Lark gave her a hug, kissing her cheek. “Hey you.”
“Hey yourself. Thanks for the escort. I’m going to stick around here and catch a ride down south.”
“You’re not.”
Lark and Helena both turned, surprised by Faine’s rumble of disagreement. Simon just burst out laughing.
“I’m not?” Helena gave him a look that would have sent any other person running. But not this giant. No, he just looked back.
“You’re not. You’re going to my house and you’re going to rest for a day and then we will go wherever we’re needed next.”
“You have a house here too?”
“I have multiple houses. It’s a smart thing to have places you can retreat to when necessary.” He shrugged, looking every bit like a prince as he did so.
“You’ve been appointed my guardian?”
“I believe we’ve already discussed this issue. You need a keeper sometimes because without one you will run yourself into the ground. In case you’ve forgotten, and let me hasten to add that I have not, you nearly died today. You stopped an explosion, and in doing so you bled from the nose and mouth. You need to sleep. Not nap, like you did earlier. You need to eat a real meal and then you need to have a hot bath and then you need to sleep for an uninterrupted eight hours. Then you’ll be well enough to go about saving the world and risking your life again.”
Lark gave Helena a wide-eyed look. “So when did this happen?”
Helena threw her hands up in the air. “It’s like I’m not even here.”
“I’m taking Molly home. Everyone else is going home or to the hotel. I’ll talk with you later. Just let me know where you end up.” Gage gave her a one-armed hug before disappearing with Molly, who gave her two thumbs up and a wink.
“We should get out of the open.” Simon held a hand out to Lark, who looked back and forth between Helena and Faine.
Lark pulled her aside. “They’re going to hear everything we say, but let’s pretend they can’t, okay? You can stay with us. There’s plenty of room. Or you can go back to Los Angeles. I do think he’s got a point. If you go back home, Mom is going to show up at your place with a basket full of goop, tea and tinctures and she will make you consume them all while covered in sticky stuff that will make you itch out the poison or whatever. And then she’ll make you tempeh loaf. Or you can stay here, have steak, some good scotch and cheesecake. While you tell me when you and Faine hooked up.”
“Is this supposed to be a choice? Mom’s tempeh loaf or letting that giant wolf over there tell me what to do?”
Lark laughed. “You fucked a Lycian and, from the looks of it, he’s not just interested in a few days between the sheets. They latch on and then you’re done.”
“I boned him, I didn’t marry him.”
“I’m not a wolf,” Faine called out, amusement clear in his tone.
“Beast, Lycian. Whatever. Bossy, and the sex wasn’t so good I’ve lost my mind.”
Lark cocked her head and dared her to keep lying.
She sighed. “Okay so it was. But . . .”
“There are no buts. He’s right. You need to rest. Also? They come with one setting. Bossy. Domineering. They’re used to being in charge. But they’re worth it. At least the Leviathan brothers are.” Lark smirked. “Come on.” Lark took her hands. “I don’t see you enough and you’ve had a rough day. Let me take care of you. Let’s catch up a little. Please? Before he and Simon can start making plans for world domination?”
“Just Lark domination, pixie.” Simon smiled at Lark, who waved it away as they walked toward the brothers.
“Faine’s place happens to be our place. He’s just poking at you. Come on back. I’ll grill some steaks and we can relax. I’d like to spend time with you and my brother for a change.” Simon gave her a little bow and she knew she was giving in before she did it.
“SO while Lark has Helena cornered off in your room, interrogating her, let me do a little interrogation of my own. What’s going on?”
Faine stood on his brother’s deck, looking out over all the wildness just beyond. He breathed deep of the trees and earth. “It’s good here.”
Simon grunted. “There’s plenty of acreage just up the road for you to build your own house. But I figure you’ll be settling in Los Angeles at this point. How long has this been going on between you and Helena?”
Faine blew out a breath. He’d been holding all this inside for some time and it felt good to finally be able to talk about it with someone who’d understand. “I’ve been attracted to her for some time. Months now. Probably since the first time I laid eyes on her. Until today it was just kisses.” He pushed away from the rail he’d been leaning against, pacing. “She could have died. It just hit me and then I saw her in an exposed moment. Emotionally, I mean. It was . . . I couldn’t resist any longer and I realized it was stupid to have resisted as long as I have. I don’t know, at first I felt like perhaps I should have waited, talked it all over with her before we had sex.”
Grabbing his glass, he turned to face Simon, letting the smoke of the scotch dance over his senses.
The scent of the meat rose as Simon put the steaks on the grill. “She’s a big girl, as Lark is so fond of saying. She knows what we are. Her sister is my Ne’est, after all. Helena knows what she wants. If she hadn’t been interested and hadn’t wanted you, she would have punched you in the head and kicked you out of her room.”
Faine guffawed. “They’re a lot alike, I imagine. You appear to be unharmed so you must be doing something right.”
Simon growled. “Infuriating, these Jaansen females. They’ve got a penchant for placing themselves between danger and their people. Drives me nuts.”
“And you wouldn’t have it any other way.” Faine understood it because he felt the same. The danger of what Helena did made him crazy, but he respected her path a great deal.
Simon snorted. “No. It’s an integral part of who she is. One of the reasons I love Lark so much. She’s a warrior. As Helena is a warrior.”
“As we are. But you and I are nearly seven-foot-tall males who share existence with a beast bearing razor sharp teeth and claws. We’ve been bred for what we are in ways they can’t be. They’re far more physically fragile.”
Simon gave one of his infuriatingly calm shoulder shrugs. “That’s all true. The fact that they’re warriors like we are makes it easier—rationally—to accept the danger they put themselves in. But the fact that I love Lark so deeply is always a challenge to ration. But I do and it’s who she is. There’s no way around that, and if I don’t accept it, we can’t be together. Let’s not avoid the fact that you’re not only Lycian.”
Faine blew out a breath. “Yes. She knows my mother is a demoness so it’s not as if it’s a secret. But when is it I’m supposed to bring up that the two halves of my being unite to make me cleave to the right female for life? Especially when she knows I was married at one time and I wasn’t bonded to Lydia?”
“You loved Lydia, yes. But she was human. And you and I both know there’s love and there’s forever love. You didn’t make it up. It simply is. Given that one of your siblings is bonded to her sister, I suppose it means our genetics seem to click with theirs. It’s not a surprise that you’d fall for her. She’s beautiful. Willful. Passionate and fiery about things. And she’s got a most excellent left hook.”
Faine snorted a laugh. “She does. And some other stuff she does, Krav Maga, that stuns me when she does it. She’s so fragile though, just beneath that tough exterior. It calls to me.”