Page 143 of Gemini Kings
He’s still doing that, actually, he’s got one arm looped around me and his hand parked nice and steady on my hip while he sleeps.
Which is… nice.
It’s chilly in the bedroom with the fire gone out, and there’s nothing like a fire sign mate in your bed to keep you all toasty.
He’s too thin, I can feel that really clearly, because under the blankets he’s only wearing like the world’s tiniest pair of briefs (leopard print, which made Vasili sneer horribly and murmur snide asides about going on safari and visiting the Animal Kingdom, when we all six piled into Zara’s big bed after everyone got cleaned up and all the excitement finally died down). I snuck my arm around Maxim’s waist right away once he started snuggling, and I can feel every single one of his ribs plus his hip bone jutting under my hand.
That just makes me want to feed him.
I make homemade buckwheat pancakes for Saturday breakfast, it’s kind of adomustradition, and I wonder if he’ll like my recipe.
I’m still thinking about breakfast when those fiery dragon eyes of his suddenly flare wide. For a sec he’s all bleary, then those vertical pupils zoom in on me and dilate.
His brow furrows and his mouth opens.
“Ssshhh,” I whisper, barely breathing out the sound. “Everyone’s still asleep. They all really need it after last night.”
He blinks and looks pretty muddled, so I scooch closer to him and put my mouth right up against his ear.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“…Hello,” he whispers back after a sec, all raspy with sleep.
“You don’t remember much about last night, do you?” I give his confused face a sympathetic smile. “That’s okay. You and Zara were both pretty out of it when Vasili brought you home.”
He scowls, and suddenly he’s Mr. Ferocious again. “Vasili brought us? How?”
“Uh, he carried you. One at a time. And, you know, flew?” I hesitate. “Complaining the whole time about how he isn’t a taxi service and it was totally a one-time thing so no one should get used to it, yeah, but the important thing is, he did it.”
Maxim looks startled by all this information.
Cautiously he turns his head to where Zara and Ronin are wrapped up in each other behind him. They’re smothered in sleeping alpha, because both Lucius and Vasili wanted to sleep really close to them and basically both on top of them after what could’ve happened to our mates last night.
This means all four of them are essentially sleeping in one big yummy pile.
“Hey. It’s okay if you don’t remember,” I whisper. “It must’ve been really overwhelming bonding with Zara and Ronin both together at once last night, like super intense, even before that whole near-death experience. And when you all came back here, Zara was still totally out of it, and you just refused to be separated from either one of them, and Ronin was pretty insistent that you shouldn’t be. So Lucius finally said we should all just sleep in here—you too, no matter how much Vasili seethed and hated—and that was how we all finally settled down and went to sleep.”
His eyes search my face, from my tumbled hair to my scruffy jaw, and take their time doing it.
The way those lidded dragon eyes look at my mouth makes me all warm and tingly.
“I hope this does not… offend you?” he says slowly. “That I too have claimed your mate? Zara said she has asked and you have given your consent. But I—I should have asked you myself. I meant no… disrespect.”
“Hey, none taken.” I let a little sigh slip out. “We’re fated mates. That’s something special that only we have. Zara and me. We’re in each other’s natal charts and everything. I’ve known for years we’d be together, just like it’s written in the stars, even if it took her a little longer to accept our whole fated mate situation. But what it means is, I feel what she feels. I love who she loves. I need what she needs. And what she needs in her life right now, right at this exact moment, that’s you. So that means you get me too. We’re like a matching pair of socks. You don’t want one without the other.”
“Is this outcome truly as… easy to accept… as you say?” Now he sounds straight-up cautious. When he’s suspicious, his eyes narrow and turn all sly and shifty.
“For me, yeah.” I shrug, unoffended. Heck, I’m into Vasili (secretly), and they don’t come any more sly and shifty than him. “I’m the easy one in this relationship. Ask anyone. If Zara wants you, if Zara needs you, that’s good enough for me. Only it turns out Ronin wants you too so that’s, like, a bonus? Because I’m with him too.”
“The way you explain the arrangement, this all seems far too simple.” He shifts around in our bed and frowns. “After all this… struggle.”
“Does it?” I get that he’s skeptical, I really do, but I’ve learned a few things since we started this harem.
I’ve learned that Lucius takes care of everyone.
I’ve learned that Vasili complicates everything.
And I’ve learned that my job is to make things simple.
