I went back to my work in the kitchens with a new spring in my step, my heart racing. It wasn’t much of a plan, and there was hardly any time to gather the food supplies we would need, but we had a way out, and we needed to act immediately.
ChapterThirteen
Itold my housemates about Horacio’s offer to help us as soon as I made it back to the house that evening. And just as I’d suspected, the news changed everything in an instant.
“Do we have everything we need to make it over the mountains?” Leander asked, marching right into his and Darius’s room and coming out with two huge sacks that were already stuffed with winter clothing, and even some rope.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that they were already so prepared. That was the point of us squirreling away things that might help us cross the mountains for the past several weeks. It was one thing to make a project of deciding what would help this sort of flight and knowing that my friends were actually planning to come with me.
“Gathering enough food, potentially for weeks, in two days will be the hardest part of the whole thing,” Darius said, joining Leander where he’d set their sacks on the couch to go through them. “We can find everything else along the way.”
I shook my head. “Horacio said that the country folk don’t want anything to do with city people anymore, and that they won’t help us.”
“They’ll help me,” Appius said, crossing to the cupboard beside our fireplace and taking out the bits and pieces of food we’d brought back to the house to snack on between meals, as if that would be enough to get us through the mountains. “I’m from the country,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at me, sparks in his eyes. “I’m from Aktau.”
Hope surged in me. “Do you think your family would be willing to help us if we get there?” I asked.
“Whenwe get there, you mean,” Lucius said with surprising ferocity. “We will get there if it’s the last thing we ever do.”
I was worried that he might mean that literally.
“Are we certain Horacio will actually help us?” Mara asked, attempting to be the voice of reason.
“He said he would meet us at dusk on Thursday at a giant’s shoe,” I said.
Leander shook his head. “The Giant’s Shoe,” he corrected me. “It’s a rock formation at the base of the south hill.”
“It’s a good meeting place, actually,” Darius said, smiling. “This might be easier than we thought.”
We went to bed with more hope than we’d had in weeks.
And when I say “we” went to bed, that ended up involving me, Appius, Leander, and Darius all falling into bed together.
“But we’re not all going to fit,” Appius said, his eyes wide with shock, as Leander and Darius slipped into our room and helped themselves to getting in on either side of the bed.
The twins laughed. “I think you’ll find that your sweetheart is more than capable of fitting at least two of us in at this point,” Darius said.
“Yes,” Leander said, climbing over Appius—and making certain he rubbed as much of himself against as much of Appius as he could—in order to reach me. “A little birdie told me that Conrad has been stretching these last few weeks in preparation for a moment like this.”
“And since we’re all going to make a run for it on Thursday, we might not have another chance to put this to the test,” Darius followed.
I laughed and let myself be sandwiched between the naked, groping twins. I might have done a bit of groping of my own in return as things heated up.
“I haven’t been doing anything out of the ordinary,” I said, looking at Appius as I did, as if he was the one I had to explain myself to.
My comment was followed by Darius sliding his hand between the cleft of my ass and pressing two fingers into my hole. He must have dipped into the jar of ointment on my bedside table, because his fingers slid in without anything other than the usual resistance. I made a sound of surprise that resolved into a moan of appreciation a moment later.
“See?” Darius said with a laugh, working his fingers in and out of me to warm up and stretch those muscles. “With a little perseverance, I’m certain our Conrad could take just about anything.”
“It would make a nice change to actually feel something when you fuck me,” I teased him, admittedly breathless with pleasure as I did.
Leander laughed. “That’s enough sass from you,” he said, then slanted his mouth over mine to silence any retort I might have given.
I was shocked at how easy it was to put everything else out of my mind but kissing and groping and fucking. What we were all about to do would either free us from one of the most horrific situations I had ever been in—and that included the Dying Winter—or get us killed. Perhaps gruesomely. So of course I was going to be as hedonistic as I could be while I could.
Leander and Darius didn’t seem in a mood to waste any more time than was necessary getting me to where they wanted me. It was too much too quickly, but Darius added a third finger, then a fourth, working to stretch me as if it were his sole purpose in life.
As he did, Leander reached over both of us to grab the ointment jar and bring it onto the bed with us. He took some and used it to slowly stroke my cock, giving me enough pleasure to relax and let Darius get on with his work, but not so much that it made me come.