Page 29 of Five to Love Him
“Did we hurt you? We…we forgot ourself. We’re sorry. Forgive us.”
“No.” I reached out with my free hand to touch the cheek of the one who’d been kissing me, closed my other hand around the fingers that were slipping away from me. “The window seat is just a bit small, that’s all. And, uh. It’s like this? When you’re with someone?”
“We scared you.” The corners of their mouths drooped. It made their faces look hollow. I hadn’t paid much attention to the individual features because I’d been busy keeping track of who spoke to me, but now, this close, I realized they had such an expressive mouth, inquisitive round eyes that looked really good when they smiled. Warm and sunny, I wanted to see that.
I shook my head. “Well, maybe a little. You’re forgetting I had no social life to speak of until a few months ago, and making out with a bunch of guys—”
“We’re not!” “We’re not a bunch of people. We’re one.” “We want to give you all our attention because you deserve nothing less, but we are one.”
I spotted them holding hands again, the one sitting on the floor and the one who’d kissed me.
I straightened, looked at the one who was still allowing me to lean my back against him. “I’m beginning to understand that. But to me—oh. You remember saying you were small?”
All of them looked away from me. “We are. We know we are.”
“I’m smaller though. I’m just one, which definitely makes you bigger than me. And I need to get used to that.” I sucked the corner of my bottom lip into my mouth, and that got the attention of at least two of them. “I don’t know whether it’s the strawberries that charmed me or all of you, but I want to get used to it.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.” I wiggled my legs. “But it’s a really small window seat.”
They were smiling again, and my heart felt lighter. “Actually, our kind would say that a small space is good, especially if you are small. It’s comfortable.” Two of them looked around the room, maybe even looked at the screen where people were dying. “This place is very big for just one.”
“Yayyiiieee,” I squeaked when they lifted me, arms hoisting me up as if I weighed nothing.
“But we see why you would feel that way, not knowing anything else.”
The hivelings scurried, moving the floor cushions and arranging them to make a nest of pillows on the ground for us, one I found myself placed into gently.
“Oh, wow.”
“Is that better?” one of them asked. Moments later, all of them were back around me, one cradling my head on his lap and stroking my chest, another lounging next to me, a third coming to lie on my other side, the other two behind them, their hands touching me as if each body needed the contact.
“I guess. You’re not watching the movie anymore.”
“No. We think you are bad company for watching anything other than you. We could do it all day and all night. Maybe you’ll let us. We’re deeply hopeful that you’ll let us.”
“Ah.” I swallowed. “I have class later.”
“We have work. We won’t skip it. We want to provide for you. But can we come to class with you? You already invited us to meet your boss.”
“Uh, I don’t know if that’s allowed? During class, I mean. Headprinci-master Farrow said to bring you for cake. He was going on and on about cake and work and how I have a resting bitch face.”
That hissing sound again, and this time it didn’t sound entirely like normal people—like humans—might hiss. Maybe it was that there were more than one of them doing it.
“Your face is beautiful. We really like your face. You have a chip of emerald in your left eye. It’s so pretty.”
I giggled. “Gran used to say it happened when the stork dropped me on the lawn outside her door. My eye took on the color of the clover sprouting from the lawn. I mean, she told me that when I was little, way before sex ed.”
“We gathered. We’d never drop you, but we like the story.”
I looked around the pillow nest. “You proved that.” I wiggled my hips, relieved that my erection had gone down. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to maybe explore more, but there was nothing wrong with a speedbump.
“You said you made iced tea?”
They smiled. “With stevia and your withering lemon. Here, try it.”
fourteen
