“Hi. Hi, he says. Hi. Gods, I really hate you sometimes.”
“Not nice.”
“I’m allowed to not be nice to you. You just killed me, then resurrected me by shocking my heart, and then passed out like you always do just to freak me out. I’m going to give you so much shit for the rest of our lives, you have no idea—”
And then it all came into startling focus.
Ryan Foxheart, alive, bitching me out.
“Gods,” I whispered. “I….”
“Yeah?” he said, squinting at me.
“I’m….”
“Yeah?” he said, leaning down for what was probably going to be the most romantic moment of my life.
“I am so awesome!” I crowed, sitting up quickly. Which was a bad idea, seeing as how I smashed my face against his.
“What the fuck,” he groaned, falling back on his ass, armor clanking. “Did you just hea
dbutt me?”
“Why was your face so close?” I moaned, holding my nose, sure it’d been shattered into a billion pieces and that I’d be disfigured for the rest of my days. Ryan would leave me because he was secretly shallow and couldn’t have someone with a squashed nose riding his dick, and then I’d have to go back to living in a hut in the woods and parents would tell their children about the Squashed Nose Man (capitalized, so you know it’s true) who would come out at night and steal their toes if they didn’t eat their vegetables and—
And then I remembered there were things far more important than Squashed Nose Man.
I opened my eyes.
Ryan Foxheart was sitting on the ground in front of me, looking ornery and irritated, scowling prettily as he rubbed his forehead. He glared at me and opened his mouth to say—
Well, I didn’t know what he opened his mouth to say, because I got up and tackled him, immediately regretting the decision as he was wearing a full suit of armor, but gladly accepting the pain of crushing my ribs into powder given that he was kissing me back just as frantically.
“You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive,” I babbled against his mouth.
“You’re such an idiot,” he growled, his hands going to my ass. “I hate you so much. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
“Scare you? You died, you dick!”
“You killed me!”
“That was like five minutes ago! When are you going to get over it? Gods, Ryan, your fixation on that one thing is going to tear us apart. Why don’t you ever bring up that I also brought you back to life?”
“I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“I don’t know why either.”
“Stop talking. I’m trying to kiss you.”
I grinned against his mouth. He was so warm and alive and vital that I never wanted to let him go. It was—
A breeze blew across my face, and with it came the stench of something terribly burnt.
I pushed away from Ryan.
And looked around.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.