Chapter 9 #4
Olivia led the way inside, talking constantly, her red hair swinging with each step. Livia walked beside me, close enough that her wing occasionally brushed my arm, and Sabrina proudly positioned herself on my other side.
The cottage was bright and cluttered in the way of homes where two energetic women lived without much concern for conventional organization.
Plants everywhere, hanging from ceilings, crowding windowsills, spilling from pots that had clearly been chosen for aesthetic appeal rather than practical capacity.
The furniture that needed moving was stacked in the main room, and it was, as advertised, the kind of weight that made two women look at it and immediately start drafting letters to attractive men.
“Bed frame first,” Olivia said, gesturing at what appeared to be several hundred pounds of carved oak currently occupying the approximate footprint of a small boat.
“Upstairs. Left room. Then the table. Then the shelves. Then the chest, which I’m fairly certain contains either someone’s entire life savings or a body, and I’m hoping for the life savings because bodies are messy and we just cleaned. ”
I lifted. The bed frame came apart into manageable sections, which was the only reason any of this was possible, and I carried the headboard up the narrow staircase with Olivia directing from behind in a voice that suggested she was enjoying the view considerably more than the furniture.
“Left! Your other left! No, your, oh, just turn around, I’ll show you.”
She pressed against me from behind, her breasts against my back, her hands on my hips steering me through the doorway, and the contact lasted approximately three seconds longer than necessary for navigation purposes.
The table came next, then the shelves, then the chest, which did not, disappointingly, contain either life savings or a body but rather several blankets and what appeared to be a collection of winter scarves in aggressively cheerful colors.
Throughout it all, the twins talked. They asked about the war, about Valen, about life back on Oakwind, their questions overlapping, their voices bright and curious and occasionally wandering into territory that had very little to do with furniture.
Sabrina, who had been handing me tools, made a sound that was halfway between a cough and a laugh. “Gabriel’s very good at standing there looking conflicted,” she said. “It’s his primary skill. Right after carrying heavy objects and breaking hearts through sheer existence.”
The twins laughed, and something passed between them, a glance, quick and knowing, and then Olivia was off the windowsill and suddenly very interested in helping me adjust the shelf, her body pressed against my side, her red hair brushing my shoulder.
“We should thank you properly,” she said, her voice lower. “This is above and beyond brotherly duty. There should be compensation. We have cider.”
“Or,” Livia added from the doorway, “other forms of gratitude. We’re creative. We have ideas. Many, many ideas.”
It was around this point, while arranging the last of the shelves in the bedroom, that I noticed the collection on the side table.
Carved wood, polished to a smooth gleam, in shapes that left absolutely no ambiguity about their intended use.
Several of them, arranged with the casual disorganization of items that were used regularly and returned to the same general vicinity rather than hidden.
My eyes found them. Their eyes found me finding them. Olivia burst out laughing, the sound bright and utterly without embarrassment, and Livia smiled with the particular fondness of someone watching a predictable reaction unfold exactly as scheduled.
“Those,” Olivia said, waving a hand toward the table, “are practical. With so few men left after the war, a girl develops certain… adaptive strategies. It’s all most of us have these days.
” She shrugged, the gesture carrying the easy confidence of a woman who had long since stopped being embarrassed by her own body or its needs.
“Unless you know any eligible bachelors hiding in your saddlebags? Because we’d very much like to meet them. ”
Sabrina, who had been unusually quiet during this exchange, spoke up from her position beside me. “I have one too,” Sabrina admitted with a shrug. “Blue. It gets the job done.”
For some reason it turned me on more than it embarrassed me.
“We keep hoping,” Livia said, her eyes meeting mine with a directness that made the room feel several degrees warmer.
“Someday. Someone real. Someone worth waiting for.” Her gaze held mine a beat longer than casual eye contact required, and the meaning was clear.
Then she smiled, shook her head, and reached for a stray scarf that had fallen from the chest. “Anyway. Cider. We’re having cider. That’s happening immediately.”
We headed downstairs. The twins poured us glasses and passed them to us.
Olivia talked. Constantly, energetically, her hands moving as she spoke.
Livia listened more than she spoke, her observations delivered with the timing of someone who had perfected the art of the perfectly placed comment.
They asked more questions about Oakwind, about the farm, about Valen, and every answer was met with the kind of attentive interest that made you feel like you were delivering state secrets rather than anecdotes about a pegasus with attitude problems.
Throughout it all, Sabrina stayed pressed against my side.
Her thigh against mine on the couch, her wing loosely draped behind me, her hand finding reasons to rest on my arm, my shoulder, the back of the couch near my head.
The clinginess was obvious enough that both twins noticed, and their response was to become, if possible, more physically affectionate themselves.
Olivia sat on the arm of the couch near me, her leg brushing mine each time she laughed.
Livia leaned against the couch’s back, her hand occasionally resting on my shoulder when she made a point.
The room was warm. Summer evening, small cottage, four bodies and a lit hearth. Olivia complained first.
“God, it’s hot. I’m melting. This is inhuman.
” She stood, reached for the ties at the front of her dress, and loosened them.
The fabric gaped, revealing the upper curve of her breasts, freckled and pale and entirely on display, and she made no move to adjust it.
“Better. Much better. Livia, you should too. You look like you’re being slowly cooked. ”
Livia also loosened her own dress. Not as dramatically as her sister, but enough that the neckline dipped, and the freckles across her chest became visible, scattered like copper dust against white skin.
Sabrina, who was wearing considerably less to begin with, did not adjust her clothing. She did, however, press closer, her body warm against my side, and when she reached for her cider her breast brushed my arm in a way that could not possibly have been accidental.
“I think we should head back,” she said, setting her glass down. “It’s getting late, and we’ve got morning chores.”
The twins groaned in unison. “You can’t leave,” Olivia said. “We just got comfortable. The fun was imminent. I could feel it. The fun was gathering its forces.”
“Fun has a curfew,” Sabrina replied, standing. “Fun goes to bed at a reasonable hour so it can wake up and haul grain sacks at dawn. Come on, Gabriel. Valen’s probably eaten half their garden by now.”
I stood, and the movement was greeted by twin expressions of disappointment.
“We were just about to have fun,” I said, and the twins laughed.
“Next time,” she said, her fingers lingering against my neck. “The fun waits. It’s very patient. Unlike certain redheaded women you might know.”
We said our goodbyes on the porch. Hugs from both twins, lingering, warm, their bodies pressing against mine with a generosity that made Sabrina’s jaw tighten visibly.
Promises to visit again soon. Invitations that involved significantly less furniture and significantly more of the good cider.
Then we were walking across the grass toward Valen, who stood grazing, and in fact had eaten a noticeable portion of the garden’s eastern border.
Sabrina didn’t speak until we were mounted, her body settling against mine in the saddle, and when she did her voice was quiet, carrying back to me on the evening air.
“Lake,” she said. “Before home. I need to cool off.”
I nodded, gathered the reins, and Valen lifted us into the darkening sky toward the water that lay between Ginger Isle and home.
* * *
The island was exactly as I remembered it from yesterday, which was somehow both comforting and profoundly unsettling.
The same flat rocks, the same clear water, the same wildflowers nodding in the breeze along the bank.
The only difference was the woman sitting beside me, and the difference she made was considerable.
Valen landed on the grassy slope above the water, his hooves sinking into soft turf, and Sabrina slid from the saddle before I could help her.
She walked to the water’s edge, kicked off her shoes, and sat on the flat rock where, approximately twenty-four hours earlier, I had sat with Gabriella’s wet hair against my shoulder and my release still warm inside her.
The memory arrived with the force of something that had been waiting for an opening, and I stood very still for a moment, watching Sabrina’s bare feet dangle above the water, and tried very hard to think about anything else.
She loosened the ties at the neck of her dress, pulling the fabric wider, and sighed as the evening air reached her skin. “God, that’s better. Those twins keep their house at the temperature of a bread oven. I was cooking alive.”