Before that, I remembered a kid being taken from its mother while she was looking away. I'd stepped in then as well.
And before that, shit, I didn't even know.
But none of it, according to our nature, should have ever happened.
There was no denying that as time went on, we adopted human ways as our own in many ways. It was changing how we reacted to certain situations, to the humans themselves.
I knew, as a leader, as the oldest, that it was dangerous. It could impact our small, but important role on this plane. Bringing the humans' innate evilness to the surface so they acted on it more readily. If we cared too much about them, could we continue to do that? If we somehow felt like we couldn't, what did that say about us, as creatures of hell? Were we no longer as evil? Would we not be able to go back home, to take over our old jobs, our only reason for existence?
It was important to separate ourselves from the humans and their many pesky emotions.
Still, as I sat there with this near stranger of a woman draped over me, trying to steal some strength and stability from me, there was no denying I was giving a shit.
Guilt was not an emotion I remembered personally feeling in the past. Yet I'd felt that way several times just since I'd come in contact with this woman.
It didn't make any sense to me.
And not knowing things, that never sat well with me.
"Ugh, no," Josephine groaned when I tried to get her to eat.
"You'll feel better."
"I'll throw up," she told me, and Minos snatched back the bag so fast I barely caught the motion.
"We're in a moving car," he grumbled. "I'm not getting stuck in here with vomit. Deal with that shit enough at the parties."
That was fair enough. There was never a house party we hosted that didn't end up with one of us hosing down the back patio or scrubbing one of the bathrooms.
Humans and their weak stomachs.
"Alright," I said, reaching for the coffee. "Try this then," I said, holding it up to her lips when she refused to reach for it. Because one of her hands was tucked behind me, and the other was somewhat obsessively tracing the stubble that had grown on my face without me noticing.
"Gross," she grumbled, but took a couple more sips before resting her head against me again.
"You should sleep."
"Mmhmm," she agreed, sounding halfway there already.
"What?" I asked, seeing Minos shooting me a look over his shoulder as Josephine passed out, arm draped across my waist.
"I didn't say anything."
"What's the look for then?"
"This just looks really familiar."
"What? Like with you and your claimed woman?" I snapped, still more annoyed than I had a right to be over something I understood he and Ly could not control. I had no idea who Minos's woman was, but I knew she existed. I knew she rejected him. And I knew it had irreparably changed him ever since.
"No," he said, sighing out his breath as a mask came down over his face. "Reminds me of Ly and Lenore," he clarified before turning forward, and putting on some of that sad sack music he liked so much these days. Music to slit your wrists to was what I'd heard Drex describe it as, and it wasn't too far off the mark.
I wanted to shake off his comment, but as the hours dragged on, as Josephine climbed all over me like a fucking cat in her sleep until I wound up cradling her on my lap, my arms around her so she didn't go flying when we braked or took a turn, I couldn't stop them from swirling around my head at a break-neck pace.
See, I'd missed the signs with Ly. I guess because Claiming was rare with our kind. And after Minos went through it, I thought that would be it for us.
But in the weeks after I realized what had happened under my nose, I'd started to analyze that time when Lenore came out of our basement and found her way into Ly's world.
Minos wasn't completely off.
Because Ly had always been hard and rough and even cruel at times. But there had been a softness with Lenore I'd never seen with him before. And if I were being perfectly honest, I was starting to see some of that same shit with the nurse. Even after just a couple days.
It wasn't just because after I'd gotten a taste of her, practically half of my thoughts were consumed with burying my cock inside her. Though there was that too.
It was this kind of shit.
She should have been in the back, sleeping off another dose of the ketamine. Because it shouldn't have mattered if she was in a k-hole. It shouldn't have mattered that she felt like shit. Because, she was not a permanent fixture in our lives. She was here for a job. And then she was going to be disposed of.
That thought, though, it made a strange, sharp sensation pierce my chest.
At some point, I found myself passing back out as well, waking up when Ly announced we were almost home to Josephine draped over me, her face nuzzled into my neck, her hand placed over my heart, her legs resting on either side of me.
Clearly, I'd been feeling her wiggle against me because I woke up with a painfully throbbing cock pressing between her spread thighs. That skirt of her dress had ridden up to allow her legs to go on either side of me, and since Lenore's kind didn't believe in undergarments, that meant Josephine's pussy was as bare as it had been the last time I was close to her.
Without meaning to, my hips shifted up slightly, pressing against her, dragging a sleepy sigh out of her.
My gaze shifted toward the front, finding Minos leaning against the window, passed out. Behind me, Lenore seemed asleep as well. Ly's focus was on the road. And Minos's whiny music was still playing loudly enough through the speakers.
I was a real fuck for crossing the line again, but I couldn't make myself give a shit as I jerked my hips upward against her again, waking her up with the sensation.
She didn't respond at first, likely still out of sorts from the drugs leaving her system and from sleep.
My hips ground upward again, getting a quiet gasp at her as she pushed up slightly, looking down at me with those sleepy brown eyes that were a mix of confused and heated.
My hands slid down her back, sank into her ass, grinding her down onto me, watching as her lips opened on a silent moan as a shiver racked her system.
She didn't pull away.
She didn't say no.
No, instead, she did another little wiggle with her hips.
That was all I needed.
I used her ass to grind her against me as I thrust upward, finding the rhythm that made her breathing go fast and shallow, made her muscles tense, made it impossible for her to keep her sounds in.
My hand went to the back of her neck, pressing her face hard against my shoulder to muffle her sounds as I drove her up, then over the edge, feeling her body shudder as a throaty moan vibrated against my shirt.
She didn't move after, just clung to me as aftershocks racked her system. Satisfied. While my cock was still throbbing for release.
Don't get me wrong, if you weren't getting the woman you were with off too, I didn't see the point. But I don't remember the last time I walked away from a sexual encounter with a woman and didn't finish myself.
Now I'd fucked around with this woman twice. Twice. And I got nothing out of it.
What the fuck was going on with me?
"We're here," Lycus called, making Minos jolt as he startled awake. Behind us, I could see Lenore sitting up as well.