Page 33 of Gemini Wicked

He’s been pacing like that since he shifted back. It’s actually making me tired just watching him.

Zara stirs on the settee and turns to Max with a sigh. “C’mon over here and warm up by the fire, big guy. We gotta talk this thing through, all of us. Anyway, Lucius has wards on the domus. We’ll know if anyone comes.”

Her wary eyes shift to me and soften. “You too, baby. Come right over here and sit with me. We can all feel you. I’m really sorry you’re hurting.”

Now it’s my turn to sigh. Living in a polycule with telepaths isn’t all fun and games.

It’s, like, impossible to keep anything secret.

Unless you’re Vasili.

Who seems to have no problem, ever, keeping secrets.

I eye the ottoman where Zara’s bare feet are resting. Her pretty opal toenail polish glitters in the firelight.

But her little feet look cold.

When she came home, she just threw on her favorite yoga pants and a Villa Augustus tee shirt (that’s the name of this domus, our residential college at Icarus). She’s really not wearing enough for a chilly night.

That decides me. I can’t have my precious one cold.

I trot over and plunk myself down on the cushion at Zara’s feet to face her. It’s hard to meet her eyes when I feel this way, but her love and worry for me radiate through our mating bond. Gently I gather her feet in my lap and cup her cold toes (she’s, like, icy) in my warm palms.

“That’s so nice, baby,” she murmurs with a grateful smile. “My feet are freezing. Too worked up earlier to find my slippers.”

I’m a little chilly too, but there isn’t time right now to worry about me. Until, to my surprise, Max prowls over and crowds onto the cushion with me and wraps himself around me from behind.

Which is just so comforting and nice.

He’s a fire sign, he’s the Sagittarius scion (only he calls it a prince), and fire signs always run hot.

While I rub Zara’s cold feet and massage her soles, Max’s sinewy suntanned arms slide around my waist. He spreads his denim-clad thighs to tuck me between them, then rubs the tawny bristle of his five o’clock stubble against the side of my neck.

Goosebumps break out all over me under my Academy polo shirt. I sigh and melt into him.

I love Max so much.

Literally one of the only good things about Zara getting kidnapped this spring was that Max and I got major together time while we were chasing her and Zephyr through the portal and the standing stones to Avalon.

Max and I hooked up over there (finally!) So now we’re together too.

“Perhaps it is you I should be biting, hmmm, kotyonok?” our dragon rumbles in my ear. His mating scent of leather and brimstone fills my head. “If you will follow our sovereign and these hellions we are mating into danger, then we must keep you safe.”

Kotyonok means kitten in Russian. I love the nickname. And I love the thought of him biting me (after waiting so long for him to offer!)

I shiver all over with happiness and delight.

Of course, Vasili’s in a mood. He’s never totally gotten over finding out about Max and me, and he’s really territorial. Because V actually has bitten me. That means he really is one of my alphas.

Even if he doesn’t act like it.

I mean, he never hovers and fusses over me to make sure I’m warm and fed and happy, you know, like an alpha should. Actually, Max is way more hovery.

So of course V has to totally ruin any kind of nice moment Max and I are having.

“Bite him if you must, darling.” Vasili sneers at Max from the far corner of the settee where he’s draped like a serpent, looking like Mata Hari in a silk kimono, with his gilded hair still damp from his shower and slicked back from his pretty face. “Since our First Boy is clearly into it. Then you can fuck him into a sex puddle and indulge your ridiculous mpreg obsession about filling his nonexistent uterus with a clutch of your revolting dragonets. The same way you carry on with Ronin.”

“Oh, man,” Racetrack mumbles from the sofa behind her coffee. “TMI, guys.”

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