The idea of doing anything else made the breath catch in his throat.He bit into his bottom lip, hard.The idea of living life to the full had never been about avoiding feeling afraid.The way to really feel alive was to feel the fear and do it anyway.That was what being alive was all about.He had a horrible feeling it was what being in love with two men, with two lions, was all about, too.
Walking back up the stairs to his bedroom, Marrick couldn’t help but think it would have been a hell of a lot easier to embrace the fear if he wasn’t quite so bloody terrified.
Chapter Seven
Marrick hesitated as he pushed open the front door and stepped into Arslan’s house for the first time in almost a week.
None of the lions ever seemed to worry about security or locking doors, and he’d been pretty much allowed to come and go as he pleased when he’d been staying there.He doubted the same rules applied now.Just as he was debating how best to announce himself, the door leading into the den’s meeting room swung open.
Arslan stared across the hall at him.
Marrick tried not to look too wary or too exhausted as he pulled his backpack a little more firmly onto his shoulder.“Are Luther and Blaine here?”
“No.”
Marrick swallowed.“No, as in you’re not willing for me to see them or no, as in they aren’t actually in the building.”
“No, as in they’ve been hanging around here, acting even brattier than usual since you left, so I sent them to get the food for tonight’s meeting of the pride.It was that or throttle them both.”
Marrick started breathing again, but he still didn’t dare take another step into Arslan’s house without a clear invitation.
“Go up to your room.Get some rest until they come back.”
Marrick nodded.He felt Arslan tracking him all the way up the stairs.Even after he turned the corner, he could swear he still felt the lion’s gaze following him right up until he closed the bedroom door behind him.
As he collapsed on the huge bed to wait for Luther and Blaine, it felt remarkably like he’d just moved from staring at one ceiling to another—like he’d just exchanged one headache for an even worse one.He pulled himself off the bed and paced into the bathroom.There weren’t any kind painkillers in the cabinet over the sink.
On the off chance the main bathroom off the landing might have some, Marrick headed in there.He hadn’t had reason to enter the room before.The first thing he noticed was that bath had obviously been designed by the same person who’d built the bed in their room.It was huge enough to host an orgy and cause a water shortage.
A more important discovery, however, was that there weren’t any painkillers in that bathroom cabinet either.
Bloody typical.Marrick leaned resignedly against the bathroom wall.Very slowly, he let himself slide down to sit the floor.Closing his eyes, he rested his head back against the tiles.All things considered, he was pretty sure he had as much chance of falling asleep there as he did anywhere else.
The edges of his mind drifted toward sleep, but, just like so many times since he’d left Luther and Blaine, sleep merely flirted with him, teasing but never following through.
When the bathroom swung open, Marrick looked up, half dreading and half hoping that Luther and Blaine were back already.But it was Ryland who stepped into the room.He was already reaching for the light to switch it off when he spotted Marrick sitting on the floor.
“You okay?”
Marrick smiled slightly.“Yeah.Just taking a minute.”
Ryland nodded, as if there was nothing strange about finding a grown man slumped on the floor in the bathroom.
“You know something?Last year, I ran three honest-to-God marathons.I even got pretty good times.”
Ryland nodded again, very slowly, obviously not having the least idea what Marrick was talking about.But he sat down on the floor opposite him, leaned against the oversized bath, and listened anyway.
“I work out—a lot.And I do sports.Mountain biking.Obstacle courses.Mountain climbing.I learnt to surf pretty well last summer.”
Ryland nodded again.
“So, all in all, I’m a pretty fit guy, right?”
Another nod.
“But, bloody hell, I need some sleep, too!”
Ryland smiled then, his expression full of sympathy.
