Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
“An eye?” I was incredulous. “For fuck’s sake, Raph, you could kill someone with that.”
He shrugged like yes, possibly.
It was horrifying. And yes, to each their own. I had no problem with whatever kind of ceremony anybody wanted, but for me, the smaller the better. Thankfully, Raphael was of the same mind.
We, Raphael and I, didn’t want a fuss.
The two of us had gone to the justice of the peace and gotten married, and it was over and done in fifteen minutes. Forgeries had been made—my partner, Cielo Jones, knew who to contact. A fake social security card, a fake birth certificate, and now Raphael had credentials like a driver’s license and a passport that other kyries had neither a need for nor an interest in. There wouldn’t have been a reason for all that, but Raphael wanted to be the first one called in case of a normal human emergency and be able, here, in my world, to act. We didn’t tell anyone but Cielo, who was our witness. Since in our day-to-day Raphael used a sword, as did I, plus he worked construction, while I, being in security, had to punch people on occasion, we’d opted for heavy solid silver bracelets in lieu of rings. They were oval, conformed comfortably to our wrists, and even with soap or grease or whatever else, could not be removed. Raphael had them forged on another plane—apparently the kyrie I loved knew about this dimension where rings, bracelets, earrings, and chains could be made in pairs, and once put on, they were permanent. When we got home from city hall, we’d sat in our living room and exchanged them. I put mine on and watched it shrink before my eyes, fitting my wrist. It was strange, but when I walked, it fell easily over the bone in my left wrist, yet if I tried to take it off, or if anyone else did, suddenly I could feel it pressed tight against my skin. Raphael’s was the same.
I said they were enchanted.
Raphael preferred the word cursed.
Either way, my hand would need to be amputated to extract the token of my mate’s undying devotion. No one I knew, and none of the warders in my clutch, had given the bangle a second look, which was exactly what we wanted. Eventually we’d tell them, but it wasn’t necessary at the moment.
“Listen,” I grumbled at him, back in the present. “I love you, and I plan to keep you, but the fact of the matter is that you’re going to outlive me and—”
“No,” he growled, grabbing my bicep and dragging me around the side of the house, still on the deck but not where anyone could see us. “I will age right along with you. When you’re old and wrinkled, I will be too. I just won’t lose my sight or my hearing or—”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” I conceded as he knocked me back gently into the wall.
“I will remain here on this plane as long as you, Jackson, and not a moment longer.”
I threw up my hands in defeat because really, arguing with him accomplished squat.
“It’s romantic, yes?”
“It’s psychotic,” I assured him.
He arched one of those gorgeous brows of his and gave me a lethal, sexy grin that basically turned my brain to mush. “It’s devotion,” he murmured, leaning in and taking my mouth in a mauling kiss.
Jesus.
Every time it was the same. With his kiss came a feeling of rightness that rolled through me, spreading heat and desire in its wake, making me want to grab him and keep him close. Once upon a time, before him, I thought I’d been in love. When my boyfriend left me for another, I was gutted. But it turned out, I was on a different path I’d never anticipated.
With Raphael, the epiphany was not some bolt from the blue, but instead the easy, simple, remarkably obvious revelation that I loved him, heart and soul. Raphael, it turned out, was the one for me. Which didn’t mean he didn’t drive me insane on occasion. Our house in Potrero Hill wasn’t big at twenty-five hundred square feet, but since my loft had been half that, it felt like a castle when we moved in. It had been newly remodeled, had an open floor plan, and the best part, to Raphael, was that it was gated. He was amazed at the thought that on one side it was public domain and on the other his alone. Having never had anything that belonged solely to him, he guarded our home with almost the same intensity he guarded me. He was also, surprisingly, a neat freak. And he was insane about coaster usage. We fought and yelled, sometimes a lot or about really stupid crap, and we both complained about whose turn it was to cook. Taken as a whole, it was good. Friends as well as lovers, we never took each other so seriously that we couldn’t laugh. It was, we discovered, the most important thing.