Page 61 of The Mentor
“That’s none of your business,” he told Finn.
Finn smiled. “I see. Well, I’ll take that as a negative.” He placed a hand on my thigh. “Don’t worry, beautiful, I’m happy to step up and satisfy you.”
“What are you two whispering about?” Marco asked.
“Nothing,” both Archer and I said at the same time.
“Ah, that’s not fair.” Finn chuckled. “Why can’t Marco know that you have a sexual fantasy about being with two men?”
“Finn!” I said in my sternest voice. “It’s not funny and I really don’t.” I regretted ever lying about this and shot Shelly a head shake, feeling embarrassed that Finn would bring this up in front of her.
“Ahh, don’t be shy. We would never judge and from where I’m sitting, I see three grown, virile men at your service.”
Archer moved in his chair and pointed to Finn with a scowl on his face. “I don’t think Khan meant for you to come on to Kya. That’s not the role of a protector.” His tone was sharp, but Finn just chuckled again like he had no concern in the world.
“Khan’s hardly going to say anything, since both he and Boulder ended up marrying the women they protected.”
“Oh, I see, and now that you’re Kya’s protector, you think she’ll marry you?” The anger in Archer’s voice made me wonder why he would get so riled up when he knew I would never marry anyone.
Did Archer feel threatened by Finn? I almost laughed at the absurdity, since Archer didn’t even like me. Why would he act this jealous?
Watching Archer pull back and stare at the flames, I wondered if Nmen really attributed so much importance to marriage that Archer would marry someone he argued with constantly?
For a while no one spoke, but my mind was asking all sorts of inappropriate questions, like who would I pick if I had to choose between Finn or Archer.
Studying Finn for a second I decided his dark eyes had a warmth to them, and he was kind of charming with the way he often made me smile and laugh. Finn was definitely the most easygoing of all the Nmen that I’d met so far. As I watched him, he tucked his dark shoulder-length hair behind his ears, revealing that he had an earring in his left ear. It was a black circle, big enough to cover his earlobe, and from what I could see it was made of some kind of shiny metal.
Discreetly I turned my eyes back to Archer. Even brooding in his chair, I found him more pleasing to look at than Finn.Maybe because he’s closer to my age?I wondered, knowing that Archer was twenty-eight while Finn was thirty-two.
Archer smacked a mosquito on his neck. “Of all the species that we lost, why not the fucking mosquitoes?”
When he caught me looking at him, I quickly diverted my eyes, but I wasn’t completely done evaluating his looks and without wanting to I looked back at him.
Again, our eyes clashed, and this time he tilted his head slightly with a minuscule frown.
For a moment, I couldn’t look away. His features, which I had always thought too masculine and hard, had become… I dismissed the word “handsome” and replaced it with “familiar” in my mind. Yes, that was it. Archer had become familiar and safe to me. He might be annoying and frustrating, but he was also willing to sprint through the forest to save me from a bear attack. My face softened as I thought about an episode yesterday when he’d blown up at Nero because the boy had been disrespectful to me.
Without fully realizing it, I’d been staring at Archer for the past five or ten seconds, and the answer was very clear to me. I would definitely choose Archer.
“Why did everybody get so silent?” Marco asked and poked at the fire with a stick. “What were we talking about?”
“We were talking about me marrying Kya.” Finn swung his head to me. “You want to marry me, sweetheart?”
Archer broke our locked gaze and hardened his jaw.
“What did you say?” I asked Finn and blinked my eyes.
“Do you want to marry me?” he repeated.
“No, thank you,” I answered distractedly.
“Ahh, that’s disappointing.” Finn held a hand to his heart. “But I guess that since you’re a Motlander, you don’t technically have to marry,” he said pragmatically. “We could just have sex.”
I shook my head, but Finn wasn’t paying attention, since he had his eyes on Marco.
“How about you, would you be willing to have a threesome with me and Kya?”
Marco eagerly pushed to the edge of his seat and smiled goofily at me. “Just say the word, Kya.”
