I stomp. It takes me three of them to reach the moron, but I don’t care. Wrapping my hand in the neckline of his chest piece, I jerk him down to my level, slashing my sword beside him so his crazed eyes focus more on the array of magic spilling from my blade than on me. “Let’s make one thing impeccably clear:I’d love to see you castrated, and that’s about the most intimate situation I’m interested in where you’re concerned. Capeesh?”
Samson gently removes my hand from Bruce’s armor and fits our fingers together. “Capeesh. Another new one.”
Totally fair. It makes sense that this world doesn’t have an Italian mafia history to have obtained that.
“We’re all set, if you’re done threatening the rubbish.”
More pissed than is perhaps wholly sane, I mutter, “Highly discouraged.”
Samson says, “That’s right.”
Hefting a sigh, I tuck my sword back into my void bag, which results in Bruce’s mouth falling open again.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“A princess from a foreign country, and Samson’s wife.” I snuff. “Get over it.”
Chuckling, Samson skirts us around Bruce and toward the door. “Also, very sleepy.”
“Shut up.” My face heats as he escorts me outside. “I am not.”
“You really,reallyare.” His thumb caresses my knuckles. “It’s a pity. The first night in a while I can actually sleep, you’re exhausted.”
I blink my weary eyes, looking up at him. “You…could sleep last night?”
He nods. “Really well. I wonder if I need a different mattress at home.”
Really?Really?He’s not serious. “Right.” I crush his hand. “It was the mattress.”
Softly, beneath the hum of early risers as we begin our trek out of the city, Samson says, “I can fix the mattress. I can’t exactly expect a friend to sleep with me each night just because I’m starved for human affection, Lemonade.”
Because I am deranged with sleepiness, I draw his knuckles to my lips and kiss. “True. However, you can make that request of your wife.”
“Careful.” We reach the quiet dirt path and the scarred land, looking down the hill, toward the forest, the sea,home. “I might want to keep you if you continue talking like that out here.”
We descend, reaching the plain, and I murmur, “And what if I want to be kept?”
He stills.
A breeze teases the hair at his nape as his blue gaze fixes on me. “Do you?” he asks.
Heat overwhelms sleepiness, and my heart turns over. I can’t quite hold his gaze as I say, “M-maybe I wouldn’t mind.”
“Yes or no, Lemonade?”
Breathing in this moment is the hardest thing I have ever done.
And I used to live inFlorida. You know. That place where the humidity in the air turns it into swamp water?
I say, “Yes.”
“Okay.” He kisses my forehead. “You just let me know if you ever change your mind.”
I mull those words over, battling the sheer confusion they cause, the entire trek back home. What doesokaymean? What doeschanging my mindmean? Why would I change my mind about this? I do not understand.
I don’t understand throughout greeting Aurelia and thanking her for taking care of things for us while we were gone.
I don’t understand while Samson coordinates when she’ll be available and willing to bless my new armor, atcost, because—apparently—Aurelia is an angel who offers her abilities to everyone in town forfree.
