Page 50 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

He was lucky he didn’t have his shoes on or I would have had to tell him to get off of my bed.

“Well?” Quinton huffed out. “We know you didn’t have a nightmare. Did you see a mouse or a spider or something stupid like that that made you scream like a girl?”

I frowned at him.

“I am a girl,” I snapped. “And I’m not afraid of mice or spiders. That’s just ridiculous.”

“I don’t have mice in my house,” Dash informed me as he pushed the cup of coffee into my hands.

I smiled at him in gratitude, thankful for more than the cup of coffee. He didn’t come bursting into my room demanding answers and giving me a hard time.

“Thank you,” I murmured happily.

He grinned at me. He’d moved into the room easy enough, but I could still see the tightness around his eyes. I didn’t know if he was in pain or if it was simply from the strain of the past week wearing on him.

“Damien brought over donuts when he picked up Julian,” he told me. “They are at the kitchen table. There’s also a box just outside of your bedroom door with the DVD’s he got for you. I don’t think he liked that you left them at the big house. It bugged him so he went and picked them up and brought them here for you. He didn’t want to wake you up so he left them outside of your room.” He looked around the room quickly and frowned. “We need to get you your own tv in here.”

I shook my head. “I don’t need a tv,” I told him quickly. I didn’t want them to buy me things. “There’s a tv in the living room and I have my laptop that I can watch things on. A television isn’t necessary. But, thank you for thinking of it. I just don’t need one.”

“Yes, you do,” Tyson said from his position on the bed. “There are a lot of us and we all need our own personal space. Without our own space we would get on each other’s nerves. Well, except for the twins. They don’t want their own space.” He waved his hand grandly in the direction of the door where the twins still stood just inside of it. “Something about sharing a womb, or, so they claim. Personally, I think it’s weird. I don’t understand the whole twin thing. Then again, I’m an only child. Uncle Quint and I are close enough in age that we were raised more like brothers, but I certainly don’t want to share a bedroom with him. Most of the time I have to fight off the urge to smother him in his sleep.”

I coughed, trying to cover up my laughter. I wasn’t laughing at what he’d said about the twins because I didn’t think their closeness was weird at all. I was almost a little jealous of them. They had each other and had since they day they were born. Before that even as Tyson had said, they’d shared a womb. I wished I had someone to always share all of my experiences with. Someone who’d have my back no matter what. Someone to always hold my hand. Someone to share all of my secrets with. Yeah, I envied the Salt and Pepper twins their closeness.

I was laughing because I could never ever imagine Ty doing anything like what he’d talked about to his Uncle. Quinton drove him mad like he did us all. But they had an unshakable bond that had a whole lot more to do with the blood running through their veins. I didn’t think anything would ever tear them apart or come between them.

“God damn it,” Quinton snarled as he turned to stomp out of the room in his cowboy boots. His frustration at the situation seemed to be wearing his patience thin.

“She was face down on the floor when we came in,” Abel shared helpfully.

I wanted to tell him to shut up.

Unfortunately, Quinton stopped moving towards the door.

“What?” he growled. He turned his hostile gaze on me and barked out, “What were you doing on the floor? And don’t even try to lie to me. We’ve had that conversation before and you know I don’t like it when you lie to me. Enough of this round and round bullshit. Give it to me straight.”

I sighed. This was my living nightmare. Why did he have to push me so hard? And in front of other people, no less. Maybe if it had just been the two of us I would have told him what had happened with all the dramatics and the embarrassment.

“I told you, nothing happened,” I lied.

I took a healthy sip of my coffee and closed my eyes. It had just the right amount of cream and sugar in it to be perfect for me. Dash was awesome. Quinton, not so much, and his points were going down by the second.

“It didn’t look like nothing,” Addison put in not so helpfully. Those damn twins were really raining all over my parade this morning. “You looked like you were in pain when we first got here.”

Fuck it. They weren’t going to give up and they weren’t going to go away until I gave them something. Who cared if they laughed at me? And, Quinton and I had promised not to lie to each other. It was important to us, to our relationship, that we didn’t lie. We could lie to others, but not to each other. I feared the twins wouldn’t ever let me live it down, though.

“How did I get to bed last night?” I asked, stalling for time. “I don’t remember going to bed. The last thing I remember was falling asleep on the couch.”

“On top of Julian, no less,” Tyson said.

My heart stuttered in my chest. Was he mad? He didn’t sound mad. But he and Julian had history between them because of the evil one. I didn’t want to make things harder for them. I relaxed when I saw him smirking at me. He looked like he found the whole thing amusing, most especially my discomfort at him bringing it up.

In this moment, I kind of hated them all.

“Julian put you to bed,” Dash took pity on me and shared. “He wanted you to sleep under your dreamcatcher.”

“That was kind of him,” I mumbled.

“Ariel,” Quinton growled.

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