“No one ever died eating deep-fried pastry, Leo. It’s too cruel a death for any of the gods to contemplate. I was actually doing us a favor, keeping us safe.”
“Then by all means, there’s a great cupcake place down the block from my apartment. Maybe we can move in there.”
“I know you’re joking, but you just described paradise to me.”
Leo chuckled and pulled me out of the way of a loud group of men taking up the entire sidewalk. One took a look at me and grinned, flashing his teeth in an entirely too predatory way to be taken as a compliment.
“Heeeyyy,” he drawled, his voice thick with an alcohol accent.
“No.” I barely gave him a second glance, still walking.
“Bitch, I said hey, can’t you take a compliment?”
Overhead the sky was clear, but if this guy kept this up, I could muster a few fairly substantial thunderheads. Common sense and the hope of staying low key were the only things keeping my anger from getting the best of me.
Leo had stopped walking though, his whole body suddenly tense and vibrating with anger.
“Don’t.” I touched his arm—good gods the man was solid muscle—and shook my head firmly when he glanced at me. “We don’t need the attention. Let’s go.”
The drunk guy, misinterpreting the situation as an invitation to be more of a douchecanoe, shouted, “Whatever, dumb slut. You’re not that hot anyway. I wouldn’t even let you blow me.”
Fuck it.
Leo moved to go after the guy, and as fun as that would have been to watch, this wasn’t his fight.
And after the day I’d had, I was craving an outlet.
I held Leo back with one hand, the group of frat guys already walking away and laughing like they’d won something.
“Hey,” I shouted.
The group paused, one or two sniggering loudly, all of them clearly smashed out of their minds. At least out of their senses, otherwise they wouldn’t be trash-talking a woman standing next to a guy who was six and a half feet tall and built like the second coming of Hercules.
“What?” The chatty one sneered again, making a come at me gesture.
“Seriously, I can’t give you a blow job? I’m super bummed. I was telling my friend here that I was so hoping some random guy in the street would offer to mouth-fuck me because otherwise how would I know my value as a woman?”
The drunk guy wove uncertainly, and his friends stopped laughing. None of them seemed to comprehend the sarcasm. “Like…I mean if you want to. For feminism or whatever.” He rubbed his junk, and it was all I could do to not throw up in the street.
“What are you doing?” Leo asked, keeping his voice low.
Who even knew anymore? “You think it’s okay to say that shit?” This gave the drunk guy pause as he slowly realized I wasn’t actually flirting with him. “Do you think you can call women dumb slut in the street and it’s allowed?”
“Whatever, bitch, don’t get your panties in a knot.”
I crossed the distance between us and grabbed him by the front of the shirt, lifting him effortlessly and backing him against the nearest brick wall with a hard thump. His eyes went wide when he stared at me, and I knew my temper had gotten the best of me.
“Y-your eyes.”
Traitorous eyes. I couldn’t see them, obviously, but I knew what he was looking at. My irises would have gone dark and cloudy, and lightning would be flashing from inside, created on its own as a marker of my rage. Just like Seth. The same thing that had made Cade toss me in a cold shower.
“She’s a priestess,” he shouted.
This wasn’t actually true. I could only be a priestess if I was in the temple, and if I lived to see retirement, that’s what I’d become. But telling him what I really was would confirm which god I worked for, and I didn’t need Seth’s name showing up in any gossip blogs the next morning.
I should have left well enough alone.
“Shit, dude, just apologize,” one of his buddies said, his voice high and worried. “You don’t need an angry priestess messing your shit up.”