Page 24 of Eat. Prey. Love.
I’m oddly proud of her when the door finally opens and she turns to blow a kiss at me before she walks inside.
Delores Drew is a force to be reckoned with, even when it comes to the people she loves.
Once I’ve droppedDolly off, I cut across the campus to the staff housing. As a visiting professor, it’s marked on a special map in our materials that isn’t available to the students. They have the pred staff in a special enclave north of the small mountain range and there’s a weird tunnel thing connecting it campus.
Why do all the other academies have a thing for tunnel entryways? It’s bizarre as fuck.
“It doesn’t matter because we’re not staying here, but I want to see if I can toss that fucker’s room,” I mutter as I slink around the admin building to the stairs leading down to passage.
“Fucking right, we’re going to search it.”
I whirl around, claws out and a snarl on my lips until Fitz’s face registers. “By Apollo’s stinky sneakers, Fitz! I could have maimed you. Scratch that, Ishouldmaim you for scaring the stripes off my ass. What are you doing here?”
He grins broadly, looking pleased with himself. “I know you took D to visit her sad friend, so I got Raina to keep an eye on the building. She’ll text all of us through this emergency app I built on the plane if anything seems wrong. Whoever is close can rush over, but that leaves me free to fuck shit up with you.”
Every word of that is new information.
“Fitz…” I give up on words and finally nod. “Fine. I don’t know anything about whatever the hell you’re talking about, but I assume it’s good. Let’s go find out why our shithead cousin is here.”
“Besides our father being a fucking jizz stain?” I snort and he shrugs as we walk into the lighted, temperature control tunnel to the other side of the rocks. “Probably because he’s working some angle behind Baby Girl’s mom’s spotted back. That fucker has sold out almost every relative and ally he’s ever had since we were born, man.”
I frown. “I don’t like his sudden interest in her.”
“Man, I don’t likeanyone’sinterest in our girl, but I don’t know that Pop is the imminent threat.”
Squinting at him for a second, I arch a brow. “Are you and Dolly reading spy novels now?”
“Why?”
“Because ‘imminent threat’ is pretty fancy for you, bro.” I grin and wink at him. “And when you pick up new jargon, it’s often from your shared reading time.”
My twin shakes his head, groaning as he waves his hand. “I fuckingwishwe were reading spy novels. Ren and I are working through the corpse nibbler’s shit with her word by painful word. Never in my life did I think sexy scenes could make my cock retreat into my fucking body but…”
“That bad?”
“Bro, her females are so damn ridiculous. They’re supposed to be tough like our girl, but really? It’s bullshit. They have all this power and let dudes treat them like dogshit. Queen D would plant a big ass thumper in any of our asses if we spent weeks or months calling her a bitch and other shitty names.”
My eyebrows raise as I contemplate that and I find I agree with my brother. Dolly served our shit right back to us from the beginning, even if she was feeling unworthy. And to be honest, none ofus would ever call someone we liked ugly names just to push them away. I was a bit of a dick, but I wasn’t abusive and mean. I can’t imagine that being sexy.
“No, no, wait. It getsworse,” Fitz says as we walk out of the passageway. “Wait… it’s two hundred and thirty steps—remember that. Now, as I was saying, it gets worse.”
The fact that my hyper, ADHD twin could count and retain the number of steps end-to-end while conversing with me is nothing short of a damn miracle. That shit isdefinitelybecause of all our girl’s work with him. He never would have been able to do that before. Hell, he could barely sit still or stay sober for a couple hours before.
“Two-thirty. Got it,” I reply. We walk into the small staff village, pausing to find a scent. “What’s worse than that?”
“The dude-on-dude stuff, duh.” He looks at me seriously. “That woman hasneverseen two dudes or chicks together outside of porn. It’s so incredibly bad. And it’s… it makes me feel gross because it’s not…. meant for bi or gay dudes. It’s like… meant for women, like yaoi.”
Once I pick up Asani’s trail, I jerk my head in that direction and we move towards the section where his cabin must be. “So you feel objectified?”
“Ab-so-fucking-lutely, man.” He shivers and shakes his head. “Not just me… the smoky-eyed granite man agreed. So did Chessie. Her stuff is definitely one-handed spank bank fodder and the bondage stuff is so bad I wish I had someone to report it to.”
Giving him an angry look, I ask, “Is it bothering the Princess? She’s had some unfortunate parental experiences with violence that damaged her. I don’t want this claptrap traumatizing her.”
Fitz waits until we’re standing in front of the small building covered in our cousin’s scent before he answers. “No, she’s okay.Baby Girl reads through it with us and has to stop because she’s laughing so hard. It’s adorable.”
Clapping my hand on my brother’s shoulder, I let out a slow breath as I process that. There are so many things vying to hurt our bunny that I find myself worrying like an old nanny goat sometimes. Knowing we’re not making it worse with this task helps. And now that I know that, I’m ready to get into this cabin and find out what plans our cousin has.
That tangled mess of a counselor isn’t the only villain targeting our girl on this campus.