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"Why thank you," he declared sarcastically. "I swear to God, you'll be the death of me one day."
foreshadowing?! oh no Jandro!! :(
"Fair enough. I'll prove it. You two want outta here?" That got our interest and the kid's eyes sparkled with glee. "I'll post your bail. You can walk out of here in an hour, tops."
Gunner
"Hey, hold up," I called after him. "What's your name?" "Gunner," he answered. "Gunner Youngblood." I stole a glance at Jandro. Maybe this preppy Gunner cat wasn’t so bad after all.
Nothing but romance and poetry, being the president’s old lady.
bahahhaa
You’d think these men were caged animals with the way they acted with no motorcycles between their legs.
He was utterly in love with our pretty medic and still passed her off to Jandro like some prized whore. I couldn’t begin to understand it. If she were mine, any man that looked at her with desire would feel my knife at his throat. Women had to be cared for, protected. Especially in a world like this. And fuck me, I did care for her. Maybe too much.
OH get off your high horse Gunner and just GET INTO THE POLY Relationship already!
I’d never forget the way that bird looked at me, with the wisdom of humanity and so much more, through an animal’s eyes. Never would I forget what happened afterward. My vision didn’t just return to my blinded eye, but I saw what I never could before. While my occasional cell mates fumbled in the darkness, I could see everything as if it were broad daylight. When my torturers came down with flashlights and had to blink to adjust to the darkness, I saw every movement and expression.
And that bird looked exactly like the one that rode around on Gunner’s shoulder all day.
Despite knowing he could see through Horus at will, the gift of sight from my childhood felt deeply personal.
No one could take anything away from me if they didn’t know about it.
My eyes lifted to look over her shoulder at the dog watching us with more wisdom that any animal should have. How would Mari react if she knew I was just the instrument? I didn’t choose who I killed, but followed the orders of someone else.
But I never heard voices in my head until I found Hades. And it was always a variation of the same sentence. His life is yours to take.
Their lives are yours. Reap what has been sown.
“Yeah, he…saw things, sometimes.” Reaper’s brow furrowed as he looked at me, as if gauging my reaction. “He had bad seizures as a kid, and had like, visions.”
He didn’t understand his brother’s ability any more than the fast healing and endurance of his dog. It was just a part of his life.
The more I got to know Reaper, the more I saw how big his heart was. He just kept it protected, wrapped in steel.
I was really doing this—seeing two men. And feeling intense, vastly different things for both of them.
On some level I knew every caress and kiss after that trip was a silent thank-you. A wordless whisper of appreciation for accepting him, loving him, despite what he perceived as flaws.
“You’ve got to get me out! He’s going to feed my balls to his fucking dog!” I turned to the door, Dallas following after me. “I hope Hades finds them delicious.”
wish I could do more, but I don’t know what to say,” I sighed. “I can heal cuts and fix broken bones, but there’s no fixing men being idiots.”
“We see it as mistreatment, they see it as keeping a family together,” she whispered sadly. “That sums up why the Collapse happened in the first place, Mari. Men have never been able to see things from our perspective.” I opened my mouth to argue, but no sound came out. I never thought of it from that perspective before, but realized she was right.
“What am I, chopped liver?” I grunted around my cigar. “That’s what you get for having a dog, Pres,” Benji, one of Gunner’s younger guards, chuckled. “They seem like a chick magnet until you get the girl. Then you realize she loves the dog more than you.”
saw her stealing glances at him, but he stayed mum like a coward and didn’t so much as look at her. She was only hoping for a hello from her friend, even my caveman ass could see that. And for him to ignore her was just rude as hell.
We leave each other be, for the most part, but even a loner like him doesn’t like to be alone all the time.”
He was a decadent dessert, too delicious to be good for me, but I didn’t care.
“I want to be one of the reasons that you feel happy.”
Once those were in place, I grabbed the handful of padlocks from the side table. Moving to the hinged side of the door, I closed the eight latches installed there before slapping the locks in place.
What the hell? You lock shadow in at night!!!!??
Despite the necessity of it, locking him in always made me feel weird. Something was wrong about it. We did this nightly ritual for a month and a half now, and I had yet to get used to it.
Well yeah you should
Feel weird!
“Only gods and stars can see us, but we can see everything.”
I knew how to bring women to bed, but wasn’t the best at keeping them. Her, I desperately wanted to keep. But it was a two-way street, and my mouth ran before my brain.
“You’re stuck with me, little butterfly,” I mumbled, sleep and relaxed bliss settling into my limbs. “You just had to go and make me fall in love with you.”
In reality, I was waiting for my dog, the god who possessed him, or whatever the fuck he was, to say anything else. But he just looked at me, curled up in his bed. I watched him lick his paws until the silence became too much.
I chose you, because you are the perfect instrument.
You know loss. You know death as intimately as a lover, yet you do not fear it. Reap for me, and I will protect those you hold dear.
“Is she really so much better than me?” she asked without turning to face me. Despite myself, I huffed out a harsh laugh as I lit my cigarette, then sucked in the first drag and savored it before I exhaled. Hades said he would protect Mari, so I felt zero guilt at the words that left my mouth. “In every way imaginable.”
I didn’t know if I was fixated on helping because of what happened between us, or just that I tried to fix everything in general.
Jandro once described him as feral, and it sure seemed that way. The tortured, haunted beast named Shadow was still skittish, but slowly trusting me more.
"Did you draw that?" I asked, turning my head to nod at the sketchbook as we passed by his desk. "It's beautiful." He leaned over and slammed the book shut with so much force, the desk and lamp shook under the weight of his hand. "No," he growled. "It's nothing."
He is the beast from Beauty and the beast personified.
“You tried to pin me as a traitor to this club. But you can’t even stay loyal to your own fucking wife.” A low murmur of, “Ohhhh” rose up from the crowd, making Gunner wheel around unsteadily to address them. “Fuck all of you!” he yelled. “Most of you can’t stay loyal to your women either! You pass them around and it’s fucking shameful!”
“There was nothing you could do.” I stroked my thumb across his face. “Human life is fragile. Weapons and wars aren’t what kill us most often, it’s those tiny, single-celled organisms designed to destroy us from inside.”
A river of blood followed and I tossed Python’s family jewels over my shoulder. Hades jumped in the air to catch them like he was catching a frisbee.
So gross
“I don’t give a fuck even if you are a monster.” I placed my knees outside of his thighs on the mattress. “You’re my monster.”
To only take and not give. Part of my own pleasure was in giving, to hear those sexy masculine moans and watch them shudder as they lost control.
“You’re the only one that’s hurting her here,” he called after me. “And yourself. All because you won’t get out of your own way.”
Yes, exactly. Get out of your own way.
You don’t have to make it all weird just because she’s female.” “What?” I barked out in frustration. “Have we met before?” He burst out laughing, practically falling into me. “Fuck me, man. You’ve got a sense of humor now too! She really is rubbing off on you.”
The other men came and went while I was the only constant. They all taught me various things with one overarching concept becoming clearer as I got older—men were good and women were evil. My time in prison was the start of me unlearning that idea. The male guards harassed and abused me. Jandro was the only male staff member that was kind to me. The female workers were afraid of me. That was the pattern I noticed after spending time out in the real world. I had feared women all my life and now I was the stuff of their nightmares.
The leather jacket was already well-worn with lines and creases telling the story of its previous owners. It still fit like a glove when I slid it on, wrapping me in a new kind of armor. The type of armor that told onlookers I found safety in the arms of the most dangerous men in the Southwest.
“What are you bringing to trade for goods?” “Drugs, of course.” I shot her a wry smile. “They’re what got me here from East Texas. Pain pills, sedatives, amphetamines, you name it. If you want to feel something, there’s a pill for it.” “Look at you, little dope slinger.”
Dallas wasn’t in love with Mari, but they had grown close and he considered her family. Every man behind me did. We were going to war for her.
“There’s footholds and edges to grab.” Jandro wedged his foot into a little nook in the rock, then pulled himself up a few feet, arms and legs out to the side like a gecko.
hee hee a funny visual
