“You’re on the pill.” I was now, but only since Connor moved in, so it wasn’t reliable yet. “I also asked the doctor to check for everything so we didn’t have to use condoms anymore.” Oh. He hadn’t told me that. “Those results came back this morning and I’m good. But, I told you I was never with anyone else.”
“In all those years?”
He turned me so I was under the spray of the water and gently ran his hand down my inner thigh to wash me. “I spent years in a cell, Alina. Then I was on the drug and I never thought about sex. Maybe that was a side-effect. I don’t know, but I do know I never had sex with anyone else.”
“But why me then?”
“Tilt your head back.” I did and he caressed my hair back, the water trickling over it. “I didn’t know why at the time, but I got fuckin’ hard as hell when you touched me.” He pulled me back into him, his hand cupping my chin. “My mind may have forgotten you, Alina, but my body never did.”
I choked on a sob, closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around him. I don’t know why it was such a relief to hear those words. Maybe because I realized I’d done the right thing. He may have not remembered me, but parts of him had and I gave him that.
Connor’s brows dropped and his body stiffened, eyes snapping to the bathroom door. “Fuck.” He leapt out the shower and flung open the bathroom door. A billow of smoke clashed with the humid air.
“Garlic bread,” I cried and ran after him, soaking wet and naked.
The kitchen was filled with smoke and it had begun to drift into the hallway. I grabbed a broom from the closet and ran to the fire alarm in the hallway and waved the bristles back and forth near the device.
Connor dealt with the oven and the charred garlic toast, but my attempts to keep the alarm from going off failed and a piercing blare sounded. “Damn it,” I shouted as I waved the broom back and forth faster. The alarm paused then started again.
Connor came up behind me to take the broom when the front door opened. Both of us froze, our hands holding the broom in the air.
Deaglan’s eyes widened and he froze, too. His gaze flicked to my breasts before he spun around. “Shit. Sorry.” Then laughter emerged. He was laughing so hard he bent over clutching his stomach. “If you guys saw yourselves… .” He burst out laughing again.
“Babe.” Connor shoved me behind him, protecting my nakedness with his body even though Deaglan wasn’t facing us.
Deaglan shook his head as he opened the screen door. “Leave you to... whatever you’re doing. But try not to burn down the house. Killian’s a real asshole when shit pisses him off and the house burning down would piss him off.”
The screen door squeaked and bounced on the hinges as it shut behind him, the sound of his chuckle fading.
Connor dropped the broom on the floor and turned toward me. I bit my lip to keep from smiling because I was uncertain how Connor was going to take that little scene.
The second I saw his brilliant blue eyes sparking with humor, it was like being transported back to when we met. There was lightness in him, a freedom to his caged emotions and it was beautiful.
I smiled and reached up to stroke the side of his face. “We’re going to be okay, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. Not perfect. Not the same. But yeah.”
“I don’t want perfect or the same. I just want us and whoever we are now,” I replied.
“Me too, baby.”
Then we dried off, dressed and reheated the pasta before going out to the cabana to eat where Grandma Kane used to have her afternoon tea.Question 14: Bungee jump or rock climb?“SO, CONNOR’S STAYING with you?” London asked as she sat across from me.
We were at Georgie’s coffee shop having lattes, two days after the garlic bread incident.
When I woke this morning, I was sick again and I knew it was no longer because of stress. And maybe there was the inkling that it had nothing to do with worry and lack of sleep in the beginning, but I hadn’t wanted to face the possibility.
I found Connor pacing in the living room, his hand raking through his hair. The room was a mess, shelf ripped off the wall, statues broken, drapes torn from the rod. He’d lost it.
When he saw me, he walked over, briefly squeezed my hand and said, “Demons and vampires are fighting, baby. I need to take a ride.”
That was his signal to me now and in a way, it made it easier because he was trying to make light of it.