“Well, yes, but there are limits. I’ve discovered that he becomes rather uncomfortable when he’s reminded that he and Jace used to hate each other, or that Jace and Moira used to date. I suspect the latter more than the former, though he wouldn’t confirm either.”
“You’d be right,” Dom said, frowning. “How did my dick come into the conversation?”
“That was the other thing I was trying to test out. I did discover that he doesn’t want that sort of detail about you, but I created an accidental...mess by not realizing Milo and Elijah were right behind us. And now there are consequences.”
“I’ll say,” Dom said, frowning at the two.
Elijah rolled his eyes. “Milo, stop licking my hand, it’s not going to work. Not after that tongue has been on just about every other part of my body.”
Dom stared at him, glanced at Mason, who was squinting at him, then down at me. “I think...we need to set some boundaries.”
“Make all the jokes you like about me saying this...but I think you’re right,” Mason said. “I have learned things I didn’t want to learn, and have been reminded of things I would have liked toforget. Can we...place a moratorium on conversations about our sex lives until we remember how to talk around each other?”
Dom rolled his eyes. “This is your fault. You started it.”
“I’d argue, but I really don’t have ground to stand on,” Mason said with a sigh. “Now let’s go before someone else decides to add to this conversation.”
“Agree,” Dom said, looking down at me again. “Really?”
“I’ll admit it wasn’t my best plan,” I grumbled. “It succeeded, but there were...consequences, as I said.”
“Yeah, in this family, you can’t fuck around because something always comes back to haunt you,” he said, eyeing the drink in my hand. “And how many of those have you had?”
“This is my first one,” I said as I turned to follow the other three toward the dining room. “Well, that’s not completely accurate. Mason served me what I think was Everclear with enough cranberry juice to color rather than flavor it.”
“Oh fuck, my stomach just rolled at the thought,” he said with a laugh. “Why the fuck did he do that?”
“Because he thought he was slick by coming to the bar and hoping me or Moira didn’t recognize him,” Mason called over his shoulder.
“Ooh, bad idea,” Milo said now that his mouth was free of Elijah’s grasp. “Mason has like, photographic memory for faces and names. Moira, too.”
“And one became the head of staff at a hotel, and the other became a rather skilled bartender. That makes sense,” I said.
Elijah glanced back at me. “You know, I never thought about it like that, but you’re absolutely right. Huh.”
“And now he’s going to think about the other things they’re both good at that might work in their different jobs,” Milo said with a laugh. “I mean, they already share a taste in men, is it really a good idea to try to figure out what else they have in…ah!”
No one, especially Milo, saw Mason stick his foot out as we tried to enter the dining room. Milo’s arms pinwheeled, making Dom and me step back before he hit the ground with a hard thud.
“Eli!” Milo protested from the floor.
“What? You asked for that one,” Elijah said.
“You could have at least caught me!”
“That wouldn’t have been as funny, though.”
“Why must I suffer foryourentertainment?”
“You suffer for all our entertainment.”
“Oh, there he is!” a new voice piped up, and I froze as I watched Matilda hurry toward me. A panic I couldn’t describe filled me. First came the instinct to back out of the room before she could get to me. That was immediately quashed because there was no way in hell I was going to do that to her. The other was panicking about where to put my drink because I suspected what she would do when she reached me. That was solved when I felt Dom pluck it from my hand and take a sip as he stepped back.
Matilda didn’t hesitate as she stepped over Milo, who looked even more offended that his mother didn’t bother to even look at him. My eyes were wide, and my hands came up as if that was somehow going to stop the inevitable. There was no stopping her, though, and I was immediately crushed against her. The last time I’d seen her, I was only a little taller than her, but puberty had its way with me since then, and now she was just up to my chin.
That didn’t stop her from wrapping her arms around me and squeezing tight, pinning my arms. I realized she was still wearing the same perfume she had worn all those years ago. I remembered hearing once that smell had the strongest ties to memory, and I realized how true it was. A collage of memories, too many and too fast for me to keep track, rushed through meas I breathed deep of her perfume that reminded me of flowers dipped in wine.
My eyes stung suddenly, and I had to fight them before they spilled over. Dom stood behind her, and I realized in one of those intuitive flashes that he was doing what he could to block us from the rest of the room. He was smiling softly as he watched us, gave me a knowing look, then turned as if he had found something else interesting.
