Arianna Rose: The Arrival (Part 4) (11 page)

Ruddy bands streaked Desmond’s pale skin and she could see him grinding his teeth, preparing to lash out at her.  Her heart slapped against her ribs while her stomach somersaulted queasily.  Her cherished relationship with Desmond seemed to be unraveling before her and she was powerless to stop it.  She did not know why.  She did not know what power this cousin held over him, but guessed it was considerable
, for he had changed.

“Arianna, I don’t know what’s gotten in to you,” he boomed and her insides jerked and plummeted simultaneously.

“Darling cousin,” Amitt interceded, still glowering at Arianna.  “Don’t you see?  She feels threatened by me.”  She tipped her chin haughtily and shook her head so that her hair swished again and her breasts jiggled.  Pointed nipples poked against the gauzy material of her top and she skimmed Desmond’s arm with them.  “She is jealous,” Amitt added for good measure.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Arianna erupted.  She eyed Desmond.  “Is she for real?  Please tell me she is out of her ever-loving mind so I don’t completely lose my shit right here and now!”

She waited for Desmond to defend his oversexed cousin who seemed hell-bent on pursuing an incestuous relationship with him.  She was ready, ready to give him a piece of her mind before the turbulent swell of tears began raining down her cheeks.  But he did not.  His features softened and he tipped his head to one side and frowned.  The head-tilt, the gentle nod and small frown, he was looking at her as if she were pathetic, as if she were a mental patient. 

“Oh Arianna,” he said with exaggerated patience.  “Jealousy is not a becoming trait.  And neither is a swear-filled tirade.  Both are so…ugly.”  He crinkled his nose as if he smelled an offensive odor.  “You’re so much better than that.”

Arianna wanted to scream.  Every part of her raged at once.  How he was behaving, what he was saying, none of it made sense.  She felt as if she’d slipped down a rabbit hole and awakened in a crazy-ass fairyland where up was down and down was up, and lovers who left for a day returned transformed.  This Desmond who had come back did not seem like her Desmond at all.  And Arianna wanted out of her deranged wonderland. 

She took a deep breath, a feeble attempt to steady her stormy nerves.  “You are talking to me like I’m a mental patient,” she said in a voice far more calm and measured than she felt.  “And I don’t like it.”

“I’m sorry, love,” he replied and a faint glimmer of the Desmond who’d left shined through, giving her heart hope.  “It has been a crazy twenty-four hours and I have been through a terrible ordeal.  Right now I cannot think straight.  I am exhausted.  Perhaps we could hash this out later after I’ve gotten a few hours of sleep.”

Arianna nodded feebly, barely keeping her tears at bay.  He’d said the first sentence that even vaguely resembled the man she loved
.  “Sure,” she whispered and held out a hand for him to take.  In her mind she silently prayed he would take it, that he would free himself from his cousin’s snare; that he would choose her. 

When he took a step forward and interlaced his fingers with hers, her breath caught in
her chest.  He gave her hand a squeeze and she was awash with relief. 

She led him to their cabin, leaving Amitt to fold her arms across her chest and scowl. 

“What about Amitt?” Desmond asked.  “Where will she go?”

His concern for her seemed more reasonable than it had before. 

“I’ll see if Beth can put her up in her cabin.  She’s alone so it should be fine,” Arianna replied. 

“Thank you,” he said genuinely and lightly kneaded the
sensitive flesh between her thumb and index finger with his thumb.  The subtle gesture breathed up her arm like a warm sigh leaving goose bumps in its wake.  A corner of his mouth lifted into a small smile.

“I’m glad you’re back, Desmond,” Arianna couldn’t help but comment.  She felt certain he did not understand the way in which her sta
tement had been meant but didn’t care at the moment.  He wasn’t acting like a jerk for the time being.  Maybe it was just exhaustion that had tried his patience and distorted his personality.  Maybe his slinky, slutty-looking cousin was just overly affectionate and harmless.  Arianna simply did not know.  But she intended to find out the answers to each of her maybes, what-ifs and questions in the coming hours.  The time for speculation had ended.  She planned to deal with everything, Amitt included, by nightfall.

Chapter 7

Desmond
had marched straight to the bathroom and showered as soon as he’d entered the cabin.  When he’d finished, he’d collapsed onto the bed.  Arianna had hoped to coax some answers from him before he’d fallen asleep, but he’d drifted off not long after his head had barely dented the pillow. 

Arianna sat on the edge of the bed beside him, watched the gentle rise and fall of his torso.
  Everything about him was the same as when he’d left.  His fair skin looked like liquid sunshine poured over the powerful slopes of his bare chest and the bulging, never-ending ropes of taut muscle on his arms, yet something seemed different.  And while his appearance remained unchanged, his demeanor seemed off.  She could not pinpoint exactly what had shifted.  He’d claimed it was exhaustion, and she had supplemented that excuse with her own, adding that he had lost his father.  And no matter how strained their relationship had been, Agnon was his father, the only living family member Arianna had ever been made aware of.  Until now, that is.  Now a new relative had materialized from out of nowhere, Amitt. 

Amitt.  Her name burned on Arianna’s tongue like acid.  She wanted to reach
out her hand and slap Desmond for bringing the raven-haired bitch that oozed condescension like a festering wound oozed pus into their lives.  She knew it was irrational, and maybe even a bit unfair, to feel that way but could not help herself.  Amitt had gotten under her skin.  The way she’d stared down her nose at Arianna, with that look of conceit, as she clung to Desmond’s arm had incensed her in a way that was foreign to her.  Loving Desmond was unfamiliar enough.  Adding competition to that unfamiliarity, competition that was blood related, no less, only complicated matters more.  She wasn’t sure what to do, how to handle what had transpired.  In the past, when things became tricky or even remotely problematic in a relationship, she’d bail.  End of story.  And calling the brief couplings she’d been in
relationships
was a gross overstatement.  She’d always kept guys at arm’s length.  Keeping them a safe distance safeguarded her from exactly what she was feeling now: mixed up, possessive and angry.  But Desmond had been different.  He’d been the exception to her arm’s-length rule.  He’d penetrated her protective walls.  He’d seen her for what she was and had pledged his undying love for her.  She wondered whether Amitt was aware of that and enjoyed toying with her cousin’s love life.  She’d heard of sadistic people who manipulated and hurt others for sport, but never imagined Desmond would be connected to such a person.  But he was.  And Arianna had dumped her off on Beth, the one person she needed to talk to right now.

Arianna clenched her fist so tightly, her fingernails bit into the soft skin of her palm.  She needed to get away from him and get her thoughts straight before he woke.  She did not want to be reduced to a stammering fool as she had been earlier.  She needed to have her wits about her and not behave jealously, as Amitt had accused her of being in the clearing. 
She needed to talk to Beth.

She stood and decided not to waste another moment.  She headed out the door to Beth’s cabin. 
She hoped Amitt was asleep.  She did not want another run-in with her.  Not now.  The time for that would come in the future.  Of that, she was sure. 

She jogged the short path two cabins down and, a
fter rapping her knuckles against the flimsy door until they ached, Beth finally answered.  Her hair was disheveled and her eyes were heavy when she answered.  “Arianna, what the hell?” was her greeting.  “Is everything okay?”

“We’re not under attack, well, you’re not at least,
” Arianna answered and heard frustration well in her tone.

“What?” Beth scrunched her puffy features.  “It’s too early for riddles. 
First you dump that Elvira chick on me and I finally fall back asleep and now you’re here again.  What the hell?  Tell me what is going on right now or I am gonna shut this door in your face.”

“Nice.  Some friend you are!” she huffed and turned on her heels to leave.

“Arianna wait!  I’m sorry.  You know I’m not a morning person.  Come on, don’t go.  Come in.”

Arianna turned and looked at Beth.  A tattered gray cardigan was wrapped around her shoulder
s and she hunched, hugging her waist.  Her hair stood up on end and dark crescents looked like bruises beneath both eyes.  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.  Go back to sleep.  I’ll tell you about the whole Desmond thing later.”

“What Desmond thing? 
I know he’s back but that’s about it,” Beth said, her features suddenly more alert.

“He came back a little while ago.  And he wasn’t
alone, obviously,” Arianna added and looked past Beth into the small cottage at Amitt who lay impossibly still on her back asleep.  She could not mask the revulsion she felt for the woman. 

Beth’s eyes followed Arianna’s gaze.  “I take it you’re not a fan of sleeping beauty,” she said.

“No, not at all,” Arianna answered through her teeth.

“Come on. 
Let’s go next door.  Last night, my brothers told me they were getting up early to train.  Their cabin is empty.  We can talk there,” Beth waved her arm and said as she shut the door to her cabin, leaving Amitt alone. 

Arianna
followed Beth to the bungalow Dane and Jason shared.  As soon as they walked in, Beth pinched her nose.  “Yuck, it smells like feet and sweat in here!” she complained. 

Arianna laughed as she
stepped inside.  The smell was unpleasant but not nearly as bad as Beth made it out to be. 

“
Just give me a sec.  I need to brush my teeth.  I know these cabins always have a spare toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.  I’ll be right out,” Beth said and disappeared into the bathroom.  She reappeared minutes later, looking far more awake. 

“So who
is that chick he came back with and why does she have you so pissed,” Beth plopped on her brother’s bed and said as if they were in the middle of a conversation already.  “I mean, apart from the fact that she is basically naked.”

“
She
is supposedly his cousin and
she
is, like, six feet tall and a hundred twenty pounds, most of it legs and boobs.”

Beth looked at her perplexedly.  “
I saw that.  So?”

“So
he strolled out of the woods around this place and she strutted like a pageant queen clinging to him.”  Beth still did not seem to get why she was so upset and continued to look at her quizzically.  “She, Amitt is her name, was, as you can see, wearing that see-through getup and had her boobs pressed against his arm with nothing between them but material thinner than a tissue, rubbing up and down him and running her fingers up and down his arms.”

“Okay, that’s gross,” Beth commented and wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“Oh just wait.  It gets better.  This Amitt, kept looking me over, eyeing me up and down, and I was wearing this,” she said and splayed her hands out at her sides, “you know, no makeup, hair wet and in a braid, and she’s looking at me like I’m coated in horseshit or something.”  Arianna’s lips thinned and she ran her tongue over her teeth.  “Messed-up thing is, Desmond looked at me the same way she did.  And he seemed to enjoy all her petting and boob rubbing.  He even stuck up for
her
when she referred to me as a girl and called me jealous, raised his voice at me and everything.”  Arianna shook her head and closed her eyes, reliving the moment.  “You should have seen Amitt’s face when he was scolding me, the superior
fuck you
that was plastered on her forehead.”

Beth’s eyes bugged.  “What?  Are you freaking kidding me?
If I had known all that, I would have told her to go to hell when you brought her to me!  Damn!” Beth threw her hands in the air and let them land against her thighs with a slap.  “Who is this Amitt?  Have you heard of her before?”

“Nope.  This
morning, when he brought her here, was the first I’d heard of her.”

“So let me get all this straight.  Desmond left because he felt Agnon’s passing; not uncommon in families, especially ones with
power like theirs.  Then Desmond comes back with a cousin he’s never mentioned and she’s all over him and in your face.  Do I have it right?”

“You have the gist of it,” Arianna nodded.  “But if you had been there, if you had seen the way she was, and the way he was too, you would have freaked.”

“What do you mean
the way he was
?  I mean, you don’t know he was into her boobs all brushing up on him.”

“Um, yeah, I kind of do,” Arianna said tightly.  “His eyes were
, like, zeroed in on her gigantic nipples.  He didn’t look one bit uncomfortable with how she was acting either.  He didn’t pull away or even lean awkwardly.”

“Oh jeez, that is weird.”  Beth agreed.  “Maybe they’re close in that family.” Beth shrugged.