Page 22 of The Deeper Game
“Are you a trainedfucking-gagent? Do you have somefucking-gknowledge we don’t have? Some knowledge that the feather is unimportant?”
“More of a hunch,” I said.
“You will work on the feather,” Odin snapped. “I want to know the species without a doubt. Take it to the university if you must.” Odin left with the case, and Thor and I got iced teas and sat out on the porch, ready to continue our tasks.
“What’s the deal with Bolo?” I asked him. “Who is he?”
Thor put his feet up on the railing. “He’s a guy around the scene. He somehow knew—I don’t know who from or how—that you like to be watched. You know…”Watched while fucking,he meant.
“Wait, heknewthis? How would he know such a thing?”
“Not from any of us. Zeus thinks…” He paused here. “Well, wehavehad some semi-public sex, if you recall. That involved one of us watching. It’s one of the risks that…”
“That makes it fun,” I said, finishing his sentence for him. But he was right. There had been a few episodes of that. Car sex. Public park in the middle of the night sex. Sex in the storage basement at Guvvey’s, the gangster restaurant. Yes, they knew I liked the danger of getting caught, and they knew I liked one of my guys watching. But not some random guy.
“There’s also the fact that the four of us are a romantic unit. Some guys don’t respect that. A guy like Bolo, he’d never go up to a man in a traditional couple and ask, ‘Hey, can I watch you fuckyour woman?’But it’s known that we’re a foursome. So people make assumptions. It could be simple as that.”
I nodded. “Even the Gigis had some shit to say about me liking manwiches.”
Thor snorted. “You love manwiches.”
“Only with you guys.”
“Never with anyone else, baby. Ever.” Thor looked hard into my eyes and reached for my hand. “This thing is as real as it gets.”
This happy feeling of warmth came over me, and I smiled. Being with my guys felt like beingheldin the most wonderful way, like being surrounded by an invisible cocoon of love and support from the fiercest and most amazing men on the planet. Even if I was out somewhere alone, I felt held like that. I sometimes couldn’t believe how lucky I was.
Thor squeezed my hand. “Anyway, Zeus told Bolo to fuck off, and Bolo got a little creepy about it.”
“Creepy how?”
Thor just shook his head.
“I want to know,” I said. “Don’t infantilize me. We’re partners.”
Thor let go of my hand and watched a squirrel run up one of the tall trees in front of the porch. “Demeaning. Dehumanizing toward you. As if it shouldn’t matter what you want, or what we want. Like it’s just a porn thing, what we’ve got going. It was almost as if Bolo thought he had a right to you. As though we had a duty to share you. That was Zeus’s impression. He would’ve put Bolo in the hospital if Odin hadn’t been there to break it up.”
“Heattackedhim?”
“Let’s just say Zeus corrected him in his thinking. We thought that was that.”
“You should have told me,” I said. “Does this sort of thing happen a lot?”
“Only the one time,” Thor said.
“So you think it’s him?”
“It seems likely.”
“Is he…what’s his background?” I asked. Meaning criminal background.
“Zeus went into his records. He’s been in for auto theft. He’s a car guy. Odin says car guys are more likely to be predatory, though. It’s not on his record, but it doesn’t mean it’s not in his background. Criminal records tend to reflect less than eight percent of a person’s actual crimes.”
“How do you get a survey like that? Did somebody at Guvvey’s do it?”
“Something like that.”
“Maybe we have to stop doing public stuff,” I said.
