Chapter Four
I'd never been good at math but apparently if you get seven buff guys and tell them to empty an apartment, they can do it in two hours, including spackling the holes where my paintings had hung.
After they'd dropped me home last night, I'd fallen into a deep dreamless sleep, the best sleep I'd had in a decade. Then I was up at dawn, more resolute than I'd been the night before.
I couldn't explain it, but it was like I knew these guys, that we were all part of a matching set, except I'd been the missing piece up until now. I knew things about them instinctively; their hurts and their hopes, although their stories were still a mystery. It was the feeling of completeness I had around them, the magnetic draw that I felt to each one, which had convinced me to abandon caution and commit to their offer.
I'd given notice to my landlord, who'd grunted his assent and handed me paperwork to fill out before slamming his door in my face. I'd packed up all my worldly belongings, which equated to six boxes, three of which were just books, and left my old life behind before lunchtime.
Although they hinted that I could quit my job and they would take care of me, I refused. I would take a sabbatical from accepting any temp jobs for a couple of weeks, but I was going to stay on their books because I wasn't an idiot. I'd made up some lame excuse about travelling Europe and my boss was excited for me. I only felt a minor guilt for lying. She would never believe the truth, or even the watered down version of ‘seven rich hot guys I met yesterday asked me to live with them and they'd bankroll me out of the goodness of their hearts’.
I called Clary and told her voicemail that I was moving, and gave her my new address.
And that was that. My old life was stored away in less than twelve hours.
I was putting my books onto my new bookcase, in alphabetical order, when there was a knock at my door. When I pulled it open, Oz was standing there, his shirt untucked and his hair in messy waves to his shoulders. He held a cardboard box in his hands.
“I brought you your own home management system. You can use it to access any technological features of the apartment.” I ushered him into my apartment and he pulled the little round machine from the box and placed it on my hall table.
“The guys have all given permission for you to have complete access to their apartments, too. You just have to say ‘Mini-Oz, let me into user: Oz’s apartment’ and it'll unlock the door. No one has the permissions for your apartment though, I promise. It's also programmed with everyone's phone numbers, control over the TV and lights, and I gave you permission to my entire iTunes collection. I just need to program your speech patterns.” He pressed some buttons. “Okay, now say ‘the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’.”
I repeated the sentence into the speaker of the sphere.
“Now say, ‘chicken soup’.”
“Chicken soup.”
“Now say ‘Oz is the hottest, most amazing person I've ever met’.”
I laughed. “Dude, have you seen Sam? That guy is basically a wet dream made real.” Oz pouted. “But you are definitely the sweetest, hot guy I have ever met, and you are definitely amazing.”
An automated voice came over the surround sound. “User: Arcadia has been identified.”
This was so exciting. “That's some pretty sophisticated tech you have there.”
Oz fiddled with the buttons to finish calibrating my machine. “Thanks, I wrote the code for it myself.”
“Is that your job? Computer programming?”
He gave me a wan look. “Sweetheart, my sin is Sloth. I don't have a job, per say. I make my money by creating YouTube vlogs of me playing video games. Twitch TV on occasion as well.”
“People pay to watch you play video games? Are you naked?”
A giant laugh burst from his body like a sonic boom.
“No. You can't see me, just the screen I'm playing on. God, you are so damn cute. Okay all set up here.” He took a step back from the bench. “Give it a whirl.”
“Mini-Oz, turn on the TV.” The TV turned on. “Mini-Oz, turn off the lights in the living room.” The lights went off. “It's like something out of a sci-fi movie.”
Oz just shrugged one shoulder self-consciously. “Someone else made the tech, I just built on it. I've programmed it so if you say the word ‘Help’ twice, it will send an alert to everyone. You don't need to say ‘Mini-Oz’ just ‘Help’. This is the only time we'll be given permission to enter the apartment without your say-so. Mini-Oz text the guys to tell them I'm running a test.”
“Text sent,” came from the speakers.
Oz walked out, and I watched the tight muscles of his back move as he left. The door shut and I heard a muffled “give it a try!” from the other side.
“Uh, help! Help!”
Nothing happened, but I could hear Oz's phone ringing and the lock on the door clicked open. He strolled back in, a pleased smile on his face. “Worked perfectly.” He reached back into the box and pulled out a bright pink wristband. He looked… nervous.
“Are you gonna propose or something with that thing?”
He laughed and went down on one knee. “Not a bad idea. Cady, will you wear this wristband which monitors your heart rate and blood pressure, so death don't us part?”
“Why?”
“It's connected to Mini-Oz and will send the help signal and your GPS coordinates to us if your heart stops or your vitals seem like you are in distress, no matter where you are. If I sync it with your phone, it'll work wherever you have phone reception.”
I chewed on my lip as I looked down at him on his knees. I could understand the concept of it, but did I want them to be able to track me all the time?
It was the earnestness on his face that sold me. He was doing this because he genuinely cared, and didn't want me to drop dead tomorrow. Besides, if I didn't want to be tracked, I could always take it off.
I put my hand out and he strapped it on. “It's waterproof and shockproof. You shouldn't need to take it off unless you want to.”
I pulled him to his feet. “Did you just have this lying around the house?”
“Nah, I picked it up this morning on my way to your apartment.”
Sloth, my ass. He was going above and beyond for me. I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around his chest. “If you are Sloth, how are you so damn buff?”
I could feel his chuckle vibrate through my cheek, and his arms came around my back, holding me close.
“If I go to the gym with Sam and Eli, enough of their sins rubs off on me to get me lifting weights for about half an hour or so a day. Wrath needs a sparring partner who doesn't need a pretty face to make money, so that's either me or Ri. Val keeps me on a calorie controlled diet and voila, this couch potato remains a red hot spud.”
I groaned at his bad pun. I looked up into his eyes, and felt the warmth of his body against mine and suddenly I desperately want him to kiss me. Maybe more.
He leaned down, brushing his lips lightly against mine, his beard tickling my chin. Then be pulled back.
“You just got here. As much as I want to kiss you right now, then lift your beautiful body onto the bench and make love to you like you deserve, it wouldn't be right.”
I pouted, but I knew he was probably correct. Still…
“Mini-Oz, play ‘songs for sex’ playlist,” I called out to the room.
“Did you mean ‘songs for sex with a pretty girl’ playlist?”
I raised my eyebrows at Oz. “Is there a ‘songs for sex with an ugly girl’ playlist?”
“Access denied. This playlist does not apply to user: Arcadia,” the automated voice replied.
Laughter bubbled up and Oz looked amused.
“Even your AI has great pickup lines!”
The moment passed, and I took a small step back but still kept an arm around Oz’s waist. I didn't know what it was about Oz, maybe it was because he was born in modern times, but I felt the most comfortable around him. Like we could be besties. I missed having a bestie around since Clary took her post overseas last year. I hadn't ever been able to keep close friends. I missed a lot of school as a teen, so I never had a chance to make that lifelong clique. Besides which, it took a certain kind of person to befriend someone who was inevitably going to die and break your heart. Same with boyfriends. I hadn't ever had a boyfriend that lasted more than six weeks. They ran as far and as fast as they could when they learned I was dying.
I hadn't even told Clary the full extent of my myocardiopathy, because I was petrified deep down that it would just be too much. I didn't want to die alone.
I looked over at Oz, who'd moved over to unpack my dinnerware into the small kitchen. He'd promised I would never be alone, and I trusted that he meant it. I would break his heart, but he didn't care.
“Mini-Oz, give Oz permission to enter my apartment at any time.” He looked at me and gave me the most radiant smile I'd ever seen and my heart swelled with an affection I didn't know could happen so fast.
Trust went both ways.
Dinner that night was a more subdued affair. Valery had left a coq au vin in Sam's oven, as he had to be at his restaurant Epicurean for the dinner service, and Oz was his designated pair. Ri and Lux had training and then Lux had to go with Ri to work in order to dampen the effects of his Lust juju. I discovered they rarely went anywhere alone, except Eli. Apparently neurosurgeons all had god complexes anyway, so the effects of his sin didn't register too much amongst his peers. He had also negotiated little to no bedside contact with his patients.
That just left Tolliver, Sam and I to drink way too much red wine and eat dinner in Sam's beautifully designer apartment. His Nordic genes really shone through, with white and a pale grey being the primary color scheme, from the walls to the carpet. His cabinets and his table were a pale Norwegian wood. It was like stepping into an interior design magazine. I was petrified I was going to spill red wine on something.
Every time either one of them smiled at me, or flirted (which Sam did a lot, he was an incorrigible flirt) my heart raced and I lost concentration. It was inevitable that I was going to spill something in the plush white carpet.
They made great dinner companions, telling me all the gossip of about the New York Fashion scene, of which there was a lot. I now knew who was suffering from an eating disorder, who got blacklisted from all high end fashion magazines for sleeping with an editor's husband, and who got told they were too fat to be a Victoria's Secret angel. The fashion scene was a battlefield that I was glad I didn't have to play on.
What really struck me was that Sam and Tolliver seemed so close, like the flip sides of the same coin. They finished each other's sentences, laughed at the same jokes. I wondered if they were a couple.
We all retired to Sam's living room after dinner, and I was so full my belly bloated into a little food baby. They sat either side of me on the couch, the bottle of wine close by on the coffee table.
What I wouldn't give to be the meat in that man sandwich. Ace had been quiet for most of the day, but apparently this was too much. I blushed, and Tolliver quirked a brow. I hoped one of their superpowers wasn't reading minds.
“So tell us about your family? I know your parents are deceased, but there is no one else? ” Sam asked, sipping his third glass of wine. His lips were perfect. Full and shaped like Cupid’s bow. They looked soft and almost feminine in a face that was all male.
“My parents died in a road accident when I was sixteen, and the lawyers tried to find some living relatives, but either there were none or they didn't want to be found and saddled with a chronically ill teenager. So I petitioned to become an emancipated minor and my trust funds were released and I've been on my own ever since.”
“My condolences,” Tolliver said, and I was beginning to think that his accent was part Brazilian, with his golden skin and square cut jaw. But his almond eyes, dark straight brows and dark black hair hinted at Japanese too. Whatever the combination, he was the epitome of male beauty.
I realized they were waiting for me to say something and instead I was staring like a goofball.
“Thanks. It was a long time ago now.”
Tolliver bit his full lower lip, and I physically had to drag my eyes away.
“And you've been alone ever since?”
I shook my head. “I decided to move to New York to be closer to all my specialists. I answered a ‘roommate wanted’ ad for a tiny apartment, the other occupant being the youngest child of a huge Irish family from Boston, who'd run away to become a singer at eighteen. Her name was Clary Mulligan and after twelve failed auditions, and sitting with me through round after round of chemo, she decided to put herself through school and become a nurse instead. Now she's a nurse for Doctors without Borders.” I couldn't help but smile anytime I thought about eighteen year old Clary. She was something else. She didn't take shit from anybody, which is why she would have hated the entertainment industry but loves being a nurse. When the chemo was bad, she'd sat beside me while I hugged the toilet bowl, gagging every time I puked but refusing to leave me without any support. She’s the best. “I would have been lost without her those first couple of years.”
They were both giving me soft looks of polite pity. “Well, she has our eternal gratitude,” Tolliver said in his usual stuff tone. There was something haughty and autocratic about him that made me desperately want to know what his previous life was like, but I held my tongue. They'd tell me when they were ready.
“You should remember that, because she is going to have a shit-fit when she finds out I've moved in with seven hot guys who were basically strangers. Not to mention the fact that you guys are all basically zombies.”
Sam laughed and Tolliver looked indignant.
“I am not a zombie!”
Sam launched himself at me, making chomping motions at my faces. “Brainnnsssss!”
I squealed and scooted back onto Tolliver's lap to escape. Sam squashed me between them, miming snacking on my forehead. I couldn't breathe from laughing. Maybe the wine had gone to my head, but it was nice just playing around.
“Don't worry, I'll save you,” Tolliver whispered against my ear, his lips brushing against the sensitive skin.
I shivered. I wasn't laughing anymore, but I definitely didn't want to move. I looked up at Sam, and saw the heat I felt mirrored in his eyes. He knelt on the floor between my knees. The buzz of excitement ran through my body as Sam lowered his mouth to mine.
“May I?” his voice was just a low rumble, and it went straight to my lady parts.
“Yes,” I breathed back. What was it about these men that sent my hormones into overdrive?
“And me?” Tolliver asked, sweeping my hair from my nape and placing a lips there.
“Yes.”
Then Sam lowered his mouth to mine and kissed me, softly at first, sipping at my lips. Then harder, his tongue running along my lower lip before plunging into my mouth.
I don't think they're gay.
Pleasure blocked out Ace. We'd always had an agreement that she mostly stuck to. She stayed the hell out of my head during sex. It was like having someone watching me otherwise. Not another participant, but a commentator. It was not fun. So we'd come to an agreement after I'd chucked a hissy fit.
The force of Sam's body pressed me back into the hard torso of Tolliver, who was trailing kisses from my ear down the curve of my shoulder.
A hand crept up under my shirt and I held my breath as gentle fingers ran up over my ribs to tease the edge of my breasts.
Sam pushed his long lean body between my thighs and I could feel the evidence of his attraction pressing against my leg.
There were hands and lips all over my body, and Tolliver was whispering something to me in another language that I couldn't understand but set my body on fire anyway. Someone was moving my T-shirt up over my stomach, higher until Sam moved his mouth away from mine and trailed his lips down to the swell of my breasts. I felt light headed, my breaths coming in pants.
Sam's front door banged open and we flew apart like guilty teenagers. I jerked away quickly and banged the back of my head into Tolliver's chin, and he let out a yelp of pain.
Oz and Valery stood there, worry etched on their faces. As they took in the scene before them, Oz’s expression morphed into amusement.
“Your health alarm went off. I thought you were about to have a heart attack. I think we are going to have to recalibrate your wristband. I better cancel the alert before the rest of the cavalry arrives.”
Sam swore. “Too late.”
I looked behind Valery and Oz to see a stormy looking Lux. Uh oh.