Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
“You have a dossier on me?”
She misses the point with nearly as much alacrity as she ruined the pancakes.
“It’s not…” I sigh. “It’s not my dossier. I found this in the laboratory where you and your blood would have been taken. As soon as I found this file, I knew you’d be the next target. So I came to save you, and just in the nick of time, as it turned out. Now sit down and let me fix your arm up. If you’re going to run away, you may as well be some semblance of intact.”
She sits and sulks. Maybe she’s scared, but there’s more to her mood than simple fear. She’s annoyed and confused. I suspect with a woman like her, the two moods are closely linked. Some people are afraid of what they don’t understand. What Elise doesn’t understand angers her.
At least she is sitting still long enough to let me numb her up and run a couple of stitches through the wound. She’ll be okay, though there’s a decent chance it’ll leave a scar. It could have been much worse. There are arteries running not far from this incision point. She’s a very lucky young lady.
“You mean there’s really an actual laboratory of freaks who believe in angels and demons?”
“Yes. This particular group of freaks believes that your blood can be used to animate the flesh of Christ.”
She rolls her eyes. “How could anybody with the funding for a lab be that stupid?”
“Money doesn’t imply intelligence. And it may be possible. We don’t know. Remember what happened when scientists reanimated dinosaurs?”
“That… that was Jurassic Park. That was a movie. And they didn’t reanimate them, they spliced their DNA with gender-bending frogs…”
She is cute when she’s almost absolutely exploding with outrage. I can tell I will have a lot of fun teasing my hyper-logical bride.
“You’re messing with me,” she realizes.
“I am.”
“Tell me you’re messing with me about the Jesus stuff.”
“Oh, I’d never mess with you about the Jesus stuff,” I assure her.
She scowls as I put an adhesive bandage over her stitches. “I’d like to sell this group of morons some magical rocks and maybe a harmonic bracelet or some other bullshit.”
“You’re a skeptic.”
“Yes,” she says. “I’m a scientist. I’m skeptical of everything that hasn’t been proved by the scientific method.”
“I see.” I can’t stop smirking. She’s so arrogant, and so certain she knows what the world is made of. She has absolutely no idea, and I know I am going to enjoy watching her deal with all the revelations coming her way. “There,” I say. “Almost as good as new.”
Elise
“You can’t keep me against my will.”
Sure, he came flying down the stairs like a tattooed puma, in a moment that I’m pretty certain will be forever emblazoned in my mind, a core memory. But he’s not always going to be able to chase me down. Not if I’m smart about it — and being smart is my bread and butter.
“Oh, sweet thing, you’re so constantly, stridently wrong,” he says as if he can hardly stop himself from laughing in my face. “And you’re laboring under the intense, persistent delusion you understand the world.”
I narrow my eyes at him. He’s insulting me now. I know I need to keep my temper, but it would seem that I can take being stabbed. I can take being forced into (fake) marriage. But I cannot abide someone mocking the scientific method. It’s a trigger for me.
“I understand the world better than people who run around stabbing women because of angels,” I say. “It’s nice you saved my life, but I don’t consider us married, and I hope you know I’ll be escaping and turning you into the police as soon as I can.”
His brows are rising as I speak, every threat ratcheting them up a fraction more toward his deep blue hair.
“Wow,” he says. “I suppose I better be careful I don’t let you escape.”
He’s toying with me. I can see the glittering amusement in his dark eyes. This man is chaos personified, and I am caught in his influence.
“I ordered more breakfast,” he says. “I suggest you eat it instead of turning it into a carpet ornament. I’m going to give you a day or two to come to terms with this, because I know you’re a rigid little thing. But your grace period is limited, and I will start to discipline you if you can’t do as you are told.”
“Oh, discipline me!” I have outrage on my side, making me feel strong. “If you lay so much as a finger on me…”
I am ignoring the fact that he has already laid fingers on me several times, and we both know that.
“Breakfast!” This time the porter announces himself cheerfully and leaves the cart outside the door.
“Are you going to try to run out the door again? Or are you going to sit there like a good girl and avoid the spanking you deserve?”