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I shake my head and squirm, trying to get up. Hardness that is not his muscular thigh presses against my hip and I stop moving fast. How long has he been this way? Do his brothers know?
"Losing a sibling is devastating. If you need to cry, cry," Orion says.
And he knows, doesn't he? He lost Atlas for a whole year when they were children.
"We're not weak men. We can handle a woman's tears." Zeus's tone brooks no argument.
Was Tino weak? I would have staunchly denied it five years ago, but looking back, I know he wasn't the husband I needed. Meeting Atlas has forced me to look at the past through different eyes.
There's no ignoring the stark difference between the two men.
"I am not Tino," Atlas says, reading my mind.
"No, you aren't. In so many ways," I whisper under my breath.
"He sure as hell isn't," Orion says, like he's judging my dead husband and not favorably.
Zeus grunts in agreement. It must be his go to sound. Another thing he has in common with Atlas. I wonder if Orion does it too.
"The more I learn about Tino, the more satisfying I find it that you don't think I'm like him, but I want to know exactly what you mean by that," Atlas says.
Bat ears is another common genetic trait, it seems.
I sigh. "I'm not spending dinner talking about my dead husband. He is in the past. I am also not eating sitting on your lap."
"Why not?" His arm settles over my lap like a steel band.
The silent message is clear. I'm not going anywhere.
"It's not polite, Atlas."
"I don't care."
"Maybe your brothers do."
"It's weird, I'll give you that," Orion says.
I frown at Atlas. "I told you."
"It's not that you're sitting on his lap," Orion clarifies. "It's that my baby brother wants a woman in his personal space at all."
Is Orion trying to imply that Atlas, Mr. Handsy himself, has an issue with people in his personal space? Because I don't believe it. He's always invading mine.
Not that I mind.
Somehow, I find myself sharing a plate of food with Atlas. But I draw the line when he tries to feed me.
"I have my own fork," I say with asperity, grabbing said fork. "I'll stab you with it if you try to feed me like a child in front of your brothers."
"Does that mean you don't mind him doing it when we aren't around?" Orion again.
I give him the stink eye. "None of your business."
There are so many lies of omission in my life that I will not lie about anything else. And the image of sitting in Atlas's lap with a blindfold over my eyes, and my hands tied together, while he feeds me has my ovaries sending messages to all my other lady bits.
I'm so wet, it's a miracle I don't slide right off Atlas's thighs.
"You will tell me whatever is putting that look on your face later."
