I flick her arm and she blinks at me in shock. “You didn’t need to get all philosophical on me, I was just giving you a hard time. Please, tell me to fuck off as often as you want,” I chuckle with amusement, grabbing her hand and picking up where we left off. “Hell, start screaming obscenities at the trees for all we care, gorgeous. No need to read so much into it.” I wink, teasing and keeping her hand in mine for another few miles.
The sound of wolves howling makes her tense, but it just makes the rest of us groan in annoyance.
Ares sneers in their direction, flipping them off as Rin starts snickering. “Damn wolves; always trying to get a glimpse of our dicks.”
Rin can’t keep the smile out of her voice. “Is interspecies breeding a no go?”
He turns to her in confusion. “What? No, it’s just,” he trails off, looking uncomfortable.
She waggles her eyebrows at him. “Hung like a horse or something?”
His annoyance fades as he barks out a harsh laugh, just as enamored with the girl as the rest of us. He can’t seem to get the admission out, so I take pity on him.
“It’s the spikes. Feline shifters have penile spines and the wolves like to give us a hard time about it.”
She blinks a few times as she tries to temper her reaction. “Are they, um, like that all of the time?”
Ares starts cursing and looks about two seconds from whipping it out to prove a point, but she releases my hand to hold hers up in surrender, laughing. “So you can only jack off as men,” she nods stoically, but the effect is ruined by her snickering. “Makes sense.”
I roll my eyes. “We don’t have opposable thumbs in those forms, so we weren’t going to anyway,” I defend.
She swipes a hand across her forehead, striding ahead with a confidence she really shouldn’t feel while everything’s pitch black. “Well that’s a relief. And here I thought I was alone on the weird genital front. Was worried about startingthatawkward conversation, so this is a load off, really.”
I become rooted to the spot in shock, Ares only a second behind me. We share a look then pivot to Osiris, because of any of us, he seems to have the best read on our mate.
“I mean,”he stutters, trying to rein in his shock.“I’ve never seen her naked. But she’s our mate no matter what’s going on down there. Like you all haven’t sucked a dick at least once anyway. We’ll figure it out, it’s not important.”
“I haven’t,”Ares points out and I just shake my head at how absurd the conversation turned.
“Well now this is twice as awkward,”Osiris states before shutting down the connection and I’m pretty sure my stomach is going to hurt for days at how hard I’m laughing.
Rin, oblivious to our inner conference, just continues unperturbed. “Like a venus fly trap down there.” She mimes the teeth clamping shut with her hands and tears start to leak from the corners of my eyes. “They call me the mantis in the city; one and done,” she finishes melodramatically and we all just fucking lose it.
Ares braces his hands on his knees, face red and struggling to breathe while I fall on my ass, laughs bubbling out as I gasp for breaths while tears stream down my cheeks. Even Osiris’ body is shaking with silent laughter and I can’t tell you the last time I’ve let go this much.
Every time we try to talk, someone wheezes and starts the process all over again. Our hike is slow going like this, someone always stopping as they dissolve into an immature fit.
“You are absolutely perfect,” I manage to gasp out, throwing an arm over her shoulders and kissing the top of her head. “You put even my weird to shame.”
Ares smiles.“I haven’t seen you this happy in a long time.”
I think I’m already in love with her. It’s way too soon for that, right? I’m being an obsessive weirdo. But fuck, man…
“Not weird,” he assures me.“And you’re not alone.”
Twelve
Ares
“Mantis? Why the hell didn’t you stop me?” Rin hisses at Osiris upstairs, underestimating our hearing.
I’d clue her in, but honestly? The way she gets into one sided arguments with my brother is one of the highlights of my day. I’m not sure it will score me any points in her favor when she finds out that we can pretty much hear anything happening within the house no matter how much she whispers.
Like the way she snores, but Osiris made us all swear never to bring that up to her face.
“They’re going to think I need to be medicated,” she continues and I share a grin with Cole as we finish cooking lunch.
By the time we got home, there was no way we could crawl into bed or our sleep schedules would be trashed to hell. It was worth it though, exhaustion aside, and I would gladly do it again.
