I didn’t know how to feel or respond to his act of service and instead focused on literally anything else. Like the way that Joe’s bed was less than forgiving. It was comparable to sitting on a military issued bed rather than a soccer dad’s.
“Fuck me,” I grumbled. “Why do you sleep on a slab of marble?”
A heard a small nose huff and guessed that was all I would get in the way of laughter now.
“I don’t want to be a humped back old man before the age of fifty.” His jewel green eyes lifted to mine, sitting back on his heels after he had both soaked shoes off of my feet. “Firm bedding is better for your spine.”
“Screw my spine. This is terrible. You’re going to be miserable sleeping your entire life just for a straight spine?”
“Well, if I follow your logic, I could either spend eight hours being uncomfortable and the other sixteen in perfect condition, or I could spend eight hours wrapped in a cloud and the other sixteen curled into a miserable ball of C-shaped pain.” He shrugged, his hands clapping back down on his thighs after like it was the most reasonable explanation.
“You don’t know me very well, Batman. I would also spend the other sixteen miserable because I got shitty sleep.”
While his lips thinned in disagreement, he didn’t argue further as he stood and said, “Lay back.”
My spine stiffened as my brain instinctively read an insinuation behind hiswords. A vulnerable stripper sitting on a man’s bed, and he asks her to lay back… It could only mean one thing.
“Again?” I asked. “Right now?”
“Don’t,” he ground out, pain and anger lacing his voice. “Insult me.” The fact that I’d just expected the worst out of him tore a guilty, ashamed gash in my heart.
I didn’t say anything else as I laid back, just like he’d asked.
Joe lifted both of my legs, propped them on hips, and tugged on the waistband of my pants. He was careful as he slipped the fabric over my thighs, dropping back down to one knee so he could both hold my legs and pull them free from the fabric.
My cheeks flamed as I became heatedly aware of my nakedness below the hips. I could feel Joe’s breath on my lower belly. I expected to flinch. Instead, it made me… relax? Feel taken care of? His proximity, his actions, were intimate, but his intentions were
I don’t know what I expected of him then. Was there a man alive who could be so close to a woman’s Mother Mary without putting his mouth on it?
“Come on,” Joe murmured, grabbing my hips and pulling until I was seated on his thigh, face-to-face. He placed my hands on his shoulders, gripped my waist again, and stood with my legs wrapped around him. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Time slowed as if someone had pressed pause on reality. Looking into his eyes as he carried me, cared for me, I could see it. Welcoming him home every night after work. Cooking his dinners, sleeping in our marriage bed, making fucking lemonade to cool him off while he worked on the yard…
It was right here within my reach.
You’ll never age, my mind whispered. He will grow old and you’ll be stuck like this forever. It can’t last.
Maybe not now. But what if I killed Callen? Would Lucifer release me? Give me my mortality back?
Living in the moment, the here and now, they were all questions I didn't have the answer to, and no amount of rationality seemed to keep the warning bells away.
Did universe know that if I got too close to Joe, to his kindness, that I would fuck it up? Would Lucifer make me kill Joe simply for dreaming? He had, after all, burned Joe’s note and rubbed the necklace in my face after forcing me to crawl to him.
Or, perhaps, the warning bells were telling me that my wish was folly; there was an error in the matrix. Joe was too good to be true. Every experience in my past had taught me one reliable lesson: a man with no flaws was an impossibility.
The warmth of Joe’s embrace made up for the rigidity of his bed. I fell into a contented sleep almost as soon as he’d laid me between the sheets, a foreign sense of contentment caressing my weightless body like the soft folds of a cloud.
It wasn’t long, though, before that feeling melted away.
An eerie set of bells carried on the breeze rustling locks of my hair. I was leaning against a dull white banister, standing on a deck overlooking a perfectly curated backyard; an inground pool and hot tub closed off for the season surrounded by dormant greenery I could imagine would be lush and fragrant on hot days.
Or, what could have been, if not for the tacky coat of gray that covered everything like a filter on a photo.
Where the hell was I?
“Dearest Dany.”
Lightning struck off in the distance in a sinister display as soon as my name finished rolling off of his tongue.
