Page 116 of Sinful Kingdom

“I really fucking hope not. I have every intention of taking Evie once I’m fully functioning again, and I do not need to find my mother within twenty feet of that place.”

“Prude,” I tease.

“Baby, I think we all know that’s not the case. But I draw the line at fucking in the same room as the woman who pushed me out of her vag.”

“Ew,” Daemon complains. “Did you have to go there?”

Tugging Calli from the stool she was sitting on, he pulls her onto his lap on the sofa before the two of them get comfortable.

“Staying, I assume?” Alex quips, wrapping his freshly bandaged arms around me from behind.

“I’ve ordered burgers. They’ll be here in about thirty minutes.”

“Mmm,” Alex groans against the curve of my neck. “Thirty minutes you say. What could we do to pass the time?”

“Don’t even think about it,” Daemon warns.

“Behave, Alexander.”

“It’s only because I know you need a rest that you’re not already on your back on my kitchen counter,” he whispers in my ear, although it’s nowhere near quiet enough for our guests not to hear.

“Don’t start a game you won’t win, Deimos,” Calli warns. “You might flaunt your skills, but I gotta tell you, Daemon also knows what he’s doing.”

“You’re trouble. All of you.”

“Yep, and I think you love it.”

“I love you,” I say, tilting my head back so I can find his lips.

“I love you too.”

“Everything okay with your arms?”

“Yep, healing perfectly. Now I just need to talk to Emmie about what she’s going to cover them all up with.”

“Mum said a year at least,” Daemon points out.

Dropping his head to my shoulder, Alex groans.

“You know, I think I preferred it when you were single and grumpy.”

“You just can’t handle the competition for the funniest twin.”

“Pfft, what the fuck ever,” Alex counters.

And that’s pretty much how the four of us spend the rest of the afternoon—Alex and Daemon shooting insults back and forth at each other while Calli and I roll our eyes and laugh at their expense. It’s pretty perfect.

Being with Alex and moving in here with him might mean distancing myself from Blake and Zay a little, but it also means gaining a whole new kind of family that I never could have imagined for myself.

I smile to myself as I sit in Stefanos’s back garden later that evening as the sun sinks behind the trees and the scent of barbecue fills the air surrounded by my family, and remember what Jodie said to me back in the cabin.

“Blood just makes people think they have a right to fuck with you. You get to choose the water for yourself. They’re what’s really important.”

And fuck was she right.

28

EVIE

---