Page 16 of The Hard Way

He kissed me on the cheek. “I’m going to prescribe oral sex only. And you receive it only. I know that’s going to be hard for you.”

“But you can still jerk off and come on my breasts,” I said.

He shook his head. “No way, we can’t have any kind of massive weight landing on your chest.”

I snorted. “Ow!” Laughing was my enemy. “Fuck. Don’t make me laugh.”

“Sorry.”

“Should I lie down?”

“A chair is best. Come on.” He led me out to the porch and put my iPad in my hands.

Twenty minutes later, Odin returned with three different kinds of pain relievers.

“Have a seat,” Thor said. “The patient is going to live.”

“More than live.” I smiled up at him, but I could see he didn’t quite believe it—he thought I was faking that I was perfectly fine. Well, I was faking it a little. My chest hurt, but most of all, I felt hugely shitty for doing precisely what he’d asked me not to do. “I’m doomed to oral sex only, though. I don’t know how I’ll get through that.” I kind of laughed, and then I winced, because fuck, it hurt when I laughed.

This sent Odin to his knees beside me. “Goddess.”

“Seriously? Please!” I said. “You warned me not to try and sleep with you, and what did I do?”

“I hurt you,” he said. “Don’t minimize it.”

“Don’t you maximize it!” I said.

I want back to my online surfing, losing myself in some bullshit top ten list, just to give things a sheen of normalcy so Odin would see it wasn’t a huge deal. He was taking it so hard!

Odin stood up and walked out.

“Let him be,” Thor said.

Twenty minutes later, the porch door opened again. I assumed it was Odin, but it was Zeus, back from the run.

“What the fuck? Why’s there a bloody towel on the floor?”

We explained what happened. Zeus had to inspect my ribs for himself. He’d been through a lot of fights and thought of himself as quite the rib-palpating expert. After a few painful pushes, he, too, decided it was a bruise.

“Thanks, Doctor Feelgood,” I said, pulling my shirt down.

Zeus showered and changed. We drank more coffee. Still Odin didn’t show.

He’d been gone almost two hours. The guys were getting worried, I could tell.

“He needs to be in control,” Thor said. “It really fucks him up to not be in control, and add to that the fact that he hurt you—”

“I’m feeling a lot better,” I said.

Thor decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and check a few cafés and a scenic overlook that Odin enjoyed. Zeus and I stayed back and played Scrabble.

I was trying to psychically dissuade Zeus from using a triple-point square I had plans for when a new mail alert flashed across my iPhone screen. I grabbed my phone and punched in my code. “Finally!” I said.

“Sisters’ newsletter?”

“Yeah!”

I opened it up to the Sunny Sisters header, settling in to read about artisan cheeses, barn repairs, and maybe even the foibles of lambs, stuff I’d found crushingly boring once upon a time. These days I hung on every word, every little detail, and my sisters would never know. How could they? They thought I was dead, or at least my two youngest sisters did. I figured Vanessa, the second eldest of us four, had to suspect.

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