“Yes, and he’s married.” Freya rolled her eyes. “Obviously, nothing is ever gonna come of it, but we just thought it was funny and we’re going to tell Jonah. Don’t you think it’ll boost his confidence that someone as lovely and beautiful as Belle feels that way about him?”
“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll be doing fucking cartwheels.” My mutter was low and irritated.
Indiana picked up a pillow from the floor and threw it back on the smallest of the couches. “I like Belle, but hypothermia must have given her brain frostbite. Jonah is a sensitive Motlander.”
Victor came back into the living room and walked to the couch, converting it into a bed.
“Do you need help?” Freya offered.
For a fraction of a second, his eyes lowered to her cleavage before he averted his gaze. “No.”
I exchanged a look with Indiana to see if he’d seen what I saw, but maybe my irritation with Belle was messing with my head. How could she lust after another man when I had been inside her last night?
Victor pulled off his shirt clearly feeling at ease with his body, which was fit but nowhere as muscular as mine or Indiana’s.
Indiana chuckled. “What the hell, Victor. I thought you were a lab rat, but I actually see a tiny bump of muscle on your arm. You remind me of someone…”
“Who?” Aubri asked and tilted her head while shamelessly assessing Victor, who was now pulling off his pants.
“Me. Don’t you think Victor reminds you of me?”
Aubri laughed at the absurdity. “You both have dark hair but that’s about it.”
“No, I didn’t mean me now, but back when I was ten or eleven and beginning to grow muscle.”
Victor gave a dry laugh followed by a yawn. “When you four are done admiring my body feel free to leave so I can get some sleep.” For a second, he locked eyes with Freya and I swear there was a look between them that gave me chills. Over the years, I’d seen her do her best to be polite to him, but it was no secret that they didn’t like each other. Why the fuck did he look at her like he was challenging her to another verbal fight?
Backing up a step, Freya turned and left with the rest of us following her out.
“Sweet dreams, Victor,” Aubri called while I took the stairs three at a time to the second floor.
I didn’t enter my room right away. Aubri’s words that Belle fancied Jonah still gnawed at me, so I decided to take a quick shower to cool my temper before joining her in bed.
CHAPTER 15
Angry Sex
Belle
Mason was cold when he came to bed. Both literally and figuratively.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
Touching his arm, I furrowed my brow. “Your skin is cold.”
“I took an ice-cold shower.”
“Why?”
He shrugged and lay down on his back staring at the ceiling. “I needed to cool down.”
“Oh, I see.”
We lay quiet for a long moment with him looking up and me on my side watching him.
“So, you would marry someone like Jonah, huh?”
The hairs on my arm rose from the underlying anger in his tone. When I didn’t answer, he turned his head and watched me. His blue eyes seemed almost black from how large his pupils were in the subdued light.
“What? Did someone cut out your tongue?”
“Why are you so angry?”
“I’m not!”
“Look, it’s not like I’m in love with Jonah. All I said is that he seems like a cool type of man.”
“Then why don’t you go fuck him?” As soon as Mason said the words, he turned back to look at the ceiling with his lips tightly shut.
“You don’t mean that. He’s your sister’s husband.”
He ignored me, so I explained, “This is a misunderstanding. I don’t want to have sex with Jonah. That’s not what it was about. Freya and I were discussing types of men and I’ve always felt that Jonah is both kind and intelligent. Those are qualities that matter to me.”
With his eyes narrowed, Mason glared at me. “So, if Jonah is kind and intelligent, then what am I? Mean and stupid?”
Propping myself on my elbow, I lowered my voice. “Mason, people are trying to sleep so keep your voice down and stop putting words into my mouth. I never said that you were stupid.”
“But you French think that you’re smarter than everyone else, don’t you?” he said through gritted teeth.
“If you mean in general, then yeah, that’s true. It doesn’t apply to me, though. I wasn’t even smart enough to become an academic, remember?”
With hard movements, Mason used his hands to arrange his pillow and propped his head higher. “Just answer me this; why did you have sex with me last night if you’re not attracted to me? I told you I didn’t want you to feel like you owed me anything.”
“It’s not that I’m not attracted to you. My conversation with Freya was about marriage, not attraction.”
His face scrunched up in a grimace. “How can you separate the two? Who in their right mind marries someone they aren’t attracted to?”
I sighed. “It’s all irrelevant anyway.”
“Maybe, but it’s pretty fucking insulting to hear that the person you had sex with the night before is naming another man as someone she would marry.”
“Oh, come on, Mason. I didn’t say that I would marry Jonah. It’s not like I could tell Freya that I’m attracted to her cousin when we agreed to keep this experiment between us a secret.”
His brow furrowed and his mouth opened and closed.
“Your jealousy is irrational.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Then how do you explain your anger?”
“I’m angry because my pride is hurt, and I’m offended that you like a Motlander better than me.”
I wasn’t used to dealing with a grown man’s emotions. His defensive tone sounded aggressive to me, so I turned my back to him. “You’re being dramatic. Who I like or don’t like is none of your business.”
Mason huffed out loud, and the whole bed moved when he turned his back to me as well.
The silence between us was deafening. At home, our social norms didn’t encourage sharing our feelings. In case someone broke that rule, the response would most often be to ignore their outburst and pretend it didn’t happen.
My first summers spent with Motlanders and Northlanders had shocked me. The Motlanders’ focus on what they called emotional awareness often made me embarrassed for them. The way they openly shared about feeling scared, disturbed, or sad was brave and all, but I wondered why they would make themselves so vulnerable. Especially when some of the Northlanders seemed to find amusement in exploiting that knowledge.
We French were brought up to speak with purpose, not impulse, and we lived by strict rules when it came to intimacy. I’d seen the pity in the eyes of the Motlanders and Northlanders when we explained our rational ways of interacting with each other back home. They couldn’t understand why we would rather have sex with strangers than form deep bonds. But those rules had been instrumental in our ancestors’ survival after the Toxic War. We were raised with horror stories of what happened when people gave in to dangerous emotions like jealousy. I’d been seven when I learned about the three-hour massacre that killed off half a district.