Signs of Cupidity (Heart Hassle Book 1)

I wake with the sun.

Not true. I actually wake with someone looming over me, blocking the sun from my face. I jerk awake at his voice and close proximity, my eyes adjusting to see Evert smirking, the sun behind his head like a halo. “Who knew such a small Scratch could make such loud snores?”

I sit up, groaning at my sore muscles. “I don’t snore.”

He reaches forward and pulls out a twig stuck from my hair. “And that’s not a puddle of drool on your shoulder either, I suppose?”

I jerk to the right and quickly wipe my chin and shoulder from the offending fluid, shooting him a glare at the same time. “I was tired.”

“Oh?” he says, playing with the twig in his hand, flipping it between his fingers nimbly. I have to admit, he has nice looking hands. And he has that nice muscled forearm with the vein…mmmm. “Is sitting down all day and night tiring you out, Scratch?”

Oh, if only he knew. “Maybe being held in captivity doesn’t agree with me.”

“Maybe,” he concedes, tossing the twig aside. “Are you ready to tell us who and what you are?”

I try to cross my arms, but I can’t do that without revealing how loose my bindings are, so I just set my arms in my lap instead. “That depends. I’ll tell you if you agree to stop tying me up and threatening to kill me. I also want more meat to eat. And fruit. And extra furs to sleep on. Oh and you have to talk to me because it’s boring without someone to talk to.”

“I’ll be sure to let the guys know your terms,” he says dryly.

I roll my eyes. “What you mean is, you’re going to ask Not-First and he’ll decide.”

Evert crosses his arms, the smirk falling from his face. “Fuck no. But we’re a covey. At least for the next few weeks. We have to work together until then.”

“Oh, really?” I ask innocently. “Because it seems to me that he’s in charge around here.”

I’ll just be here, holding a giant spoon and stirring the pot. I’ll stir it all day and cook up something really good.

“I know what you’re doing, Scratch.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Third.”

He snorts and leans close to me, making my breath catch. With him this close, my brain does some crazy sex-flash visions. I successfully undress him and jump him in my mind. I’m really good at sex-visualizing.

“Tell me what you are,” he says quietly, his lips right next to my ear. Tricky, tricky Third.

If he thinks he can seduce me for answers, he has another thing coming. Because hello, I’m a cupid. If anyone’s going to be the seducer, it’s going to be me. So I turn my head and nuzzle my nose against his neck, and then nip him gently, using my lips and tongue to soothe the marks. I can practically feel him shudder in both surprise and hunger. And I don’t mean hunger for food. “Set me free,” I whisper in his ear huskily, because I just want to see if he’ll do it.

He leans back, and I can see the desire in his clear blue eyes. The attraction between us is obvious. It has been since I first landed here. His aroused state saturates the air and I inhale deeply. There’s clearly no need for any cupid power intervention here. We have it in spades. Or maybe hearts; wink, wink.

When he goes to the side of the tree to start undoing the bindings, my mouth opens in surprise. “Wow, that really worked?”

He chuckles. “Nah. I came out here to let you loose for awhile.”

“Oh.”

I quickly pull the ropes tight in my hands, hiding the motion from him. I don’t want him to know how loose they really are, or my jig will be up.

When he unties me, I stand up and grimace. Maybe I practiced flying a tad too much last night. Evert misunderstands my expression of pain and frowns. “Were the ropes too tight? I’ll fucking beat my brother’s ass.”

“No.”

His frown deepens and his blue eyes trail over my body. “Did I miss some of your injuries?”

“No, you got them all I think. I’m just sore.”

“Your shoulder?”

I nod, because that’s as good an answer as any. “Yeah. And my wings.”

He accepts this and then tosses me a piece of round fruit. I’m starving, so I immediately bite into it. The second my teeth break through the skin, I wrinkle my nose and pull it back from my mouth. Evert laughs. “You’re supposed to peel it first.”

“That would’ve been good information before I bit into the bitter skin.”

 I put the fruit on my lap and start peeling it. When I get the red skin off, I find a pink, juicy fruit inside. It tastes amazing. I let a little bit of juice dribbles down my lip. I lick the escaping juices slowly, letting my tongue swipe across my bottom lip.

If I thought he was aroused before, it’s nothing to the heavy presence of it in the air now. I really like this new addition to my powers. It’s quite useful.

I slowly put the last bite of fruit in my mouth and bite down provocatively before swallowing. I smirk at his expression. “What’s the matter Third?” I ask innocently.

He looks like he wants to devour me, and I’m pretty sure I’d like to be. “You think it’s fun tormenting me, Scratch?”

“A little, yeah.”

He reaches forward and grabs my hand, and then slowly lifts my finger to his mouth. He puts it in his mouth and sucks the rest of the fruit juice off it in a delicious swirl of his hot, wet tongue.

Annnd my love lips just filled with lady lava.

He releases my finger and leans back with a triumphantly smug look on his face. Whatever expression he sees on mine makes him chuckle darkly. “Whatever you do to me, I’ll match and raise you, Scratch. Remember that.”

Gods, I hope that’s a promise.

“Come on. We’re taking a walk. Do you need to go first?”

I try to clear my head because he has me all worked up. It takes me a second to comprehend his words. “Umm, go where?”

“You know…relieve yourself,” he says, and I swear, the man blushes. He just sucked my finger like it was nothing, but he’s totally embarrassed by pee.

“Oh, yeah,” I answer, realizing that as soon as he mentions it, I do have to go. These physical bodies sure do take a lot of maintenance.

He points in a general direction behind me. “There’s an outhouse about a hundred feet over there. I’ll wait here.”

An outhouse. That would have been good to know last night before I popped a squat in the forest like a bunny rabbit.

“Thanks.”

I walk in the direction he pointed and soon find the small wooden outhouse. Inside is a simple wooden bench with a hole, but the smell makes me promptly plug my nose. I do my business quickly and then return to where Evert waits for me.

When he sees me, he motions me over. “Come on, I’ll take you for a walk.”

I look up at him suspiciously. “Why are you taking me for a walk?”

“Would you rather stay tied up all day?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Evert leads the way through the forest, and I follow beside him, careful to watch where I go. Evert is barefoot, too, but unlike my sensitive and dainty feet, his seem adjusted to the forest floor, and he walks over sticks and rocks like he doesn’t even feel them.

“So. Stitch, huh?”

“Yep. That’s me.”

“Pretty fancy trick you have.”

He chuckles and reaches up to push aside a low hanging branch. “I don’t do tricks, Scratch. I perform miracles.”

“Gods, you’re humble, too.”

This time, his laugh echoes around me and fills my belly with warmth.

“Just one of my many positive attributes.”

“I’m sure.”

“Where you from, Scratch?”

I wave a hand dismissively. “Oh, you’ve never been there.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Are you going to set me free?”

He holds his arms up and motions around. “What do you call this?”

“I call this supervised exercise. You know, like what a prisoner gets.”

He chuckles. “How’d a pretty little thing like you end up falling over our island, anyway?”

“I jumped out a window,” I deadpan. I pull off a leaf as we walk by, twirling it around in my fingers as I run it across my palm.

“Boyfriend?”

I smile at him. “Why, are you interested in filling the position?”

“What if I were?”

I shrug. “The application process is very selective. You probably wouldn’t pass.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’d be fine.”

Hell yeah, he’s fine. He and Sylred both. And Ronak. Dammit.

We come to a copse of trees whose branches are hanging heavy with long, green fruit in a conical shape. “What are these?” I ask, trailing forward.

“Bice Horns,” he answers, reaching up his arm for one. I watch his muscular bicep flex as he snaps the fruit from a branch and hands one to me, and that’s when I notice the tattoos poking out from his sleeve.

“Try it.” He catches me staring at his arm and his signature smirk returns.

I take the offered fruit. “Are there any secret fruit tricks to this one that I should know about?”

“You’re learning,” he says, reaching forward.

Our fingers brush and I try to stop the slight shiver that runs down my arm from the contact, but I don’t think I’m successful. Gods, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this touching thing.

Evert snaps back the point of the cone-shaped fruit and the skin falls away, leaving a smooth, pale green center. He hands it back to me and I take a bite, and my mouth floods with saliva.

I make a face and Evert laughs. “The outside is sour, but once you get closer to the core, it gets sweeter, I promise.  Keep chewing.”

I decide to take his word for it and keep working on it, while Evert gathers a few for himself. By the time I finish my one, he’s eaten three. I wipe my mouth with my hand, making sure there’s no residual food on my chin.

“You’re right. It had a sweet center,” I say. “Is that kind of like you?”

He looks over at me with a glint in his eye, his dimple showing on his cheek. “What?”

“Yeah, you know. You try to be a jerk, but you’re really just sweet on the inside.”

He scratches at his black beard and laughs. “I hate to break it to you, Scratch, but I’m definitely not the sweet one in the covey,” he says with a mischievous glint in his blue eyes. “But if you want to stick with your fruit analogies, I won’t stop you from trying to taste me to see if your theory holds up.”

It’s my turn to smirk at him, and I feel a jolt of victory when I realize he’s watching my lips curve up. “Be careful, Third. You don’t want to start something and get in trouble with your boss.”

He scoffs and we start walking back toward the cabin, our paces slow. “I already told you, he’s not the boss.”

“Hmm. I don’t think he knows that.”

I am pot-stirrer, hear me whisk.

“Tell me what the ranking means. Why do you call me Third?”

“Fine. Since you took me for a walk and gave me food, I’ll tell you. I decided I was going to kiss you thirdly,” I confess. ‘But Ronak turned out to be a complete asshole, so my ranking is clearly flawed.”

He chuckles and shakes his head, but there’s a decided heat that passes between us, and I can tell that I’ve dragged his mind right into the gutter. Right where I like it.

When we’re quiet for a couple minutes, I take a risk and ask, “Why were you banished to this island?”

The second the question is out of my mouth, I know it’s a mistake. Evert’s face shutters closed, his expression becoming suddenly cold and unreadable. The friendly flirting that we’d been dancing with immediately ends. “That’s covey business.”

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I didn’t know it was a big sensitive secret. I heard you mention something about it.”

“It has nothing to do with you, so don’t bring it up.”

Gods, I really struck a nerve.

Evert’s pace quickens so much that I nearly have to jog to keep up, which I decidedly can’t do, because I’m sore and my body still feels like a newborn foal trying to walk on unsteady legs.

When we get back to the tree, we don’t speak as Evert ties me up again. It’s tighter than before, but I don’t worry about that now. At least it’s not as tight as Not-First would have made it.

When Evert stalks off, I’m left alone again. The walk was nice while his good mood lasted, and the fruit was yummy. I just wish I hadn’t pissed him off. Maybe I could have talked him into letting me walk around for longer.

Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day, and if I want to sneak out of my bindings again by nightfall, I have a lot of work to do to get them loose again in time.