House Of Dragons Page 28

  "I want this one...that you and Blaine picked. I think it's gorgeous. It's perfect."

  I really thought so. And, despite the fact that it had happened in the bathroom, I thought Nick's proposal, while I'd been wrapped in Blaine's arms, had been perfect, too.

  Not to mention that receiving a proposal on a bathroom floor after a night of drinking and vomiting seemed just about right for a woman living through a Bloodsucker apocalypse.

  Just as I was about to drift off to sleep, I asked Blaine and Nick what they’d done for a living before the apocalypse. It just seemed like something I should know about two men I was now engaged to.

  Nick answered first. "I was in the military. Army ranger."

  "And what did you do, Blaine?"

  "A lot of different things." He paused so long that I wondered if he was going to continue. "I was best at fixing cars."

  With visions of myself wearing a white dress floating around in my mind, I soon fell asleep, wrapped in Nick and Blaine's arms.

  CHAPTER 14

  A week or so later, just about two weeks after we'd met, I became Nick and Blaine's wife while wearing a long white satin sheath dress that I thought was just as beautiful and perfect as my engagement ring. Nick wore dark dress pants and an Oxford shirt. Blaine wore clean jeans and a clean t-shirt, and I didn't mind in the least that he wasn't more dressed up.

  In fact, my heart had done a little stutter when I'd seen him and Nick dressed how they were, each with their different style. I loved them both just how they were, and I never wanted either of them to ever change.

  The simple ceremony was performed by an older man in his sixties who was a non-shifter and former Methodist minister. He'd serendipitously arrived in Helena with his young grandson just two days earlier, after having seen a sign posted somewhere about ten miles east.

  Nick and Blaine had actually taken my drunken idea to post Helena signs and directions for travelers seriously, and they'd ultimately decided it was a good idea, dispatching some of their men to post a dozen or so signs as far as a hundred miles away.

  Using an old fashioned ink well and pen to write in stunningly beautiful calligraphy, the minister had written up a marriage certificate on thick cream-colored paper, and Nick, Blaine, and I signed it after the ceremony.

  I signed my name in careful cursive, Nick signed his name with large, bold strokes, and Blaine just scrawled a large capital B. Surveying the contract with our different signatures that kind of seemed to reflect our individual personalities, I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen in my life. I'd frame it later.

  After the living room wedding, which had been attended by a small, intimate group of about a dozen, Tracy, Elisa, and Kathy set up a buffet and even a little bar area in the kitchen, and a loud, boisterous, crowded wedding reception ensued. Nick uncorked a bottle of champagne, an exceedingly rare treat in post-apocalyptic times, and he and Blaine made a toast of sorts together, both speaking briefly about their "beautiful new bride" and how they hoped for "many, many happy years." I toasted them similarly, heart swelling. When the champagne ran out, Nick refilled everyone's glasses with wine so that Chris could make a toast.

  While everyone clinked their glasses and said cheers, Blaine spoke near my ear in a low voice with the edges of his mouth twitching. "Careful, now. You know how goofy you get on wine."

  He seemed to have a much higher tolerance for alcohol. Once he'd drained his wine in two or three gulps, he refilled his wine glass with a few inches of whiskey and knocked that back, too. Somehow charmed by him in some deep, profound way that I often was, and experiencing a sudden, strong rush of love for him, I asked him to kiss me right then, and he did, to clapping and cheering of everyone present.

  Nick kissed me next, dipping me at the same time, to more clapping and cheering and a whistle from Kathy.

  She was actually being exceptionally nice to me. She'd told me congratulations and had given me a genuine-seeming smile, and while I'd been walking up the carpet "aisle" in the living room, she'd watched me, becoming clearly misty, as if she were a proud mother. A few moments later, while I'd been walking past her, I'd caught a glimpse of her wiping her eyes. She'd also been the one to pick my wildflower wedding bouquet and a posy of white flowers for me to wear in my hair. She sure was a funny one to figure out.

  After everyone had enjoyed large plates of delicious buffet food, Elisa brought out a beautiful triple-tiered vanilla wedding cake she'd made, and after thanking her, I cut the first slice with one of Nick's hands and one of Blaine's hands covering mine.

  Once everyone else had slices, I fed Nick and Blaine bites and they fed me bites, and without smearing frosting all over my face. I'd warned them both that although I knew some women thought it was cute and fun to get a face full of cake at their wedding, I didn't think I'd be one of those women.

  At no point during the wedding or reception had I become anything more than just slightly misty, but that was soon to change when a barrel-chested shifter named Jim said he had a wedding gift for Nick, Blaine, and me. Like Blaine, Jim was a rough-around-the-edges kind of guy who spoke in a gruff sort of manner. Before the apocalypse, he'd spent a few years in prison for something that had happened during a bar fight.

  While everyone present looked on, he handed me some kind of a scroll tied with a dark blue ribbon. "No cameras anymore, of course, so I figured you might like a picture to remember your day. Did it during the talking part of the wedding."

  Face reddening a bit, he took his seat, and I undid the ribbon and rolled out the scroll on the table, eyes instantly filling. In pencil, Jim had done a gorgeous, remarkably detailed sketch of Blaine, Nick, and me, each of them holding one of my hands, standing up by the minister during the ceremony. The quality of the sketch was on the level of a very talented professional artist, and it was one that I would have expected a professional artist to require hours to do. Obviously incredibly talented, Jim had to have done it in less than fifteen minutes.

  While everyone crowded around, looking at the sketch and murmuring admiration, I surveyed it with a huge lump in my throat, then looked up at Jim and spoke in a wavering voice. "It's so, so beautiful. Thank you."

  Reddening further, Jim said it was "nothing." But like the wedding certificate, I'd frame the sketch, too, and would treasure it for the rest of my life.

  Soon, after a few more gifts, mostly things for the home, I tossed my wildflower bouquet, and Tracy caught it. Which made everyone laugh, because she, Trent, and Donovan had just gotten married the day before.

  After that, Kathy, Elisa, and Tracy started cleaning up, refusing any help from me, and Kathy told the men to go enjoy a drink in the living room if they wanted.

  When they'd all cleared out, Kathy handed Elisa and Tracy a couple of vases that Tracy had given me as gifts and asked if they could please go put them in a storage closet down the hallway. "Just because Eva might not want to use them right away. And also please maybe carefully wrap them in something...see if you can find some tissue paper or just use hand towels. Just wrap them carefully so they don't break."

  It was clear to me, and probably Elisa and Tracy, too, that Kathy wanted a minute alone with me. And once Elisa and Tracy had left with the vases, she got right to it, having a seat at the table with me and immediately beginning to study her nails.

  "So, obviously, I don't have a clue about your past relationships before the virus, and I don't know what specific kind of relationship you've had with Nick and Blaine the past couple weeks, or what already has or hasn't been going on in this house, and you're very young, and...."

  Sighing, Kathy paused, still surveying her nails and cuticles. "Well, do you have any questions or concerns or anything? In this day and age, most of you girls seem to have a lot more knowledge and experience than I had when I got married for the first time; but I always ask because...well, who knows.

  “You're very young, and I have no clue what has or hasn't been happening in this house, so...who know
s. Since none of you girls have mothers, I figure better to ask than have one of you fearful or confused about something when some simple advice or answering of a simple question could help."

  I was finding Kathy surprisingly endearing at the moment, and I almost wanted to giggle for some reason, but of course I didn't. Not least of all because I was one of those inexperienced young women that Kathy sought to help.

  Over the course of the previous week, I'd slept in Nick's room, alone, while he'd slept in one of the spare bedrooms and Blaine in the other. The night of our engagement, I'd awoken to use the bathroom and had found Blaine awake, staring up at the ceiling. When I'd returned to bed, he'd gotten out, apologizing.

  "I just can't do this anymore, Eva. Sorry."

  While he grabbed his pillow and one of the blankets, I asked him what he meant, and he said that he just wasn't able to sleep right next to me right then.

  "Even with the blankets between our lower bodies?" I'd asked.

  "Even with the blankets," he'd said, then had given me a quick kiss and had left the room.

  Getting back into bed, I found that Nick was also now awake, and he asked if I'd mind if he took the other spare room, saying that he'd barely slept all night. Knowing that I was going to miss the feel of his and Blaine's arms around me, but not wanting him to lose any more sleep, I'd told him to go right ahead.

  The next day, I'd gotten it into my head that maybe I wanted to wait until our wedding night to become intimate. Nick and Blaine had both said that was fine, but that with that being the case, we should definitely continue our separate sleeping arrangements until then.

  After that decision was made, Blaine and Nick still kissed me, but they both almost seemed actually somehow stressed when they did it, and often seemed determined to just give me a brief peck only. I got their thinking, and I didn't want to frustrate them, or myself, unnecessarily, so near the end of the week, I just stopped asking for kisses.

  Nick and Blaine had become increasingly grouchy by this point, and Blaine even kind of slammed a mug on the counter one morning after I'd given him a good morning hug. He'd immediately apologized, raking both hands through his hair and actually almost tugging at it, as if he wanted to rip it out. He'd then immediately left the house.

  Later that same day, I'd given Nick a hug hello, a hug that I'd just thought was a regular hug, but he'd sucked in a breath through his teeth, kind of pushing me away.

  "Eva, please, ...not so close. Please don't put the front of your body so close against the front of mine."

  I'd barely even brushed the front of his body with my own, and I told him that. "Really, the only part of me that even lightly touched you was my chest."

  "Yes, and...that's more than enough these days to cause me more than a bit of...." After sighing, he ground his teeth for a moment, making muscles work in his jaw. "A bit of tension and distress."

  That evening after dinner, I'd asked Nick and Blaine if they wouldn't mind talking about our wedding night. "The night we got engaged, I wanted to talk a little about how things might go the first real time the three of us share a bed, but I fell asleep, and...I guess I just thought we might discuss everything right now.

  “I just don't want my experience with you both to be as painful as my first and only other one was, and I have a feeling that more time being spent together beforehand, just...enjoying each other, I guess, might help with that, so...I guess I want to know if the both of you are committed to taking your time until I feel really ready, maybe just...." Struggling not to drop my gaze from their faces, I paused, swallowing. "Maybe just spending a lot of time touching me or something."

  With a little sigh, Blaine put his face in his hands. "Jesus."

  I just looked at him, incredulous. "What the heck is that supposed to mean?"

  After raking his hands over his face, his spoke again, though without even looking at me. "Please don't talk about us touching you...ever again...until we actually can."

  Hoping that Nick would give me some support, I turned my gaze to him just in time to see him give Blaine some kind of a sympathetic, understanding sort of nod, jaw clenched.

  Furious, I stood, throwing my napkin on the table. "Well, when are we ever going to talk about this? Right on our wedding night? Or would both of you prefer that the three of us not talk about it at all?"

  Fighting tears, I'd stormed away from the table and had stomped upstairs to lie in bed, where I'd cried into my pillow. I knew the previous week had been difficult and frustrating for Nick and Blaine, but it hadn't been frustrating only for them. Even though I wasn't as prone to becoming irritated and worked up over simple light touching as they were, I'd felt a bit grouchy, too, particularly while trying to fall asleep at night, which I'd had increasing difficulty doing.

  It was just hard for me to quiet my mind with images of Nick and Blaine floating around in my mind while imagining some of the things we might do together. Self-release didn't help much, mainly because I'd never been very good at achieving it. Usually, I didn't even try. The maybe half-dozen times in my life I'd been successful, the satisfaction gained had been fleeting. Fleeting and somehow not truly satisfying at all.

  Maybe a half hour after finishing my cry into my pillow, I'd almost fallen asleep when Nick entered the room with wet hair, clearly having just taken a shower. Blaine followed, having changed into the sweatpants he often wore as pajamas. Both of them pulled clothes-strewn chairs over to the bedside and sat down.

  On my stomach, looking at them with the side of my face pressed into the pillow, I spoke first, before either of them could. "It's fine. We don't need to talk about anything. I guess I'll just be surprised about how things go on our wedding night. I am hoping for things not to be upsetting or painful for me, though, and it sure would be nice if my two future husbands would give me at least some assurance that they're going to try their best to prevent that from happening."

  Nick apologized first, saying that he was sorry for upsetting me and making me cry.

  Leaning back in his chair, Blaine moved his head in a fraction of a nod. "I've been an asshole all week. I'm sorry, too."

  Nick continued by saying that I was right, that certain things should be discussed before our wedding night.

  Softening some but still irritated and hurt, I told him and Blaine to go ahead then and say anything they wanted to say. "I've already said all I have to say."

  After moving from his chair to his knees beside the bed, Nick moved one strong hand to caress the side of my face. "Neither of us want our wedding night to be painful for you in any way, shape, or form. We want you to feel completely relaxed and safe, and we want the experience to be very, very enjoyable for you. And you're right in thinking that really taking our time with things might prevent pain for you and allow you to enjoy things, and Blaine and I are both completely committed to doing that.

  “If at any point you say 'stop' or 'slow down,' we will, right away. You have our word. We'll be listening to you and taking your cues. And before we move on with anything, we'll make sure that that's what you want. We promise you this, if you'll just give us the chance to prove it to you."

  Now having softened completely, I nodded. "All right. I'll give you both the chance. I love you both, and I just want all three of us to enjoy our wedding night."

  Nick leaned over and brushed a light kiss against the side of my face. "We do, too, and we won't let you down or go back on what I just said. Promise."

  The following day, the day before the wedding, I just kind of steered clear of Nick and Blaine, thinking that it was probably best if we didn't have much further contact until the wedding. That evening, I didn't see them at all, because Elisa threw me a "bachelorette party dinner" at her house, and when I got home and went to bed, Nick and Blaine weren't even home yet.

  In the present, in the kitchen with Kathy after the reception, I responded to what she'd said by telling her that I didn't really have any questions or concerns. "I'm definitely not very experienced, and not
much of anything has been going on in this house, but Nick, Blaine, and I have had a few talks, and...well, I think things are going to be okay."

  Still studying her cuticles, Kathy seemed completely unable to lift her gaze to my face. "Well, good. Just make sure that everyone takes their time...and by 'everyone,' I really mean Nick and Blaine. That's the key. Just make sure everyone takes their time. Even set some zones as off-limits for a certain length of time if you'd like. Also, don't ever be afraid to be specific. Be as specific as you feel like you need to be, and don't ever be afraid of that. Human beings were meant to communicate."

  "Okay."

  Taking a deep breath, Kathy finally lifted her gaze to my face. "Well. Anyway. Do you need any help with anything beyond kitchen stuff? Or any...any questions or concerns or anything?"

  I shook my head. "No...not really. I'm honestly feeling pretty cool and confident right now. Thank you for everything, though."