“Yes?” he asked.
“What do you mean your mother bound us?”
He blinked. “You’re…” He sighed and looked off over my head. “Wow. Is that a mood killer. Why are you talking about my mother?”
“Because you said. Back before…before…this…” He smiled at me and I frowned. “You said your mother bound us together.”
“I did say that.”
“Okay, that’s it. Sex is off. Move.” I shoved at his arms which were caging either side of my head.
“I’d plead and tempt, but you’re not going to fall for that, are you?”
“No.”
He let his head hang for a minute. “No lying. All right, but since we’re being honest, I don’t want to talk about it. I think more sex is our best play right now.”
I slapped his arm again and he lifted up on one hand, moving his entire body to one side in some kind of power yoga move.
“Show off.”
He grinned and flexed every muscle. I almost dragged him back down to me again.
Instead, I rolled out from under him, looked around for my clothes, and gathered them up. “Tell me. All of it. What did your mother do?”
“Many, many terrible things. But I’m guessing you want to know about the binding.”
I rolled my hand in a hurry up move, hooked my bra and slipped the straps over my shoulders, then bent and unbunched my shirt, shaking it until it was right side out.
“I didn’t catch it quickly enough to stop her.”
Lie.
“Want to try that again?”
“I didn’t want to stop her. It seemed like a reasonable decision at the time. However, I didn’t know she was going to do it until it was done. And yes, I probably had just enough warning to stop her, but that would have meant the vortex remained open longer. We would have had to start the spell again. And we were about to be buried in frogs.” He rolled to the balls of his feet and then stood.
“I thought one price was worth the other,” he said.
“And that means?”
“Her binding us was worth all those people not turning into frogs. You’d be angry with me either way. Plus, this aligned with my desires, and I am a creature who follows his desires. All the way. You may have noticed.”
“You are so annoying.”
He smiled because he could feel the lie.
“How did she do it?” I asked.
“She used the string, cut by Death’s blade, used to save the living. She bound the connection between the Underworld and above with the string you and I held. Poetry, really. She’s particularly good at those things.”
“Bindings?”
“Screwing with my life.”
I laughed and he looked very pleased with himself.
“What kind of binding is it?”
