Page 17 of Twins for the Enemy

His face hardens again. "Does a woman deserve to suffocate on smoke and have her face burned?"

I fling the risotto. It spatters all over Kieran's chest, creating a lemony cascade down his shirt. He looks down at it. When he looks back at me, there's no anger in his face. Just slight surprise.

But I still realize I've made a huge mistake as he starts unbuttoning his shirt.

"Do you need to do that?" I ask.

"It has olive oil and butter in it. I may be a man, but I can still get that those two ingredients don't come out."

I’m getting used to seeing him shirtless, but my heart immediately starts thrumming throughout my wholebody. It's not just the muscles and tone, but the memory of how it felt against me—the heat, the weight, and the way his body moved with mine, the ocean waves crashing down on the shoreline.

When I look back at his face, the hunger in his eyes makes my appetite look small. But God, do I want to cater to him.

He leans closer to me. My hands are trembling. Hot breath. Dark eyes. Lips slightly parted.

Faint bells chime. As Kieran pulls away, looking around, I realize it’s not in my head.

“Kieran!” a woman’s voice calls out. It sounds like she’s coming from the foyer. “Are you here?”

“Excuse me,” Kieran says, standing up. “Keep eating. I need to deal with this.”

As I watch him walk away, I imagine another woman sinking her nails into his shoulder blades like I did. I imagine her calling his name—actually knowing his name when they have sex—and how it’d echo throughthis house louder than it does when she’s calling him now.

I take a sip of my water. This doesn’t seem like a feast for a god anymore. It’s a meal to keep the humans placated while the gods take everything from them.

Even the fire they originally gave them.

Chapter six

~KIERAN~

Seeing my sister is always a glacier of emotions. On the surface, it’s good to see her. She’s the last piece of me that’s not corrupted by greed, rage, or arrogance.

But underneath that, the fury is worse than ever. It’s my job to keep her safe. Two months ago, I would’ve sworn on my life I’d have done anything to do it. I would’ve said it was the most important responsibility in my life.

Then Farah literally crashed into my life, and I’d forgotten all about her. I let my responsibility to her slip between my fingers. It’s not Farah’s fault that I allowed myself to be distracted.

It is her fault for causing the fire that injured Ellie.

“Hello, Kee-kee,” she says, smiling. Nobody would ever be able to tell that she’s my sister. She has long blonde hair, folded into two braids, with a body that’s thin enough that it seems unsafe for her to live in the Windy City. One strong gust and she’s drifting away to the Atlantic Ocean. She wraps her skinny arms around me and kisses my cheek. “Why are you shirtless? Were you flexing for someone?”

With her face so close to mine, I can see the white scars on the left side of her face. Dr. Bartkowski had done an extraordinary job after the burns, turning her immense pain into faint cobwebs along the edge of her face.

Even with the expert hands of a surgeon hiding her pain, I can’t let her know that Farah is here. Ellie can do yoga and meditation all day long, but it’s significantly more difficult to forgive when the arsonist isn’t a phantom that vanished in the night.

I have the opposite problem—where it was easier to hate her when she was a phantom. But she’s soft, supple flesh and bone, creating chaos in my head.

I tell myself to stop and I go. I tell myself to go and I stop. I tell myself to keep my distance, and I gravitate around her like a goddamn moon.

“Kieran?” she asks. “Are you doing okay?”

“I’m doing good,” I say. “I am curious if you’re here so late to rob me or kill me.”

She rolls her eyes. “I wouldn’t need to come over late at night to kill you. I could do it in broad daylight, and a million businessmen would come out and applaud me.”

“Only a million? I thought I’d broken into at least three million at this point.”

“They’d send me gift baskets.” She beams at me. It pulls a bit at the scarring near her eye, but if you didn’t know about it, it would just look like some glitter. “I had some mini replicas made of the buildings Henry designed. It’s going to be a surprise for the engagementparty, but I can’t let him find them at our apartment, so I stored them on the shelf in your library.”

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