“No.” Tension oozed from his voice.
“What if I shoved my breasts in your face and then gave you a blow job?”
He glanced over at her and grinned. “I admit, it wouldn’t help, but I’d still enjoy it.”
At least he was smiling now. Edie toyed with one of her short braids. “How about we raincheck that until later and we go check out the convention for a bit?’
“Or we could do that,” he agreed, pocketing his phone and extending his hand to her. She got up from the bed and took it, and smiled when he leaned down to kiss her again. She could get used to all this attention.
***
And people thought cat ladies were weird, Edie mused as she watched a “knight” with purple hair fight a man dressed as a pink unicorn in a duel to the death. So far today? She’d seen a lot of weird. She and Magnus had strolled through the convention, admiring booths and seeing the sights. Magnus explained that it wasn’t an official gaming convention, but there was still a big “gamer presence” here at the con, and every time they passed a crowded booth, they paused to see what the fuss was about. Whenever it was video-game related, she could practically see the wheels in Magnus’s head turning. It was interesting to watch him, knowing that he was seeing what others found interesting about games and mentally stowing away that information for later.
There was food, of course—Edie’s favorite—and at one booth, Magnus had bought her a pair of cat ears to wear on her head. It had made him smile despite his constant frowns as he checked his phone, so she’d agreed to it. Magnus had been approached several times by more fans, all of whom he gave autographs to (thankfully not on body parts) and answered questions for. Inevitably, someone would ask about Levi, and Magnus had to make excuses for his brother. He was running late. He’d had car trouble. He was sick. Each time Magnus gave an answer, he delivered it with a smile, but his hand tightened on hers, and she knew he was stewing at the fact that Levi wasn’t here.
Then it was time for Magnus’s panel. The enormous room was packed, but Edie managed to find a seat in the audience between a Brony and a Sailor Scout. From her vantage point, she watched the men on the panel discuss Warrior Shop, its infamous buyout for two billion dollars, and what the Sullivan brothers had planned for the future. Magnus quickly had the panelists—and the audience—won over with his charisma and humor, and when he deflected questions about his upcoming projects, it was good natured.
They asked questions about Warrior Shop, the ideas behind it, the creativity, the coding, and Magnus talked for what felt like hours, discussing how he and Levi had coded it while in college, then shopped it around to investors, and when that failed, they’d put it up on the Internet themselves by maxing out their credit cards to pay for everything.
Occasionally a creativity question would come up, concepts about the game, the story behind the characters, and Magnus would deflect those questions with a smile. “My brother, Levi, could answer those if he were here, but unfortunately he’s stuck in traffic.”
And each time he avoided a question, Edie gave a little wince of sympathy. Where was Levi? Why was he hanging Magnus out to dry when he should have been here assisting him? Why was it that Magnus always had to cover for his brother?
When the panel was over, Magnus and the others got a standing ovation, but Edie’s heart hurt for Magnus. She could see the lines of tension on his face and knew they had to do with his brother. Why couldn’t Levi be reliable and devoted . . . like Bianca?
Then again, Bianca was sometimes devoted to the point of smothering, so maybe there was a happy medium somewhere out there.
Ignoring the ache in her knee, Edie headed for the stage and waited for Magnus to finish greeting people. She smiled brightly at him when his attention fixed on her. “That was a great talk.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” he told her, grabbing her arm and pulling her along behind him. “Come with me. We’re going to go back to our room.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, perplexed, and then Magnus was dragging her behind him through the crowds at high speed. Her knee protested the quick movements after hours of walking, but she suspected Magnus was lost in thought at the moment and had forgotten about her old injury. He was always super careful of her during sex, so it wasn’t like him to be thoughtless. She did her best to keep up, stumbling after him.
They crossed the large convention floor and rounded the corner to the nearest elevator. The line to go upstairs stretched around the corner. Magnus considered it, then shook his head. “This way,” he said, dragging Edie along again. “There’s another elevator down here—”
He stopped short, nearly running into Levi, who was pulling a carry-on behind him. Three costumed girls surrounded him. At the sight of his brother, Levi’s face lit up. “Hey, bro!” His gaze moved along to Edie, holding hands with Magnus, and his smile faded a bit. In fact, he looked downright unhappy to see Edie with Magnus, which stung. “Hi, Edie.”
“Levi,” Magnus said, his voice utterly pleasant and so out of character for how he was acting. “Glad to see you could make it.”
“Oh man,” Levi said, throwing his hands up dramatically. “These ladies will tell you, traffic is a beast out there. I’ve been stuck for hours—”
“I’m sure,” Magnus said, cutting him off. “Edie and I were just leaving.”
Levi tilted his head. “Why’s she here anyhow?”
Magnus’s eyes narrowed. “She’s a consultant for a game I’m thinking about creating. One with cats.”
“She is?”
Edie looked up at Magnus in surprise. She was? Why wasn’t he telling his brother she was here with him as his date?
“We can talk about it later,” Magnus said to Levi. “We’re going upstairs. We need to rest.” He started to head for the stairs, and for the first time, Edie protested. “I can’t,” she told him. “The stairs will kill me.”
Magnus’s expression softened as he looked down at her. “I’m being thoughtless, aren’t I? Are you okay? Do you need to sit down for a moment?”
“Oh, shit,” Levi said, then gestured toward the lobby. “That’s right. You want me to get a wheelchair for you, Edie?”
“I don’t need a fucking wheelchair,” she told him, irritated.
He gave her an abashed look. “Gee, I’m sorry. I was just trying to be helpful.”
The other girls gave her a horrified look, as if she were the one out of line. Fuck that. She threw her hands up. She wasn’t an invalid. She just had a bad goddamn knee and had spent too much time on it today. “I am going to go wait in line for the elevator,” she told Magnus. “I’ll see you up at the room. Why don’t you and Levi go have a talk somewhere?”
He moved forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be up shortly.”
She nodded, and the brothers left. She noticed that as Magnus moved away, Levi was giving them another one of those strange looks. She shot him the bird, because if he thought his brother could do better than a girl like her, he could go fuck himself. She was just as normal as the last girl. Maybe a bit bitchier, but it was because people like Levi tried to offer her a wheelchair and everyone else acted like she was the jerk for being offended.
Everyone but Magnus, that is. Brownie points in his direction for that, at least.
Eventually it was Edie’s turn for the elevator, and she went up to their room, grabbed a drink from the minibar, and filled the bathtub with scorching hot water. Icing her knee would probably be better for it, but fuck it. She was going to hurt in the morning anyhow. Might as well enjoy a hot bath and a drink. As the tub filled, she downed her tiny bottle of alcohol and grabbed two more, because she was feeling good.
Within ten minutes, she was toasted. The bubble bath was heavenly, the tub a luxury she never got to enjoy at home since the tub was upstairs with Bianca. And she was having a great damn time, because being in the big, bubbled tub reminded her of the scene from Pretty Woman. It was a similar situation, wasn’t it? Big sexy guy with ridiculous amounts of money got a great hotel room and his broke-ass booty call got to enjoy the bathroom. Of course, in Pretty Woman, the hotel wasn’t full of nerds in costumes, and Edie wasn’t a hooker, but those were semantics.