I turn to face him and give him a droll stare. “Dare couldn’t hurt me if she tried—not that she ever would.”
“Dare? You gave it a name?” Gunnar looks around like someone might be playing a prank on him.
“Her, and no, she told me her name.”
“She talks to you?” Grim blinks several times, looking quite mystified.
“Yes,” I answer slowly, thinking they might actually all be the slow ones.
Calix purses his lips and gives a humph. “Who knew.” He turns around and starts putting the groceries away again.
“Back to the business of you not leaving…” I may be easily distracted, but I’m not that bad.
“Works out perfectly, really.” Gunnar lifts his lips in a mockery of a smile. “We can answer your questions, you can get to know us, and we can go from there.”
Grim lets out a soft sigh.
Several thoughts collide in my head at once. On one hand, it’s what I’ve always secretly longed for. Companions. On the other hand, I don’t trust them, and what’s to say they won’t just leave me whenever they feel like it. Sure, they say they’ll stay, but no one ever does. But that’s not true either. Uncle has been returning to visit me since I was a child and, when I think about it, so has Grim.
I look over at him, searching past the perfect exterior of dark hair and the chiseled jaw, trying to see what’s beneath. Grim sucks in a breath of air, it whistles past his lips and his chest expands. I watch as he holds it, not taking his gray eyes off me. “You’ll answer my questions?”
Grim exhales slowly. “To the best of my ability, yes.”
I narrow my eyes on him. “What does that mean?”
“It means we might not have all the answers, Damiana, but we’ll do our best,” Calix answers, before picking up a huge chunk of meat from the island, and holding it in his hands as if he’s waiting for my response.
“Why should I trust you, any of you?” I don’t meet Grim’s eyes when I ask. It seems he may be the only one who ever really tried to help me.
“You can trust us,” Gunnar announces, causing Calix to hang his head back on his shoulders and groan at the brute’s tone. “You trusted me to stay in your house and to seek me out at the club.” Gunnar makes an effort to soften his voice.
“That was before I knew you guys abandoned me,” I argue, speaking the truth.
“None of us really abandoned you, Damiana.” Calix sets the meat back down on the counter and holds up his hands to stop me when I open my mouth to argue. “I know if feels like that now, but we’ve all been around more than you know. We’ve all tried to help you along the way, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Give me…give us,” he amends begrudgingly, “a chance to prove that to you.”
Could that be true, or is it just wishful thinking on my part? “You better not do anything to scare my friends away, and I’m still not cleaning up after you,” I warn.
I’m smarter than this. I shouldn’t be letting them stay, but there’s some part of me that wants them to. Stupid loneliness.
Grim pulls out a stool from under the island, and he places his hand on my back, urging me forward to sit. I jerk away from him a little. I’m not ready for him, or any of the others for that matter, to touch me.
My hormones and head don’t always agree on the order in which I should get what I want. I’m hoping my head will win this battle and hold out for answers, while my body just wants to jump any one of them right here in the kitchen.
I eye Gunnar while he starts helping Calix put away the groceries. Something about him puts me on edge more than the others. I’ve never been one for an angry fuck, but I feel like I could give it to him good.
Grim doesn’t acknowledge the way I spurned his touch. He just pulls out the stool next to me and takes a seat. He inspires a different kind of lust. He’s always so calm and in control, and I’d like to see him tied to my bed, with my black sheets under him and the black blindfold over his eyes. Nothing else. I bet I could make him squirm.
I put my elbows on the counter and cover my eyes with my fingers, while massaging my temples with my thumbs. “What were we talking about upstairs?” I blurt. I have to get these thoughts out of my head.
“You asked why you can’t always sense the truth from us,” Grim supplies without an ounce of hesitation.
“Right, right, and you said you had a theory,” I murmur, recalling the beginnings of the conversation, and urging him to continue.
“Telling whether or not someone is lying to you is a defense mechanism. Maybe some part of you knows you don’t need to use that awareness with me, us,” Grim concludes, amending his slipup.
“Or, you could be blocking me somehow. I just learned about wards, there are a lot of things I’m sure I don’t know about.”
“Wards are cast bywitches,” Gunnar states, sneering the last word. “We aren’t witches.”
