Pushing her backward, he laid her down on the rug.
“We could go out and watch everyone open gifts,” she said as he kissed the corner of her mouth.
“No.” He pressed kisses down along her jaw line.
“I think they have a stocking out there with your name on it.” Literally. She’d seen it hanging up. She wrapped her legs around his waist and fisted her hands in his hair.
He groaned again. “Do we have to?”
Lacey tipped her head back so his questing mouth could cover her neck with hot wet kisses. “This might be my last Christmas.”
He grabbed her hands from his hair and trapped them beneath his on the carpet beside her head. Lifting up, he met her gaze. “Do you really want to go out there?”
“Yes, but first, I want you to kiss me until until I lose my mind.”
“I can do that.”
“I thought you might be able to.”
Tempus pressed his mouth against hers, and she saw fireworks.
Every time she brought up the possibility of this being her last anything, his stomach clenched and a soreness, much like his throat the night before, stung in his heart. Not only did he not want it to be her last week on Earth, but he wanted her to trust that he wouldn’t have given her those keys if he didn’t mean it.
“Mmm. Hot cocoa,” she said, pulling a tin of hot chocolate from her sock. There’d also been apples, oranges, a chocolate Santa, a deck of playing cards, and a DVD with what looked like a toy reindeer on the front. “Did you watch this on TV last night?” She held up the DVD.
“No.”
“Sweet. We can huddle under the blanket with hot cocoa and watch it later.” She turned to him. “Why haven’t you pillaged your stocking yet?”
“I was watching you.”
She grinned. “Well, I’m done so now I can stare at you while you get your stuff out.”
Nodding, he reached into the large sock. He shuffled his fingers around the obvious fruit that had been used as filler. He pulled out a strange pair of plastic tongs that had round half-cups at the end.
“What! That’s not fair!” Lacey frowned severely at him.
“What?”
“You got a snowball maker and I didn’t.”
An elderly man walking by reached into his stocking, pulled out a pair of the tongs, and passed them to Lacey with a wink.
“Thank you!” She clutched the strange item to her chest and gave the man a smile that verged on hero-worship.
The man returned her smile and nodded before walking on.
“Bwahahaha!” Lacey said in a deep voice, waving the snowball maker around. “The gloves are off. You’re not winning at this.”
“You’re not wearing gloves. Of course they’re off.”
She shook her head. “And when I put them on—they’re staying on—it’s a silly saying, but basically it means: prepare to have your ass kicked in an epic snowball fight.” Her eyes lit up. “Oh, we should see if Ruin wants to join our snowball battle.” It’d already been upgraded from a fight to a battle.
He didn’t want his brother to intrude into his time with Lacey, but he also wanted, strangely enough, for his brother to see that he was with Lacey. He felt like bragging about that. “I guess I can ask him.”
Which is how they ended up in a snowball fight with his brother and Ruin’s... friend two hours later.
After an hour and a half, Ruin pulled him to the side. “I’m surprised to see Phoebe has this bloodthirsty side to her.”
The two mortal women were flinging snowballs as fast as they could make them.
Ruin cleared his throat. “Are you staying through New Year’s Eve?”
Tempus nodded. It seemed strange to be here again... back to where they first met, but Lacey wanted to.
His brother scowled. “I don’t trust this.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t realize this was where Zeit went. Maybe I should have asked.” He nodded in Phoebe’s direction. “She won this all-expense paid vacation here from a radio station.”
“That’s... lucky.”
“Isn’t it just? Who do you think arranged it? The Fates? Or Father?”
It could be either. “I couldn’t say. If it was the Fates, what would be their motive?”
“Motive?”
“There has to be a motive.” A year of reading books had taught him that. “How long have you been with Phoebe?” It seemed like more of a relationship than any of his brothers usually went for.
Ruin rubbed both his hands down his face. “A year. Her twin brother was last year’s mortal sacrifice for me.”
His mouth hung open.
“I know,” Ruin said.
“You took her brother and she’s okay with that?” He hadn’t even been the one to take Lacey’s father and she most definitely hadn’t been okay with that.
“She doesn’t exactly…” He trailed off.
“What?”
Ruin looked over his shoulder quickly and then lowered his voice. “Know. She doesn’t know. She thinks I’m a guardian angel.”
He shook his head. Was Ruin kidding? This was going to blow up in his face. It was a good thing he couldn’t be killed. “Maybe Father did this to give you a chance to come clean.”
“Why at the same time as you two?”
“It is strange.”
“I don’t like it,” they both said at the same time.
“Woo hoo!” Lacey shouted, coming up behind them. “Phoebe conceded defeat. We won! We won!” She hopped around while holding onto his arm.
Phoebe followed her over, brushing snow from her clothes and laughing. “I’m too cold to continue this battle to the death. Let’s go in and have lunch and something steaming hot.”
Lacey nodded. Her nose and cheeks were pink from the cold. “I think I’m using up my whole tin of hot chocolate today.”
“Me too.” Phoebe grabbed Ruin’s hand and dragged him back toward the lodge as Lacey did the same.
The brothers exchanged a look over their heads. He really didn’t trust what the Fates had in store for them.
That night, Lacey fell asleep after only one chapter of the book—one chapter that confirmed that he was right about who the murderer was. Tempus brushed her hair from her face. Every day... every hour made him realize he’d be a fool to keep his immortality at the cost of her life. He needed her. He wanted her. He might even love her.
This time, he didn’t turn on the TV. He laid there in the quiet with his loud thoughts and the soft breathing of the mortal he wanted to keep forever.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tempus really knew how to wake a girl up. Just three more days until New Year’s and he started pounding on the bathroom door right when she’d put shampoo in her hair. She’d been drowsy still from waking up next to a warm immortal, but shampoo in her eyes was more effective than the worst alarm clock.
Then he started snapping his fingers.
“Hold your horses!” Geez, did he need to go or something? “Ow. Ow. Ow.” Oh, it burned.
“Lacey!”
“What? I’ve got shampoo in my eyes, but I’m almost done.”
“Don’t! Move! Do you hear me? Don’t move your feet! Don’t move at all!”
“Let me grab a towel and I’ll come unlock the door.”
“No! Stay right where you are! I’m coming in! Don’t move!”
Okay. He sounded really panicked. “But I’m kind of... naked.” They hadn’t gotten to that point yet. They’d done a lot of kissing and a decent amount of groping, but she was stark naked.
“What?” He was jerking the doorknob around like he was trying to unlock it.
“I shower naked.”
“Of course you do. Don’t move. Dammit! Are you moving?”
“No. You told me not to.” Luckily the water had washed the shampoo out without her having to move.
“Dammit! I can’t get in. I’m going to break the door.”
“Wait! What? I’ll just come unlock
it.”
The door was kicked in. Either because he was trying to save her modesty or he was just in a rush, he grabbed her, shower curtain and all, and hauled her up in his arms.
“Ah!” She was hit in the face with shower curtain rings. This was so not romantic.
Taking her back into the room, he dropped her onto the bed, rings, curtain, soaking wet naked skin, and all. She attempted to wrap the curtain around her torso like a towel and sat up as he went back to the bathroom and turned off the shower.
“What the hell, Tempus?” It was in a nearly reasonable tone for what had just happened.
He paced at the end of the bed. Stopping, he snapped his fingers several times before starting up a litany of curses.
“Can I have a towel or a robe or clothing or something?”
He stared at her.
Great. A full body blush and he could see most of that body. She’d thought it best not to rush the physical side of their relationship because intimacy was difficult for her. It would happen eventually. No big deal. Instead, here they were... and she was naked... and he was not.
“I’ll... just…” He pointed over his shoulder and went back into the bathroom, emerging a moment later with a robe. He handed it to her before turning his back. Well, that was nice of him. A little late for courtesy when you’d hauled someone sopping wet around in a shower curtain, but she still somewhat appreciated it.
She pulled on the robe and stepped out of her shower curtain nest. “Okay. Explain.”
“You were going to slip and hit your head on the wall in the shower.” He turned around.
His heated look made her still feel naked. “So, your best option was to break down the door and haul me out in the curtain?”
He lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. “I can’t stop time. Also, apparently I can’t conjure things on this plane because I couldn’t get a screwdriver or anything to open the door.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that does make it sort of reasonable.” She frowned at the curtain on the bed. “It’s a good thing we’ve only been using one bed, but I think we’re going to get some weird charges on the bill.”
“Money doesn’t matter. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” How would it be for money not to matter? A second later, he rounded the bed and pulled her into a hug. “I’m really okay.”
“I know. That was just…” He squeezed her tighter. “And I couldn’t do anything.”
“A busted door and the shower curtain on the bed say otherwise.”
“I’m not sure if you should shower alone.”
“Wow, that’s not a line that I’ve heard before.”
He pulled back and frowned at her. “I’m serious.”
“How about if I take baths?” She had all that gingerbread-scented gel that would probably work as bubble bath.
Sighing, he went back to hugging her. Apparently that had his reluctant agreement.
“Why do you think you don’t have powers anymore?”
“I don’t know.”
“Should we hang out with Ruin and Phoebe more?” Phoebe was a worthy adversary in the great snowball fight and it’d been fun to eat lunch with them. Ruin had found Tempus’s fascination with books amusing. Both men had stayed up the previous night watching TV and they compared notes on “mortal TV” over lunch.
“Ruin is not going to save you in the shower.”
“What?”
“He is not going to save you instead of me. That’s wrong.”
“You’d rather let me die than have your brother save me?”
He didn’t dignify that with a response. “Besides, he might have lost his powers too.” He loosened his arms enough to reach out and grab his phone from the nightstand. Calling his brother confirmed that he too had lost his powers inexplicably. Tempus seemed relieved by that.
She frowned severely at him.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he assured her, tugging her back into his arms.
Nearly against her will, she relaxed and listened to the beat of his heart. “So, you don’t have powers and you can feel pain. Does that mean you’re basically mortal like me?”
“Yes. It doesn’t feel as unnatural and frail as I expected it to feel.”
“Are you saying that humans are frail?” If he said yes she was fully prepared to punch him as hard as she could.
“No. I just expected my body to feel less... intense and alive. I almost feel things... more than I did before. I can feel the pull of gravity, I think. I can feel the pressure of my feet against the ground and the weight of my body. I can feel you in my arms... your hair dripping on my skin.”
“That’s your fault. You’re just lucky I managed to get all the shampoo out. I got some in my eyes from all your shouting and pounding.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Is that why your eyes are pink?”
No one could kill the mood like an immortal. Well, not that he was technically immortal anymore. Actually, she didn’t know what he was, but he’d killed the mood.
She pushed away from him, tugging her robe closed tight at the collar. “That’s what happens when someone goes ballistic outside the door.”
“I saved your life.”
That was true. Plus, slipping in the shower was a very lame way to go, so he’d saved her from that too. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m going to get dressed.”
He was staring at her robed body. “You don’t have to. Maybe you shouldn’t go into the bathroom until the floor dries. I can order room service again.”
“Room service is expensive.”
“I told you... money doesn’t matter.”
“Because you could just conjure it... remember you can’t do that anymore.”
He shook his head. “We don’t conjure money. It messes with mortal accounting. I just have the card that I use in ATMs or at mortal establishments. We have bank accounts that we share when we actually buy things rather than conjure them. We tend to accrue money so I’ll never have to worry about it.”
“Huh.” It sounded like she was off the hook for paying halvsies on this trip. “Room service sounds good.” She snapped her fingers where he was focused. “Hey, Tempus, my eyes are up here.” She gestured at her eyes.
He tilted his head and asked, “Where else would they be?” Then he grabbed the phone and the room service menu. “Do you want whipped cream on your hot chocolate?”
“Uhh yes.” She sat down at their room’s table and crossed her legs. Hot chocolate without whipped cream? He still had to get the hang of being mortal obviously.
“Damnation!” He stuck his tongue out and tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.
“Damnation? Who says that?” Lacey took a sip of her hot chocolate. “Holy mother of...,” she sputtered. “Did they heat this in a volcano before delivering it?”
“It’s hot. It did something to my tongue.” He gave up on trying to see it without going to a mirror.
“It fried the taste buds on it. Welcome to pain, Tempus. It ain’t all biting and hair pulling.”
“It could be.”
She’d been sipping her orange juice and choked.
His muscles all went taut. Had the Fates snuck one past him? Was she going to die right now when he could do nothing? He gripped the sides of the table as she coughed. Then she recovered. He exhaled slowly. This was going to be exhausting. How was he ever going to keep up with the Fates if he didn’t have his powers?
That kept playing over and over in his head the next two days. Luckily, either the Fates were biding their time or it was difficult to devise a death scene with them doing nothing more dangerous than walking in the snow, reading, and watching TV.
The day before New Year’s Eve, he opened his eyes and was prone on the bed. They hadn’t been having sex. But he was lying there. “I think I just woke up,” he said to Lacey, who was sprawled, fully-clothed, on his c
hest.
“Mmm.” She snuggled closer to his side.
“My eyelids felt heavy.” He looked at the clock. “I kept doing that mortal thing with yawning after you fell asleep. Now I’m waking up and I don’t remember going to sleep.”
“This is a fascinating play-by-play.” She kept her eyes closed.
“That was weird.”
“Sleeping?”
“No. I can sleep if I want to, but I usually only sleep when I’m bored or just want quiet for a while. I’ve never needed to sleep.”
“And you were tired last night?”
“Yes. I suppose.” He frowned. “I don’t like that. I don’t like being ruled by my body.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “This is the world of mortals, babycakes. We have to suck air in and out to live. We sleep when we get tired. We hurt. We weep. We die.”
“You’re so cheerful. I can see giving up immortality is the best decision I’ve ever made.”
She froze. Then, her body relaxed muscle by muscle and he suspected it took a lot of effort. “Don’t do it on my account. I won’t hold you to it.”
She should. She should know him well enough from the last week to know that he was serious about this—he was serious about her. “I’m going to do it.”
She cleared her throat. “Well, then, there’s also this.” She raked her nails down his chest from his shoulder to his side.
He closed his eyes and groaned internally. That felt so good. Who’d have guessed he had an inner masochist? Maybe it wasn’t all bad. “You could do that again,” he suggested.
She laughed softly. Her touch was lighter as she teased her fingers across the skin on his chest. It tickled and felt as unfamiliar as pain. Perhaps she was right in saying that he had to experience this side of mortality to understand other aspects. When she paused, he held his breath. He didn’t want her to stop. Tempus opened his eyes.
She leaned up on an elbow and looked down at him. “Two more days.”
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