“I love you,” I whispered into the phone.
“Love you too, sweetcakes.”
When I put down the phone, Hades was still staring at me. “My Aunt V is coming tomorrow,” I told him.
“I gathered.”
“She wants to meet you,” I added.
He folded his arms. “She told me as much on the phone.”
My mind immediately went to what they might’ve talked about. My Aunt wasn’t into bullshit, so it was surely colorful. Hades hadn’t struck me as someone who’d be good on the phone. Damn, I hadn’t ever talked to him on the phone. That was totally weird.
“Is it weird that we haven’t spoken on the phone?” I blurted out.
Hades regarded me evenly, like he wasn’t thinking I was completely insane. “No.”
“Okay,” I replied.
He kept looking at me like he was waiting for me to break down. But the problem was, I had already done that.
“You’re going to go and sit on the couch,” Hades instructed, as if sensing that I had no idea what to do with myself right now. “Then, you’re going to put on that show you love about the bitch who drinks too much coffee.”
I raised my brow at this because he knew very well what Gilmore Girls was called. I actually suspected he liked it, but to utter the name of the show must’ve been tantamount to forfeiting his badass card.
“I’m going to make us dinner,” he continued.
My brow raised farther. Hades had never made me dinner. Sometimes he helped chop things, but then he distracted me with his mouth, with his hands, with his cock. Then we never ended up eating anything but each other. I did the cooking. And I was more than happy doing the cooking. I loved the simple act of feeding him. Taking care of him.
“You can cook?” I asked.
He didn’t reply to this. “After we eat, you’re going to have a bath. After that, I’m going to fuck you. Then we’re going to sleep. When we wake up, you’re going to see your aunt.”
I stared at him. The man in my kitchen, laying out exactly what I was going to do with my night so the future didn’t seem so icky or uncertain.
“You got me, Freya?”
“I got you,” I whispered.
He nodded at me. “Then get your ass on the couch.”
I didn’t say anything else. I just got my ass on the couch.
“This is something I should’ve asked a long time ago, but what exactly does the club do?” I asked, drawing patterns on Hades’s chest with the pad of my finger.
There were scars peppered all over it, intermingled with the tattoos. I wondered which had come first, the tattoos or the scars. His body was covered with both of them. There was the neat line on his abs which was what I considered ‘my scar.’ Then there were the ones that weren’t so neat, the jagged, painful-looking ones that made me feel vaguely sick. Ones that I’d stared at and wondered about often. Ones that hinted at what exactly his life as the enforcer of the Sons of Templar MC entailed.
I’d figured that sleeping with an outlaw and being submerged in his world would be a bit more jarring. Sure, there was the crazy ex I’d killed in the living room, but that wasn’t exactly an outlaw thing, that was more of a Hades thing.
“This is something you want to talk about right now?”
Right now being the day I’d found out my father had died and had consumed a fair amount of wine and tequila. I’d also consumed two bowls of the pasta that Hades had cooked for me. Then there was all the sex. It had all been fucking wonderful, the pasta, the sex. But it had only worked for so long.
I was painfully sober. And I really needed to think of something in my present—what would hopefully be my future—instead of the man who would only ever remain my past.
“Yes, this is something I want to talk about right now,” I affirmed. “Something I need to talk about right now.”
Otherwise, I’d be thinking about my dead father and why he hadn’t wanted me to know he was dying. Why he hadn’t wanted to mend fences with his only daughter who was the whole reason he was in prison.
Yes, distraction was crucial right now.
Hades didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask me again if I was sure or if it was just the grief talking. He trusted me to know myself.
“The club runs guns,” he said.
“Runs guns?” I echoed.
He nodded.
“Can you explain what that is?” I asked. “Because I’m taking it includes you running with a bunch of guns, like in a relay race or something, and I know that’s not right. Plus, I also had a lot of wine, so my brain is a little hazy. And on top of that, I’m not really hip on the outlaw lingo, so you’re gonna have to spell it out for me.”