It was almost too much between us, like the gravity of our attraction would grow so strong it would crush us and the building. Especially once Naomi’s eyes fluttered, half-lidded and almost sleepy. Parts of me stirred that hadn’t in quite some time.
“I—”
“Well, isn’t this quite the spread?”
I nearly jolted. I’d been so laser focused on Naomi that I hadn’t realized three rather strapping but somewhat shorter men had approached us.
Naomi’s spine went ramrod straight. Whatever heat was between us dissipated immediately. For a split second, I was completely confused, but then I saw their faces when the men basically pinned her in by standing behind and to either side of her chair. The family resemblance was uncanny.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, sounding somewhere between horrified and enraged.
“Aw, you know how it is. We just had to come check out our sis on her date. Make sure her beau’s being a right proper gentleman and not a chud.”
“After all, we’ve heardnothingabout you,” the shorter one chimed in, smiling in a way that let me know he was definitely trying to neg me in some way.
I got the feeling that Naomi’s brothers may be idiots, and her reticence to talk about her family made a whole lot more sense now.
“Kinda weird place to come, don’t cha think?” the last one said, looking around uncomfortably. “Isn’t it a bit hum—uh, kitschy?”
Yes. Definitely idiots.
“Guys, you need to go, and you need to gonow,” Naomi said, and there was this sort of… vibrating energy to her. She lookedsoupset when we’d just been having a good time that I wanted to do something, say anything, but I also didn’t want to overstep.
“D’aw, come on, Otto-Roboto, you can’t blame us for being concerned for the only one like you in the family! You’re precious.”
“Only one like me?” she repeated in such a low tone that I almost couldn’t hear her. It felt like poison was slowly dripping down my ear with each syllable.
“The only girl, of course! It’s up to the stronger to protect the weak. You know that! Don’t worry, we’re not here to demand you go home or make waves. Just wanted to check in, ya know? Can’t have our one and only Otto get?—”
“Itoldyou not to call me that!”
“God, calm down?—”
That was quite enough.
Naomi was clearly upset and I wasn’t about to let her be harassed right in front of me without saying anything.
“It’s sweet to see siblings so involved in each other’s lives,” I said in what Ibrahim had once called my teacher tone. While I never had an education in a formal classroom, I had always taken it as a compliment. “But perhaps you would be less inclined to interrupt your sister’s dates if you had romantic evenings of your own to deal with.”
It wasn’t a zinger. It wasn’t some sort of showstopping condemnation. But I hoped it was enough to shake them out of whatever made them think it was all right to embarrass Naomi like this. Hopefully, they would retreat and cause no more trouble.
Rarely did it ever work out like that, but hey, at least I always gave people the option to do the right thing.
“Oh, believe me, we have no shortage of chicks to spend our time with.”
I never liked stereotypes—I’d been hurt by them myself—but the three frog-shouldered men before me really did seem like the quintessential douchebag jocks, all posturing and macho and pulling some sort of power play on their sister. Granted, I didn’t know the family situation, but as an outsider looking in, this seemed like a control issue of the highest order.
And it concerned me how Naomi was just staring at her plate, her fist balled so tightly that I was starting to smell the sharp, floral bouquet of her blood. While that was a scent I craved, that I sometimes dreamed about, this wasnothow I wanted to experience it.
“And yet you are here. With no ‘chick’ in sight.” This time, I put my fork down and stood. While I wasn’t a hulking man and covered in muscles like Naomi’s brothers, I was quite a bit taller than them, which allowed me to look down at their rather annoying faces. While Naomi’s features looked so lovely on her, feminine and artful, I found those same things foul on her brothers. It was a corruption of her beauty, her strikingnesspasted onto men who didn’t deserve her time, blood relation be damned. “I highly encourage you all to go out and use this time to pursue positive romantic interests rather than living vicariously through Naomi.”
“Pffft!” one practically spat. Although I was no longer a particularly violent man, I really wanted to punch him. “Like I’m taking advice from some random guy! And what’s with the weird goth makeup?”
Makeup?
I only just figured out what he meant when the largest brother elbowed him and started laughing. “That ain’t makeup! This guy’s a straight-up ghost! God, Noms, you could have told us if you were slumming it this hard! Come on, let’s go home and we’ll find you a nice mate from the pa—our neck of the woods.”
It was as if Naomi suddenly came to life. She was on her feet too, quite a bit shorter than her brothers even in the gorgeous, red heels she was wearing, complete with bat wings on the heels, but the sheer rage radiating from her made her seem towering.
