Kings and Sirens (The Blood Falls Book 2)
Kings and Sirens: Chapter 3

Atsila

“She’s under your skin!” Klah sang into his fist.

The asshole had been teasing me for days. Ever since…

…the memory of being alone with Leena. In that tight, dark closet. Her breasts pressed against my chest, her tongue against mine…it hit me hard and fast as it always did.

I shook my head to erase it.

Again.

“She’s not under my skin. She’s an annoyance.” A very beautiful, interesting annoyance.

“Oh, my dear good sir,” Kuruk said as he clapped my shoulder twice. “She’s so far under your skin she’ll be telling you to jump and you’ll be asking how high in about four hours.”

“If that,” Klah laughed.

“I hate you two.”

Klah ducked into our tent first. It was set out like the last time. One communal living space, three bedrooms. Kuruk grabbed the beer and we all cheered to surviving. It had been a long time since I fought something other than my brothers, an animal, or…it.

“Just sleep with her already. You both want it,” Kuruk said.

“Midnight Dreams is the perfect time. Indulge. Get it out of your system. Have some fun.”

I glared at them both and drank my beer. “I promised I wouldn’t marry an outsider.” Breasts. Soft, supple, round, and soft. Pressed against my chest. No.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Klah put his hands up. “No one said anything about marriage.”

I found I was not like my brothers. They enjoyed casual sex immensely. Perhaps even preferred it. While I…became attached. To me, sex was deeply emotional and Leena…well, she elicited an emotional response from me I couldn’t control or explain. Having casual sex with her would ruin me.

Maybe she’d consider being my mistress?

No. I shuddered at that. There was something fundamentally wrong with thinking of her that way. Something not right. I couldn’t explain it.

“So what are you going to do this week?” Kuruk asked. “Let your dick explode? Fuck everyone but her? Think this through.”

Oh, I’d thought it through. I had a plan. “Midnight Dreams doesn’t start for nearly a week. That’s plenty of time to explain the situation and send her home to her costume party.”

Klah laughed at me. “Yeah…she’s not leaving. Did you see the look in her eyes when Lyla explained things? When she stepped through the door? She’s staying.”

She wouldn’t. Once we showed her it she’d have no choice but to return home. I had a plan. It would work.

“So I can fuck her?” Klah asked.

I growled. The instinctive response came out of me before I could stop it. Further proving to my brothers that I was fucked. “No.”

Klah grinned. “Well then, I guess I better go visit Carly and Snook to work out my sexual needs instead.” He stood up and stretched while finishing off his beer. Then practically skipped into his bedroom where the soft murmur of his favorite couple lilted through the air when the curtain was open.

Leaving me with Kuruk. He sat and drank quietly, even once Carly started giggling and Snook began grunting. We were used to how loud the threesome got.

I finished my beer and got us seconds, then found some jerky to tide us over until dinner. “What are you thinking about?”

His eyes moved. Nothing else did. “I didn’t like it there. Too loud.”

There, meaning the outside world. The House of Wren. And that was kind of funny considering how loud Klah was getting in the next room. “That’s why we live here.”

He grimaced. “We have a war to fight. I just need to get used to it.”

It was one of the things that confused me. As the future king of the House of Heida, I should have been the most uncomfortable being outside around that many samhain. But…I wasn’t. I enjoyed it.

Enjoyed her.

I knew that was part of it. Leena’s teasing was annoying and arousing. She was effervescent when all I’d known was simmering. It…excited me. “Perhaps this rift between worlds will heal now that the Dreg program is under control.”

His lip twitched at the corner. That was his only response. Generally that meant, go fuck yourself, but in this context I had a feeling it meant, Sure, sweetheart.

If I hadn’t seen the rift for myself. Seen the ghosts. Seen the goddamned dragon, I’m not sure I’d believe me. It would be a task to convince Lyla and the rest. Our isolation was as important to us as blood. It was part of who we were. It would take more than my word to convince the Heida to join this grand plan of Leena’s brother. Perhaps I would succeed. Or perhaps I would merely plant the seeds so that when the time came, the Heida wouldn’t be entirely caught off guard. If that were the case, then I’d need to secretly make other preparations when we all returned to our homes.

“I see you plotting, our once-and-future-king.”

Kuruk’s voice snapped me out of my strategizing. “It’s what I do.”

He tilted his mug, pouring more beer down his throat with a massive gulp. “I believe it is why you were chosen. But I also believe it is your weakness.”

I studied my friend. Technically by blood he was my half-brother, but we weren’t raised as siblings. We were brothers by battle. By choice. His shoulders were broader than mine, his features just a bit grizzlier. His hair was never neat and his beard always wild. He had the stature of a fighter and the scars to go along with it. At the House of Wren he looked like a giant. We all did. Their furniture was so tiny and the Wrens so small compared to us.

But now he looked normal again. The couch he sat on was actually big enough for his frame. “How is it my weakness?”

From behind us the grunts and moans reached a climax, then a sigh, then back to moaning.

“When you replace a problem, you have to solve it. Everything else goes out the window. It will help keep us safe when you advise our Queen. It will give you the ability to strategize our success in battle.”

“But?” While I appreciated him laying out all the ways my focus was an asset, I would much prefer it if he’d get to the ugly part.

“But some problems aren’t supposed to be solved.”

That…made no sense. That was the point of a problem. To solve it. A puzzle must be put together, the logic of a riddle found, a lock needed a key.

Kuruk leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Tee.” He hadn’t used my nickname in years. Not since I was named the future King. “Some of us, me, hell even Klah, we’re just fine not having answers. We enjoy the mystery. What do you think Klah’s doing right now?”

“Probably got his dick buried in pussy.”

Kuruk shrugged. “Or maybe he and Snook are taking turns with Carly. Or maybe he and Snook are having a go. The point is, he never goes in there with a battle plan. He’s there to uncover the mystery of what happens when three Heida get naked with the intention of pleasure.”

“What do you mean he doesn’t have a plan?” That made no sense at all. When I took to my bed I always knew what I wanted.

Kuruk chuckled, sat back with the last of his beer, looking over me like I was the mystery now. “The rest of us just fuck, man. It’s a fluid situation. It ends when it ends. It begins when it begins. It changes when it changes.”

That sounded horrible. Or…maybe just different. I’d have to think about that. “What’s your point?” Kuruk was going to all this effort to make me uncomfortable to illustrate something.

He swallowed down the last of his beer in a single gulp, setting the glass on the table with a thud. “You can’t solve Leena. She’s too wild for that. Too unpredictable. So stop trying. You’re only going to confuse yourself.”

I frowned. “I’m not trying to solve her.”

“Yes you are.” He stood. Stretched. “You’re trying to figure out how to get her out of here so you don’t have to figure out how to fuck her without falling for her. But I got news for you, you’ve already failed on all counts.”

I felt numb and pissed. Numb because he couldn’t be right. I couldn’t know so little about myself. Not possible. And pissed because I knew he was right.

“Kuruk,” Daisy cooed from the curtain to Klah’s room. “Want to join us?”

Kuruk lit up like a fire on a cold night. “I didn’t know you were in there little flower.” Kuruk and Daisy were as close as two could be without declaring themselves a couple. His affection for her ran as deep as bone.

“I missed you.” She let the curtain fall away, revealing her naked body.

Kuruk growled, stomping across the room in two long strides, scooping her up into his arms. “Let me fix that.”

I sat alone with my empty mug, listening to my brothers enjoy themselves and wondering if Kuruk was right. Was I capable of letting something go unsolved? And if I did, would Leena be the end of me?