Page 18 of Seduced By the Mermen
I slide out of bed and pull on my robe over my blue and gold sleeping shirt. Everything here is blue and gold. I’ve always liked blue, but I’m more of a black and gray kind of girl. I tighten the robe’s belt, yank the collar up around my neck, and pivot. Maybe I should bake something for everyone to have for breakfast?
“No baking, Mom,” Marlee mumbles into her pillow.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“And other lies you tell yourself . . .”
Out in the hall, there’s light coming from under Zion’s door. I slow and then pause. I’m holding my breath, listening for him. But I can’t hear anything, and then I wonder if he can hear me? That I stopped? It’s enough to propel me to the kitchen tea kettle. I’ve never been a coffee drinker, not like Annabelle and Marlee, which turns out to be a good thing. There’s lots of tea here but not much coffee.
I finish my cup and put it in the sink before making my way back to Marlee’s room. I’m more tired. Sort of. Tired enough, I guess. But I can’t help stopping outside my room. Zion’s light is still on.
“Blair, did you need something?” His voice is soft but firm.
Panic races up my spine. I knock.
“Come in.”
“No, I don’t need anything. Did you need something?” Am I sweating? No, why would I be sweating? Zion’s still shirtless. He has the pillows propped up behind him, and his leg rests on another pillow. His phone—block—rests on his lap.
It’s hard not to stare at his chest. Working on a farm gives you some muscles. But no one in my life looked like this. Crap... crap. I’m staring.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I made some tea. I stopped because I saw your light.”
“I’m a cavefish. How was your tea?”
“A cavefish?
“I thrive at night.”
“Oh, like a night owl. Me too. I used to like to clean and bake at night. I got pretty good at doing it quietly. All but the vacuuming, of course. But then the rest of the house woke up at four to take care of the animals. I’d...” Why would he care about how I used to clean the farmhouse? “My tea was good. Would you like some?”
“No. But I’d like to hear more about you. What is vacuuming?”
“It’s a hose that sucks up dirt from the floor. But it’s really loud. It works better than a broom.”
“Oh, we have something like that, but it’s automatic. Rodgers does it.”
Rodgers? “I don’t remember meeting him.”
“He works for us. He’s not part of our pod. Though he has his own pod now, I think of him as family.”
“Oh, like a housekeeper? Cooking, cleaning, laundry, and things like that?”
“He does some of those things. There are others who work for us too,” he says and gives me an honest smile. “Why don’t you sit and chat with me until the tea makes you sleepy?”
“I’d like that.” I round the bed to get the chair from the corner of the room by the window. But he moves over and pats the bed.
“Here, you can put your feet up. That chair doesn’t look comfortable. You need to get sleepy, not wake up more.”
I glance from the chair to the bed. He’s right. Anytime I’ve sat in it, I ended up popping up before too long because I can’t get comfortable. “All right, as long as I’m not crowding you.” I move back around to the other side of the bed and climb up onto it. I really need to get a stool; the darn things are too tall. Zion holds out his hand. I take it, climbing the rest of the way up. His smooth hand sends tingles through me. I settle as close to the edge as I can without falling off the bed.
“Blair, I don’t want you breaking a leg falling out of the bed while you’re getting sleepy.” He pats the canyon of bed between us. When I first moved into the room, Holter asked if I was going to be okay sleeping in such a small bed. The thing is bigger than any bed I’ve ever slept in. It’s at least king size, if not bigger.
“You’re right.” I wiggle closer to him and stare at the blue dot on my ceiling. It’s just a sticker or something, leftover from the last apartment owners. But my nerves settle when I focus on it.
“Tell me more about where you come from.” Zion puts his block on the bedside table and takes a pillow out from behind his back. He’s settled down on the mattress on his side. His blue-gray eyes glisten at me.
“There’s no more to tell you about where I’m from. But Marlee and I have spent the last few years traveling. We spent some time in Phoenix, Arizona. I really liked the desert, but Marlee missed the snow. And we both wanted to be closer to Annabelle, even though we weren’t seeing her. It was nice to know that we could.” If we thought it was safe. The weird thing was, right before she was taken, Marlee and I were talking about driving down to Boston and surprising her. Then the battle happened and?—
