by Selena Scott
“It is good. I love it here. And I wouldn’t leave. I just think that my brothers might be leaving and if they did, I was wondering if you thought I could handle living on my own.”
“Why would they be leaving?”
“Well, it would be weird for us to be separated, but I think Ida and Phoenix have done the whole sleeping-over thing for long enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if pretty soon, they just move in to her house.”
That made sense to Quill, while making his blood pressure rise. The Director wanted all three of the siblings. A package. Seeing them split up and separate would make things much harder on Quill.
“Uh huh. What about Orion? I can’t see him moving out anytime soon.”
“Well, after the thing with Diana the other night, I figured it might be kind of the same thing as with Phoenix and Ida.”
Quill’s heart stopped. “What thing with Diana the other night?”
He cursed himself for thinking that taking a little space from Dawn would help him sort his shit out because now he’d gone and apparently missed something gigantic. Like a whole thing with Diana and Orion.
“Oh, she slept over last weekend. And then two nights ago, he didn’t come home at all. I think he was with her. Apparently they’re going out again tonight.”
Cold sweat trickled down his spine. Keeping his secrets from the Wolf siblings hadn’t been that hard. They didn’t know enough about humankind yet to really find him suspicious. Besides, he always had reasons for why he was around, or why he was so observant. He could just blame it on his job at the center. Ida and Wren were the only people he’d really had to fool. Ida naturally believed the best in everyone and then she’d been so lovestruck by Phoenix that she hadn’t been much of an obstacle. And as for Wren, who was sharp as a tack and skeptical, he’d kept a fairly wide berth from her, not letting her get a good hold on why he came around and when.
But Diana?
If Diana started hanging around the pink house, inserting herself into the lives of the Wolf siblings. He was utterly and completely screwed. He’d never be able to recruit them without her noticing. The woman noticed absolutely everything about her clients. She could probably tell you what each of them ate for breakfast. His only saving grace had been that she purposefully ignored Orion under some semblance of professionalism. But now? If she’d given in and started spending time with him? Oh, god.
Quill suddenly knew, with a sick certainty, that he was going to fail. The Director was going to have him killed.
“What’s that look on your face for?” Dawn asked, peering back over her shoulder. Her bottom jaw fell open. “Oh, no. You don’t like Diana do you? I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to, I don’t know, spoil your hopes and dreams or something.”
He chuckled humorlessly. Her guess so off-base it was almost, almost funny. “No. I don’t have feelings for Diana. I just— I’m tired is all.”
“Are you sure? You could tell me if you did. I can keep a secret. And I’d totally understand. She’s so beautiful and organized.”
“I don’t have a fucking crush on Diana!” Quill snapped, suddenly irritated that Dawn was pushing this. Diana’s unexpected presence in Quill’s life was terrible, terrible news for him. But more than anything in that moment, he found himself irritated that Dawn didn’t give a shit that he might have a crush on someone. In fact she’d even volunteered to be his confidante. What a joke. His -literal- head was on the line and he was worried stressing about these stupid feelings for Dawn.
“Okay,” she said, quailing back from him. Her voice was quiet and her hurt apparent in her eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to butt in.”
He hated himself for putting that expression on her face but he couldn’t stay there and fix it. He was suffocating in the clear air. Panicking. Watching everything get flushed away.
He stood up. “It’s fine. Look, I just remembered something I have to do. I’ll meet you at the expo, okay? You can drive yourself?”
“I— Yes. Sure.”
He could feel her hurt, confused stare on the back of his head as he jogged down the porch stairs and to his car. He practically peeled away. When he was a few streets over, he parked his car and pulled out his cell phone, his thumb hovering over the Director’s number. He needed to call him and confess all. He needed to just get this over with. He’d be punished, but he wouldn’t be killed. Not yet. He could still salvage this plan.
But then Dawn’s eyes flashed in his mind. Green, striking, so hurt just because he’d snapped at her.
He pictured what she might look like if she ever found out what he was about to do to her family. He pictured what betrayal, hatred, disgust might look like on her face.
“Fuck!” He punched the steering wheel and tossed his phone aside.
He couldn’t do it.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to get his breathing under control. Half an hour later, he drove to the expo, apologized to Dawn for his weirdness, and helped her haggle for books.
Neither of them mentioned his mood from before.
***
“This is not a sandwich shop,” Orion said to Diana, a frown on his face.
“The sandwich shop is down the block. This is a brief stop before we eat sandwiches. It’s not gonna hurt. I promise.”
She planted hands on his back and attempted to give him a little push inside the glasses store. She didn’t even budge him a millimeter.
He’d recently had the thought that he’d go anywhere as long as he could go there with Diana. His only caveat had been the dentist. Yeah, well, apparently he had two caveats. Because he was not letting Diana talk him into getting his eyes checked again. And he really wasn’t letting Diana talk him into wearing glasses. Glasses were stupid, unnecessary human accessories that made a man look like he’d trip over his own two feet if he ever tried to spend a day in the wilderness.
“I have no interest in them shining lights in my eyes and giving me headaches, all right? I’ll pass on the glasses. Let’s just eat sandwiches.”
“Orion!” she jumped in front of him, her high heels making her at least three inches taller than when she’d been standing in her stocking feet in her kitchen the other morning. She didn’t even remotely acknowledge the sour look he was intentionally sending her way. “You don’t have to do an eye exam. I got your prescription from before pulled.” She held up two small pieces of paper and waved them around. “All you have to do is try on glasses and then we can choose a pair and some contacts and you can be on your way!”
“Pass.” He tried to get around her but she got in his way again.
“We have an appointment. It’s rude to miss it.”
“Why the hell do we have an appointment?” he asked incredulously. “Did you make us an appointment? Is that why you wanted to meet so early?”
“Maybe.” She had the grace to duck her shoulders and look a teeny, tiny bit sheepish. “Come on. The whole thing will take fifteen minutes tops. And then we can eat sandwiches and I can rest easy knowing that you at least have the option of having decent eyesight. I don’t like thinking of you out in the world with blurry vision.”
He frowned. She’d found his achilles heel and it was pissing him off. He didn’t want her worrying about him either. But he really didn’t want to go into this damn shop.
“Would you want me to walk around Portland with bad vision?” she asked, her hands on her hips.
“Ugh,” he groaned, putting his hands on his hips and mirroring her position.
A man with glasses walked past them, eyeing their stances, and he ducked into the store.
“Seriously?” Orion pointed at the man through the window. “You want me to wear glasses like that guy?”
Diana turned and looked, her eyebrows coming up. “That guy is hot. So if you wore glasses like that guy, you wouldn’t have a damn thing to worry about.”
Orion’s mouth dropped open. He’d never heard her say anything like that. She rarely swore and she definitely didn’t go around tal
king about hotness.
“You think that guy is hot?” He jutted an incredulous thumb at the shop. If that was her type, then maybe he really didn’t stand a chance with her. Because Orion was certainly not skinny and he was certainly not blond.
She took one step toward Orion, looking at him up from under her lashes and lowering her voice. “I think glasses are hot.”
He frowned.
She frowned, little bit of pink on her cheeks.
He kept frowning.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, holding his eye contact.
“Goddammit,” he muttered, turning on his heel and striding into the store.
He instantly felt his mood drop fifty degrees once inside. He hated stores. They all smelled like plastic and were filled to the brim with a ton of crap that no one in their right mind would ever need. It wasn’t that he was a miser, exactly. He’d honestly felt that Phoenix’s medical bills they were still paying down had been a good investment. He didn’t mind paying that much money for something like his brother’s health. But he pictured how heavy the armoire he’d carried up four flights of stairs this morning was and he thought about spending his hard earned money on a goddamn pair of plastic glasses… He nearly walked back out of the store.
Diana, however, was a smart woman. She grabbed him by the hand and marched him to a chair in front of a mirror, waving away a sales rep as she did so. “Sit here. I’ll bring you some options to try.”
Orion crossed his arms over his chest and sat there sullenly. He caught sight of himself in the mirror and almost laughed. He’d never looked more like Phoenix in his life.
Moments later, Diana was back with a tray with about thirty different clear-lensed frames on it. He resisted the urge to bat the whole thing out of her hands, toss her over his shoulder, and sprint them down the block for sandwiches.
She set the tray down, picked up the first pair and shoved them on his face, not even giving him time to recoil.
“No.” His reaction was immediate, taking them off.
“Why not!” Diana said, her hands on her hips. “You didn’t even look at yourself in the mirror!”
“They smell.”
She sniffed them, confusion lining her features.
“Like plastic,” he clarified.
“Ah. Okay. No plastic frames. We can work with that!” She sounded bright and bubbly as she moved a ton of them to one side of the tray, apparently disregarding them.
The next pair she put on his face were so light, he barely felt them there, and he was ready to tell her that that was creepy and that he hated them, when she leaned down to straighten them over his face. Their noses weren’t more than six inches apart as she narrowed her eyes and eyed him critically, her fingers touching his cheeks and ears and then the bridge of his nose.
“Nope,” she decided. “Not quite right.”
She took the glasses off of him and reached back for another pair.
Orion blinked.
She put the next pair on him, doing the same thing, touching his face, his hairline, pressing her thighs into his knees as she leaned over him. This time, she also brushed at his shoulder and straightened his shirt a little. Cocking her head to one side.
“What do you think?” she asked, stepping aside so that he could see himself in the mirror. She came to stand behind him, leaving her palm on his shoulder and leaning her weight into him just a little bit.
What did he think? He think-ed he was about to get a boner in this glasses store if he wasn’t careful.
Then he glanced at himself in the mirror and grimaced. His face in a pair of glasses. There was a boner killer if he ever saw one. “No.”
“All right,” she said brightly. “How did these ones smell? They have metal frames instead of plastic.”
“Bad,” he responded, ornery and milking it.
“Okay. Oh! These ones are perfect!”
She picked up a pair of glasses and again, moved to slide them onto his face. This time, apparently deciding that she needed to get closer, she wiggled in between his legs and stood half an inch away from his crotch. She bent down close enough to kiss him, if that had been her intention, and straightened the frames on his face.
“Mmm,” she said, making a low, tempting noise in her throat. “I like these ones.”
He shifted in his seat, halfway in heaven and halfway in hell.
Friends.
Friends.
Friends, he reminded himself.
His hands twitched at his side as he peered around her and caught sight of her bent-over ass in the mirror. He didn’t even glance at his own face or the glasses there. She licked her lips and his eyes fell to her mouth.
“How do these ones smell?” she asked. “The frames are made of wood, so I thought they might not be as offensive to you.” She leaned forward, planting her hands on his shoulders and took a deep inhale at his temple. “Mmm,” she made that sound again.
He shifted again.
She pulled back, her hands on his shoulders, eyeing him. “These work for me, Orion.”
He wasn’t quite sure what her words meant. But he knew exactly what her facial expression meant. She stood up straight, still between his spread legs, and there were her high breasts. Right there in his face. If he’d leaned forward a foot, he could have taken one in his mouth, wetted her shirt, bitten down. Punished her and pleasured her. Just exactly as she was doing for him right this second.
“Finding everything okay over here?” A man’s nasally voice asked.
Orion jolted, a little surprised to remember that they weren’t the only two people left in the shop. In the world for that matter.
He had to get out of here.
Friendsfriendsfriends.
He needed to hightail it out of here before he lifted Diana’s skirt and took a bite out of her ass.
And he knew, without a doubt, there was only one way she was letting him leave here.
“Yes,” he responded to the man, standing up so fast that he jolted her backwards a few steps. “We’ll take these. She has my prescriptions.”
Diana grinned at him, wide and genuine and thrilled. “And six months worth of contacts as well,” she added.
It was twenty minutes later, as they sat in the gourmet sandwich shop, elbow to elbow at the counter, watching the world pass by on the sidewalk and their mouths chock full of sandwich, that the penny dropped for Orion.
He took a huge gulp of his iced tea, washing his bite down his throat as he turned to survey Diana.
He only needed to observe the satisfied expression on her face to know that his theory was completely and utterly right.
“You played me.”
She covered her mouth with a napkin and turned to him, those stunningly large eyes of hers the picture of innocence. “What’s that?”
“In the glasses store. You completely and utterly played me.”
She swallowed her bite, and took her time taking a long drink of iced tea, her eyes on his over the top of her glass. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, neither confirming nor denying his claim, thus completely confirming it.
He lowered his eyebrows at her. “I may have only been a part of the human world for a year, Diana, but I wasn’t born yesterday. You played me.”
“How, exactly, are you claiming that I played you?”
“You rubbed up against me and shoved your tits in my face until I would have agreed to elective surgery if asked.”
Her eyes goggled as she halfway choked on a bite. “You said ‘tits’ to me.”
Her mouth was full of food and she looked utterly shocked.
He shrugged his shoulders, raising his eyebrows.
Turning to gaze, unseeing, out the window in front of them, Diana mused, “No man has ever said ‘tits’ to me before.”
This was not a surprise to Orion.
“That’s because they see the hair and the eyes and the shoes and the skirts and the ‘that’s highly inappropriate, Mr. Wol
f’ and they think you’re fancy. So they don’t say things like ‘tits’. But I’m figuring you out, Diana.” He shook his sandwich in her direction. “You’re not fancy at all. You just know how to get what you want. Sometimes that’s for your employees to be on time to work and get their jobs done. Hence the—” he waved his hand up and down her generally spic and span appearance. “And sometimes that's for your clients to agree to some dumbass glasses. Hence the—” He leaned forward and shook his chest like he had a nice rack. “And sometimes that’s just a sandwich. Hence the—” He demonstrably shoved the last gigantic bite of sandwich into his mouth, just barely finishing his before she finished hers.
She stared at him, looking torn between laughing and leaving. “I should dump this iced tea over your head.”
He shrugged again. “It’s annoying when someone figures out your game.” His eyes slanted to hers. “Get used to it.”
“I thought you were a nice man.” Her eyes twinkled with something, squinting in a flirty way he knew she couldn’t quite control.
“I am a nice man. I also told you I was the best hunter out of everyone in my family. Which means I know how to read animals. And you, Diana, pretend to be fancy. But you’re an animal just like the rest of us.”
“You aren’t so hard to figure out, yourself,” she told him smugly. “All it took was some tits to the face and bam. Putty in my hand.”
He was enjoying this way too much. Hearing Diana say tits was making him want to laugh way too loud for this restaurant, bend her over backward, kiss her very soundly.
“Yeah, well, you’re in for a surprise. Because you may have gotten me to agree to buy them, but there’s no way in hell I’m wearing those glasses.”
She shrugged. “That’s your business, I suppose. Far be it for me to tell you what to do with a gift.”
“A gift?” He lowered his brows. “What do you mean a gift—” He groaned and dropped his face into his palm. It hadn’t occurred to him yet that he hadn’t paid anyone at the store for the glasses. This whole currency thing was a little new to him and he hadn’t questioned it when Diana had just arranged to have the glasses dropped off at his house when they were ready later in the week. “You bought those for me?”