“Open.”
My traitorous mouth pops open, no argument, just a strange settling feeling taking hold. Plus, after smelling the salad in front of me, I’m famished.
And it really is as good as it smells. He keeps lifting forkful after forkful, and together we keep lounging back further and further. It happens easily; it feels like we’ve done this a hundred times. And by the time he’s leaning back on his elbow, I’m leaning back against his insanely hard abs with the sun in my face, listening to Kai and Ramses talking.
“No more,” I insist after a while.
Without argument, he stops feeding me and pulls the box to him. I realise belatedly he hadn’t taken a bite.
“Darius, you didn’t eat?” It seems pointless to ask, but still I do.
“You eat first. If it was Kai’s turn to cook, he’d do the same. It’s how we were raised.”
“You said before your family are no longer here. Do you have any other family though?” I ask, watching him eat, watching him work through a volley of emotions. He doesn’t talk again until he’s eaten the rest of the salad.
“Little moon, that’s a story for another day. First, I want to impress you with my cooking skills before I drive any memories you have of Kai out of your thoughts. It’s my day. Tomorrow is Ramses day. You’ve already done Kai, so we figured this was best.”
“This was best?” I ask Darius, hoping for clarification.
“The other alternative is, we can just jump straight into some shared sexual experience, in the name of bonding, but we didn’t want to freak you out.”
“You didn’t want to freak me out?” I laugh, shaking my head.
He keeps surprising me with his directness. “We are all sleeping in your room though.”
“No.” I splutter, shocked.
“Huh! I knew it. We’re fucking all night, aren’t we?”
“No.” I growl more insistent this time.
“Darius. Let her enjoy some peace and quiet. Maybe we could answer some questions, I’m sure you’ve got a hundred or so,” Ramses offers.
And Ramses is completely different in temperament to his other brothers. Kai is like an open book, and he wears his emotions on his face. Well, that’s how it feels with me. Darius is like dancing with the devil at a Shaman Festival. You know he’s got a wicked streak in him, he does too, and no one wastes time warning you about it.
Ramses is almost conservative in his mannerisms. It’s certainly in the way he speaks. Without trying, he is centring. Not calming as such, more being around him fills me with a sense of being whole again. And if anything, I feel a sense of familiarity with him, and definitely a sense of safety. Realising that and putting together small innocent remarks the triplets have made separately and together stirs up a question that I should have asked him already.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I turn right round to watch him. He looks confused for a second until our weird connection allows him to also jump onto my train of thought. But for the others, I slightly amend my question. “Ramses, why did you try to kidnap me at my office?”
Kai and Darius laugh. I jiggle from the laughter vibrating through Darius’s chest and it makes me smile.
“He couldn’t sit down for the day. You fucking nearly split his nuts,” Darius says, tugging on my hair when I keep watching Ramses.
Smacking Darius’s hand away, I twist so I put my back to him so I can look at his brother.
“I wasn’t going to kidnap you,” Ramses insists. There’s a tiny smile on his face, though the regret is more telling.
“He needed to see you,” Darius says, his hands drifting down to my ass.
I growl over my shoulder. “Let him tell me.”
“On the proviso I can feel your ass while he talks,” he says back. No humour, nothing but this serious tone like we’re brokering a deal.
“Only on the outside.” I growl back at Darius before looking at Ramses again. “So, no kidnapping?”
But instead of answering that, his eyes pull down. “How’d you react so fast?”
I look off, trying to remember the moment. “It was weird. Like you know when you’ve got that feeling you’re going to win something? Well, it was like that. All my senses were blitzing out, and I knew I needed to pay attention. You were lucky Bradley and Charlie were waiting at the lift.”
