Ruthless Creatures (Queens & Monsters, #1)(77)

She’s amazing, this girl. I freaking love her.

“Where’d you get the gun?”

She starts to pour again, filling her glass, then mine. “I stole it from Stavros.”

“Stole it?”

She makes a face. “It’s not like he’ll notice. The boys had weapons lying all over the place the way people leave out dishes of candy for guests.”

“Wow. That must’ve been some cruise.”

Her smile is small and mysterious. She pulls up a chair beside me and sits. “Someday, I’ll tell you all about it. But right now, I need to hear the dirty details about what you’ve been up to with that beautiful monster, King Kong Kage. And start with the butt sex.”

My cheeks flush. “What makes you think there was butt sex?”

Considering me for a moment in silence, she tilts her head. Her small smile grows wider. “You’ve got that anal afterglow.”

I stare at her for a beat. “That’s not even a thing.”

“It’s totally a thing.”

“You’re making it up! Nobody glows because they had anal sex!”

With a straight face, she says, “Sure they do. It’s from the phosphorescent glands in your sphincter. Why do you think my complexion is so great?”

I look at the ceiling and heave a sigh.

“Okay, fine, killjoy. Don’t tell me about your amazing anal sex. But you have to tell me one thing.”

“What?”

Resting her elbows on the table, she leans closer and lowers her voice. “He’s hung like a Clydesdale, isn’t he?”

It’s my turn to smile mysteriously.

She gasps in outrage and slaps her open palm on the tabletop. “You twat! You can’t keep that to yourself!”

When I only sip my wine and keep smiling, she glowers at me.

“If you don’t start talking, I’ll shoot you with this gun in my boot. I swear, I will.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Give me one good reason.”

“I kept that picture of you from when you first got your braces on when you were fifteen. Remember how that was during your mohawk-and-black-lipstick phase, when you wanted to run away and join the circus to be an emo clown? And you’d been experimenting with facial piercings? You had such cute freckles then, too.”

She says flatly, “You know those were zits. And it was a punk contortionist, not a fucking emo clown. And you told me you threw that photo out!”

I sigh dreamily, as if lost in good memories. “I lied. But I’m sure the local paper would love to feature a throwback pic of the third runner-up in the Miss Tahoe contest of 2014—”

“2015.”

“—in the Lifestyle section. You’re such a popular yoga teacher in this area. How many Instagram followers do you have now? Four thousand?”

“Forty thousand. Which you know. Witch.”

“Hey, maybe they’ll want to do a Before and After photo spread! Those are always fun. I think I’ve also still got a bunch of photos from the summer between fifth and sixth grades when your parents sent you to fat camp.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I love you, too.”

After a moment, she raises her glass to me in a toast. “Okay. You win. I’ll just keep on thinking he’s got a dick longer than my forearm.”

I grimace. “I’d be in the hospital.”

This is when she notices the ring on my finger and freezes. She stares at it like it’s a hairy tarantula crawling up my hand. “What…is…that?”

“A ring.”

“No shit! Did you get engaged without telling me?”

I twist the interlocking bands of gold around on my finger, shaking my head. I say softly, “It’s a promise ring.”

Examining my expression, she narrows her eyes. “Was this promise a suicide pact?”

I sigh, scrub my hands over my face, then swallow a big gulp of wine. Mojo decides it’s time to go back to sleep and curls up under the table. “It’s not an engagement ring, because we can’t get engaged. He’s not allowed to marry anyone except who his boss tells him to.”

When her mouth drops open in shock, I look down at the tabletop and add miserably, “We can’t live together, either. He doesn’t think it’s safe for me. And we’re only going to be seeing each other every once in a while, when he can get away. However often that might be, which sounds like it won’t be very often.” I hesitate. “And…”

“Sweet Jesus, there’s more?”

“Yeah.” I down another swig of wine, then exhale a heavy breath. “He can’t have kids. No, that’s not it—he doesn’t want kids, so he had a vasectomy when he was younger.”

Silence.

When I glance up at her, Sloane is staring at me with the constipated look she only wears when she’s worried about me.

“What’s that face for?”

“I just hope…”

“What?”

Glancing down at her wineglass, she slowly traces her finger around the rim. Then she raises her gaze to mine and says softly, “I hope he’s worth it, babe. Because it sounds like you’re giving up a lot just to ride the guy’s dick.”