On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) (27 page)

“Thought you didn’t play video games.”

She didn’t respond. He walked over to her, and she barely spared him a glance as she battled a troll. And quickly died.

She snatched the headphones off her head and glared at him as if it was his fault. “This game sucks. It’s too damned hard.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes, the fuck, it is.”

Like he was gonna argue. The game did not suck. She just sucked at it. “How long you been playing?”

“Three hours. Three freaking hours of my life I’ll never be able to get back.”

“You like it.”

Her head fell forward in defeat. “I do.”

He stood her up, sat down, and resettled her on his lap. Her body was tense, not languid and malleable like it had been the night before.

“You’re naked,” she muttered.

“I’m also as hard as a fucking pike, but I don’t hear you saying anything about that.”

She tried to stand, but he held her around her waist with one arm while maneuvering the controller with his free hand. She relaxed a little when he hit the menu button and brought his hands together, resting the controller on her stomach. She leaned back against his chest, watching the screen as he went through the weapons, magical items, and tools she’d accumulated thus far. He shook his head in disgust and proceeded to delete her saved game.

“Hey.” She reared up, reaching for the controller, trying to pry it from his grasp. “That was
my
game.”

“We have to start at the beginning so you can learn what to do. You’re not going to beat the troll because you don’t have enough knowledge, skills, or the right weapons to beat him.”

She looked over her shoulder and scowled at him. He could tell she wanted to yell at him, but she also wanted to know how to defeat the creature. He waited as she worked it out. Eventually she squinted, giving him the evil eye. He made sure his gaze was stony, though he felt like grinning at her intimidation tactic. She turned and leaned back into him, crossing her arms over her chest to indicate she was still pissed. As if he gave a shit.

When she wiggled her ass, impatient for him to continue, he was caught in a dilemma. His dick urged him to throw the controller across the room so he could play his own game with her body.

“Show me already,” Sabrina demanded as she flicked her hand out toward the television screen.

His eyes darted between the controller and her breasts. Show her. What should he show her? How to play a game he’d mastered ten times over, or how to navigate the crown of his penis into her mouth? Handless. With her eyes closed. His grip loosened on the controller.
Show her.

She reached down and took the controller away from him. “To hell with it. I’ll work it out myself. I was doing fine before you interrupted me, anyway.”

“You’d died.”

“I would’ve figured it out. That’s what I did before you barged in.” She adjusted herself on his lap again, and he groaned. “And I’m not having sex with you, so you can tell your little friend to stand down, go back to sleep, or whatever it is they do when they’re not needed.”

“Hang around,” he said, taking back the controller and inputting her name.

“What?”

“They just hang around until they’re needed.”

He scrolled to the character she had chosen for herself before and selected it again. He went to the main weapons window and scrolled through the choices, pausing when he noticed her back vibrating against his chest. When he looked over at her, she was laughing silently.

He frowned. “What?”

She smiled, and his thumb twitched spastically over the bud of the controller. He wanted to suck her smile straight into him, store it away inside, unearthing it only when he was trapped in the dark, ugly place that sometimes descended over him.

His eyes flicked back to the TV. “Why did you choose the mallet? It’s too big for your character.”

She laid the back of her head on his shoulder. “I chose it because I wanted to beat my enemies into a bloody pulp.”

He flicked the cursor to the Genesis Sword. It didn’t look like much, but it would evolve into a powerful weapon of pure killing beauty. He clicked on it.

“Why that one?” she asked.

Was she aware her foot was stroking up and down his shin?

“It’s light and sharp. The best choice for this character. You can move easily with it, and it gives you distance—not too much but enough. Always go with something that’s strong, dependable, and cuts clean.”

“Reminds me of you.”

“Exactly like me. The best choice for you.”

She snorted and snatched the controller when he chose garments which left her character almost nude beneath the black cloak. Rude.

The final area of selection was her magical abilities. Here they had a problem. Big problem. He’d helped her to see reason with the first two items, but she wasn’t budging on the last two. When he tried to wrestle the controller away from him, she bit him. To stop himself from pinning her beneath him and biting her back while sticking his dick into her hard and fast, he closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and breathed, because it was pointless to try and reason with a woman who obviously had something against the state.

When he opened his eyes, she was sitting straight up in his lap, her legs bent with her feet steepled together between his knees. She had chosen healing as her third magical selection, switching it to her primary magic.

Ridiculous.

At least he’d talked her into Medusa Magic, which allowed her character to temporarily freeze opponents, and Ethereal Magic, the ability to move about unseen.

“Sabrina, this character needs more offensive magic. She’s physically weaker. To win, you—”

“Black Thorn is my character. I’ve given you your say, but I’m keeping healing and choosing…”

She scrolled to the glittery pouch and selected it. “Glamour.”

By the gods and devils of torment, she was killing him.

“Oh hush,” she said when the metal of his blade rapidly tapped against the wooden part of the seat frame. His hand stilled. “Black Thorn will need this when she’s talking to those tight-lipped villagers, or when she has to be seen as someone or something that will help her in her quest.”

Her quest would end quickly with these bullshit choices. He tried reason one more time. “Sabrina, there’s a creature on the tenth level that won’t—”

“Look,” she snapped, turning back to him. “I let you dress Black Thorn in straps of skimpy material and didn’t say shit. I’m choosing healing and glamour, so follow my earlier lead and don’t say shit else about it.”

She turned back to the screen and pressed the button to begin the opening narration and animation.

He settled back and relaxed against the sofa. “You’re not going to win.”

“Oh, I’ll win,” she said, standing up and walking over to the television.

He liked watching the sway of her hips encased in the hugging underwear she wore. His friend twitched. When she crouched down and pulled the headphones from the console, allowing the ethereal music to permeate the front room, his breath quickened as he remembered her kneeling on her futon as he slammed into her over and over without restraint.

“I’ll win just so I can rub it in your face.”

She turned and paused, her gaze automatically moving to the part of him silently trying to make her see it was the joystick she should be playing with. She moistened her lips, her chest rising and falling a little more shallowly. Was she remembering the feel of him thrusting inside her? Remembering how her satin vagina pulled like a tourniquet around him, squeezing him until he burst open inside her, drenching her fruit with his cream.

He didn’t utter a word. He wanted her to be compelled by her own need. When her gaze slid up his chest to his face, and came to rest at a point behind his head on the wall, his chest deflated, though his dick continued to hold out hope.

“Either put it away or get out of my seat.”

His eyebrow rose as he contemplated her long and hard, waiting for her to realize she didn’t own anything in over a hundred-mile radius except for the few contents packed in her bags. The rest was his, including her. He had handcuffs in his duffel bag. He could strip her naked, secure her to the headboard of his bed, and let his friend do the rest.

With the hand holding the Bowie, he waved her over to him.

She tried to suppress a triumphant smile but failed spectacularly. She scrambled back to him and adjusted herself around his erection again. He watched as she went on her adventure across Moreland. His blade, tapping against the wood at a steady clip, drew his focus away from the piece of flesh straining between her open legs.

She paused the game and looked back at him in exasperation.

“Just play the fucking game and don’t say shit else about it,” he said flatly, mirroring her earlier words.

She shrugged and turned, lying fully back against him, doing exactly as he commanded. A short time later he wanted to drag his blade across his throat.

She had to be the most aggravating, nonsensical player in the history of people across the world that had played any game ever. She did what she wanted to do and rarely took his well-thought-out advice. It was divine intervention that made him throw his blade across the room when she bought another cloak instead of the magically created shield in the Elven store.

Twenty minutes later she wanted to free a supposedly magical squirrel for fifty silver pieces from a swindling peddler he’d encountered in his own play simply because she wanted a partner to share in her adventure.

She made absolutely no sense.

“I bought the squirrel, Zeus. Drop it.”

“Fucking squirrels aplenty on the other side of the door, but I don’t see you inviting them in here to ‘share your adventure.’”

“You got one more time to throw my words back up at me.”

“What, not two?” He smirked, grunting in surprise as her puny elbow jackknifed against his ribs. If she showed the same kind of assaultive skill in the game, she might have a raindrop’s chance in hell of beating the level.

Zeus tensed in confusion as he watched her move to the village nursery and buy seeds to donate to the village garden. Why would she do that?

She looked over her shoulder, eyes wide. “What? It’s a poor village and the kids need food.”

“ENOUGH,” ZEUS SNAPPED. He stood and sent her tumbling to the floor in an undignified heap. If not for the ache in her hip and her strong survival instinct, she would have laughed.

That said, she still had to pretend to search for the controller to hide her humor. The bronzed psycho godling didn’t stand a chance against a vindictive Samora female with a point to prove. Maybe he’d think twice before trying to make decisions about what she should and should not do. Even in a fantasy realm.

“Hey,” she said, pausing the game. Zeus stopped before disappearing down the hall, apparently too disgusted to turn around and look back at her. Which was fine. It allowed her to openly ogle his tight ass, wide back, and strong legs. His skin, the palest butterscotch, made her want to lick him from foot to head. Again. “You’re still going to teach me how to protect myself with a knife, aren’t you?”

“If she fights with a knife the way her character fights with a sword, I’m going to have to buy her a gun and call it a fucking day.”

She didn’t know if he was talking to himself, some unseen entity, or to her.

She got up, saved her game, and turned off the television. “You know, I was thinking. Maybe it would be better if you trained me to use a sword instead of knives. Maybe it would help me be as dangerous as Black Thorn.”

He walked away.

No sense of humor. She smiled, opening the curtains. The window she looked out of was crystal clear from the cleaning she’d given it the night before. Last night the forest had felt like the entryway into an alternative universe, where flying demons swooped down from the tops of primordial volcano craters. Today it looked like a forest. A simple forest.

Turning, she smothered a scream when she saw Zeus standing inches away from her. She thought she saw a shadow of a smile floating around his mouth, but then it was gone.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“What am I supposed to do, go hunt squirrel for you or something?”

“It’s your turn to cook.”

“I think we pretty much established last night that I clean and
you
cook.”

“One hunger or the other, Sabrina. You decide.”

He turned and walked to the back of the house. Demanding, self-centered prick, she thought walking to the kitchen to inspect his refrigerator and cabinets.

She took sausage from the freezer, pulled a box of blueberry muffin mix from the cabinet, had Zeus bring in three potatoes, and in under an hour, the table was filled with home-fried potatoes, sausage, muffins, sliced apples, and cranberry juice. Sometime during her meal prep, Zeus had dressed and settled against the kitchen wall next to his bedroom door, silently sharpening and oiling over two dozen blades of various shapes and sizes.

“Go wash your hands and come to the table before it gets cold.”

He sheathed some blades against his body and rolled others in a long suede and leather piece of material which had slots for every blade. He stored the roll in his bedroom, walked to the bathroom, and quickly returned to the kitchen, drying his hands on a large towel. Sitting, he looked at her with expectation.

She snorted and sat in the seat across from him. She served herself, thinking his food would go stale and moldy before she did the same for him.

Sabrina felt at ease as they ate in near silence.

“Food’s good,” Zeus eventually said. “Too bad you can’t play like you cook.”

She switched a mouthful of muffin to the right of her mouth. “Do you really want to go there?”

“It’s true. You can’t play worth a damn, and you cook better than you let on.”

“So what if it’s true. I’ve been cooking most of my life; I’ve only been playing the game half the morning. If you said I played the game better than I cooked, then I’d have to wrestle you into submission until you changed your mind.”

He stilled and pinned her with a lust-filled gaze. “You play the game better than you cook.”