Accidentally Aphrodite - Dakota Cassidy Page 0,54
said to them, Nina. You said I had irritable bowel syndrome.”
“Oh, shut your piehole, Goddess-Lite. I had to think fast.”
Quinn began to squirm against him, her once limp hands struggling to brace herself into a sitting position. “Put me down, Khristos! I’m okay now. Whatever it was passed.”
Whatever it was. What the fuck was it?
No match had ever gone down like that. There was no pain involved in it—no suffering. He knew firsthand how the emotions felt. His mother had taught him well to know all the signs, see and feel all the highs and even the lows.
But none of them damn well hurt. Not the way they’d appeared to hurt her. Last night, she’d been smacked into the hard pavement and she hadn’t made a peep.
She might declare she was a chicken, but not when it came to pain—which meant, whatever happened back at that studio had to have been pretty bad.
“Did you hear me, Khristos with a K? Put me down!”
“I’m not putting you down until we’re back at your place. So suck it,” he said.
She twisted his nipple through his jacket. “Khristos! Put me down!”
He stopped in the middle of the busy sidewalk, Nina reaching over him to tighten Quinn’s scarf and make sure her hat was covering her ears. “Okay, but if you face plant again and get any more scraped up than you already are, I’m not responsible for what your mother’s going to do to me. You don’t want her to chew my face off, do you?”
“Jesus, kiddo. What the hell? You scared the shit out of us.”
Quinn hit her feet and wobbled a little, reaching for the brick wall of a store. Then she straightened and batted her eyelashes at Nina. “I scared you? You of the big muscles and cold, black heart? Know what that means, don’t you?”
“It means if you do it again, I take you out and I don’t have to worry about it anymore?”
Quinn grinned, but it was weak, and he sensed it. She tugged on a strand of Nina’s long hair. “It means I’ve grown on you. Maybe it’s only like mold or whatever bacteria, but I’ve grown on you. You really are a marshmallow just like Ingrid said.”
Nina growled under her breath and tipped her sunglasses down her nose so Quinn could see her eyes. “Walk, or I’m going to eat your skinny little bird legs right off your body and pick my teeth with their bones.”
Quinn reached upward with a notable shaky hand and patted Nina’s lean cheek. “Clearly someone didn’t paint away their discontent.”
Nina moved in closer and flashed her fangs. “Move or I’m hiking your featherweight ass over my shoulder like the sack of potatoes you are.”
But Quinn only chuckled. “If only my scale said featherweight. I might be short, but my hips don’t lie.”
Nina pointed in the direction of home. “Now.”
“On it, Boss.”
As Quinn turned to make her way down along the sidewalk, Khristos cupped her elbow, unable to let her too far from his grasp.
Yet, her excitement was uncontained. “So, OMG, right? Who knew those two should end up together?”
“Sometimes, the most unlikely people, people who appear so ill-suited it makes you cringe, are true soul mates. I tried to tell you.”
“Was that the part where you were clenching your teeth and you had that tic in your jaw?”
He laughed as he navigated them through the crowd. “Somewhere around there. You were so busy sharing your bad experiences and bonding, I worried you’d talk yourself out of their match. You have to be careful not to let your experiences cloud your judgment, Quinn. It’s important. Those two are going to do great things together for children in Doctors Without Borders.”
Her sigh was one of happiness, her eyes full of that special brand of Quinn wonder. “How unbelievably romantic.”
Then she stopped dead, her eyes wide in revelation. “I’m just like my mother. Oh, criminy, I’m just like her. Bitter and preachy,” she said on a groan.
He grabbed her hand, not just because she needed a reminder of how different she was from her mother, but because he liked how it fit in his. “No. You’re not that bitter. That takes time, and long, dark nights spent raging against life instead of living it. You have plenty of hope left in you, Quinn. I promise.”
She sagged against him. “My mother drives me crazy, but I hate hearing she was in such a dark place. If there’s one thing I want, almost more than I