath the adornments of faith and holy attire and he didn’t trust it. He’d wait, see if Big Country had any luck in finding out why the saint was here, and if not, he’d let his blades garner whatever information human conversation could not.
Standing, Zeus made his way to the end of the line, waiting as the others made their plates and sat at the tables pushed together to create one long communal table. Like most of the men, Zeus took two plates and piled them with food. There were scrambled eggs in one pan, grits in another, sausage patties, hot links, country-fried potatoes, two pans of homemade biscuits, and a smaller tin that held gravy heavy with shrimp and garlic to spread over their grits or biscuits. Zeus and Sabrina preferred butter and Blackburn syrup on their biscuits. The biscuits were the best he’d ever had, and they came from a recipe Mama learned from Big Country.
He needed Sabrina to learn how to make them once he got her to learn to make the bed.
If the mercenary group hadn’t taken it upon themselves to rescue her from the warehouse that life-changing night, neither she nor Zeus would be struggling with being a part of a larger collective.
Zeus waited until Sabrina finished making her plate and guided her to the booth behind the table where Mama, Terry, Bride, London, and Cizan sat. Just as Sabrina was getting used to the large amounts of food Mama prepared when there was a large gathering of Brood-in- residence, Zeus was growing more accustomed to not eating alone. He liked it here, liked that he could have his woman, dance with his blades, stalk the mountain, and still get fed. He liked that Mama treated his woman like hers because Sabrina enjoyed it. For her happiness, he was willing to share her.
