“You better be about to saymodel!” I shouted again. I was going to punch this guy.
“A prostitute,” he countered. “I don’t judge. You do you, as your people say.”
Oh my God, this wasn't happening.
“Look, you need to break this … tether … that has us bound and get the hell out of my house!” I pointed at the door.
He just shook his head. “I owe you a life debt for releasing me. At this stage, I do not know how to break it, but I will figure that out. Until then, I must keep you alive, because if you die, so do I.”
Oh.
Shit.
He stood and took a step closer as I backed up. “So … you’re telling me, I can’t get more than five feet from you for … who knows how long…?”
He ignored me, choosing to look around my tiny apartment instead. “This is where you live?” he asked, unable to hide the grimace from his face. “How have you survived? I see no servants. No…”
I snorted, cutting him off. “Yeah, in my world, I’m the servant, big man.”
His expression was unreadable as he stared at me again. “Servantandprostitute. Quite the combination there.”
Fuck you, dude.“This is a judgment free zone, asshole,” I told him, crossing my arms. “I don’t judge you on the fact that you’ve spent … did you say a thousand years … in a cave? And you don’t judge me for being a tiny bit shallow and without any real life-skills.” Narrowing my eyes, I was the one to step closer now. “Deal?”
“No,” he said immediately.
Throwing my hands in the air, I spun around and stormed toward the bathroom. Or tried to at least. He didn’t move with me, which meant I was basically just lifting my legs in the air, running in place and not going anywhere.
“I need to shower,” I snapped at him.
His gaze went a little unfocused, like he was thinking, and then he nodded. “Right, cleaning yourself is important. Humans are such primitive, dirty beings.”
At this stage I was beyond being offended by him, and I decided to just fuck with him a bit. “For sure, big man. Can you sit outside the door so I don’t feel like I’m being torn into two?”
He nodded, as if he was acknowledging this and agreeing.
The moment I got inside, I shut and locked the door, not that my flimsy little lock would keep him out if he decided to come in, but it made me feel a bit better. Stripping off my clothes, I turned the shower on as hot as it went. As I stepped in, I felt a tugging on my body—we were clearly right at the end of the distance—but I wasn’t writhing in pain, so it was working.
Grabbing my body wash, I washed off the sand, blood, and dirt from my beach and cliff falling experience, and as I did most nights I showered, I sang as loudly as I could. Life was too short not to sing your way through it.
My song choice this time, though, was purely designed to annoy the big dude, so I started with Spice Girls. By the time I moved on to my hair, I was in the middle of a full-on concert, mixing it up betweenSpice Up Your LifeandWannabe.I jumped when a heavy hand slammed against the door.
“What the hell is happening in there, human?”
Snorting under my breath, I didn’t even want to acknowledge why he continued to call mehuman. Somehow, and I really didn’t know how, I had some sort of mythological creature attached to me, one that was at least a thousand years old, lived in a cave, and was the tallest person I’d ever seen.
What the hell was he? A vampire? A demon? A gladiator with an attitude problem?
I racked my brain for any other fantasy stories I knew but came up blank. I had a secret obsession with indie romance stories, because you never knew what you were going to get, but I stuck mostly with sports and high school romance. Nothing really fantasy. I lived for the real life-like dramas.
Sure as shit tonight, though, I was checking myself out some Viking fantasy.
“Are you a Viking?” I shouted, rinsing off the last of my soap, still humming loudly.
There was no reply, and if it wasn’t for the tugging sensation on my body still, I might have thought he’d disappeared.
Turning the water off, I climbed out and wrapped a towel around myself, before brushing my teeth at the sink and then strolling over to open the door. Pulling it open, I gasped as I came face to face—okay, face to chest—with the dude. He had the fiercest, most pissed-off look on his too gorgeous face, and I was trying to figure out what it was this time.
“If I could kill you, human, I would,” he said from between gritted teeth.
