forward, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim of my cup. “No, you sick fuck, I’m not hungry!”
I expect one of them to say something, maybe to try and calm me, but they keep staring like they paid good money for this show.
Setting down my coffee on the closest bookshelf, I keep the blanket closed with one hand and use the other to point at Zachary.
“You think you can just go around doing whatever the fuck you want? Well you’re wrong! You can’t.”
Zachary settles back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. Is that a smile ghosting his lips?
“Someone’s going to notice I’m gone. You realize that, right?” I scan the other faces one at a time. Apollo with his mop of unruly hair. Reuben with his ten-yard stare. Cassius who—
He’s fucking leering at me. “Who’s gonna notice you’re gone, my little slut?”
“Stop calling me that!” I charge forward, emboldened by their apparent lack of giving a shit. I make to punch him on the shoulder, but nothing close to that happens.
Instead, he’s on his feet pulling some kind of ninja move that has me draped over the back of the couch and him bending over me.
No one stops him.
Cass’s hand slides under the blanket, grabbing at my breast. Reuben’s rosary falls out and dangles from my neck.
“How did you sleep?” Reuben asks, as serene as fuck. Contorted like this, I can barely breathe. The fact that Cass keeps groping me isn’t helping.
“Okay!” I shriek. “Please.”
“Let her go,” Zachary, by contrast, sounds exhausted.
“God damn it, Zac!” Cass pushes away from me, but not before he squeezes my ass with both hands. “Stop giving me fucking blue balls.”
“You’re doing it to yourself,” Zachary replies. “Now sit. Both of you.”
“Yeah, right over here,” Cass says, showing me his teeth as he drags me around the couch.
I end up on his lap, despite my protests. He seems to remember Zachary could get me to stop fighting with a slap on my butt, so it takes three of them before I sink onto his lap and don’t bolt straight up again.
It’s not exactly the most comfortable seat. Does he always have a hard-on?
“Where are your things?” Zachary asks.
I glower at him for a second, and then remember how futile it is to resist, protest, or fight back. “What things?”
“Trinkets and keepsakes and shit like that,” Apollo fills in. I glance up at him, but his eyes are on the camera in his lap. He seems intent on either fixing it, or taking it apart piece by piece.
“I don’t have things like that.”
“You didn’t bring any with you?” Zachary asks.
“No. I don’t have things like that.” I cross my arms, mimicking him, and shrug. “What, is everyone supposed to have a whole bunch of junk for no reason?”
“Things of sentimental value?” Zachary says. “Most, yes.”
“All I found was this,” Apollo says, leaning over and picking up something off the floor beside his armchair.
I would have stood if Cass hadn’t slipped an arm around my waist and clucked at me like I was seconds away from receiving another smack. So I toss my hair and try and make it seem like I don’t give a fuck that they’ve taken the only thing I brought with me that wasn’t clothing or shoes or underwear.
“It’s a bible,” I say stiffly. “In case you were wondering.”
“An old translation,” Zachary says, stretching to take it from Apollo. He flips it open, and I tense…waiting for the photo to fall out.
After how they’d grilled me about Gabriel, what would they say if they saw the photo of him and my father? It might spark the kind of reaction that ends in violence.
But nothing falls out. Either they’ve already found it, or I jammed it so hard between the pages that they’d have to open it to the exact place to take it out.
I can only hope they’ve been too busy to check.
Zachary hefts the thick volume in his hand. “I prefer these. The newer translations are too… polished.”
“They’ve taken out all the good shit,” Cass agrees. “All that fire and brimstone.”
“Strange how many things are open to interpretation,” Zachary muses, as if to himself.
“Mis-interpretation,” Apollo says. The camera comes apart in his hands, and he stares at the assortment of pieces now littering his lap.
“Not everything.”
I turn to Reuben, and swallow when I see him staring at me. When he reaches for me, I instinctively close my eyes. They pop open when his fingertips brush my breastbone. He