plate on his lap. I took the can from him, he watched as I popped the tab, his brows going up at the hiss then his lips twitched. He took it back, sipped at it, swallowed, shook his head, set it on my side table and commenced eating.
I watched, waiting for a response.
After three Cheetos and his second bite of sandwich, when I got no response, I prompted, “Well?”
He swallowed his bite of bologna and cheese sandwich and stated, “It’s not bad.”
I felt my mouth form a small smile.
“It’s also not good,” he went on and for some reason, I burst into laughter.
When I was done laughing I noticed Tor was not eating. He was watching me with a look so tender it was a shock when I felt it slice clean through me. The pain was so perfect, it felt exquisite, better by far than any orgasm he’d given me (and he’d given me lots and all of them were good) so I bit my lip and looked away.
I was trying to shove that feeling out of my soul when Tor murmured, “Only you.”
It took a lot but I forced my eyes to his face to see his were moving around the room.
I shouldn’t ask, I really shouldn’t ask but I asked.
“Only me, what?”
His eyes came to me. “Only you could put color in a colorless world.”
My lungs seized and then I followed where his gaze had been and I saw my space through his eyes.
I’d painted the walls a soft peach. I’d strung string after string of fairy lights covered in sherbet-colored daisies all around the top edges. I’d chosen carefully selected, but all fanciful and vibrant, prints for my walls. I had a comfortable armchair in bright pink with a deep purple chenille throw tossed over it, at its foot, a grass green, poofy, rectangular ottoman. We were sitting on a peacock blue sofa with sunshine yellow and orangey-red toss pillows. On the square coffee table in front of us was a collection of glass orbs, all of different sizes and colors. The dining room table was glass topped but the chairs were covered in raspberry fabric, a huge glass vase in the middle of the table with whirls of multiple colors swirling through it. There was a wide rug over the wood floors that reflected nearly all of the colors I’d chosen for the room, not in a dizzying way, but a subtle one (I thought). And all the lamps in the room had different bases and different colored shades, turquoise, lilac, pink, royal blue.
Oh fuck, there was that exquisite pain again.
I turned my head to him, saw him sitting on my sofa in jeans and a tee, feet up, eating bologna sandwiches and Cheetos, chasing it with a Coke, looking relaxed and totally at home after a day out, by himself, in a world that couldn’t be any more different from his home and it hit me.
“And only you,” I blurted.
His eyes held mine when he asked quietly, “Only me, what?”
Oh well, might as well say it.
“Only you could be catapulted into a different world, a world totally unlike your own, and take it all in stride.”
He wasn’t just taking it in stride. Just like in his world, he seemed in command of the situation. Not only at- ease but like he had it all under control and I suspected, with very little effort, if he didn’t have it under his control, he would.
Just like always.
I loved that about him and I hated that I loved it.
Hoping to hide my feelings, I babbled on, “When I got to your world, I was totally freaked out. The first ten, fifteen minutes, I thought it was a dream. The rest I knew wasn’t and I was scared shitless.”
“You forget, my love, I was prepared for your world,” he told me and I felt my brows draw together.
“You were?” He nodded. “How?”
“You told me about it. About the cars and the buses and the planes and the asphalt and the sidewalks. You told me about the buildings made of glass rising into the sky. People talking to other people on their phones in the streets. Others sitting in front of those…” he hesitated, “boxes, tapping at them with their fingers.”
“Computers,” I reminded him, stunned.
He remembered everything I told him.
Everything.
He smiled. “Computers.”
“You thought I was making it up,” I whispered and his eyes went dark.
“But now I know you were not.”
“You thought I was,” I semi-repeated.
“But now, Cora, I know you were not,” he also semi-repeated, this time softly but also firmly, that tender look back in his eyes.
I swallowed.
It was Tor’s way of apologizing. And it was a good way.
Then I decided I’d had enough. I couldn’t take more. He was going to get to me and he couldn’t. What he did hurt, too much. And anyway, he didn’t belong in my world and I didn’t belong in his. It was unnatural and anything could happen. Nature had a way of righting itself, sometimes violently.
I’d given in once, giving him all I had and taking what I could get in return.
And I loved it.
But it could be taken from me. He could be taken from me. At any moment a blue mist could form and whisk him away.
I had to stay on target. I had to sort out my life. And I had to guard my heart.
Which was going to be hard with a seasoned warrior obviously intent on laying siege to it.
But I had to try.
“Do you want to watch TV?” I asked into the void, his eyes flashed his displeasure at my change of subject then they settled.
“Will you rest if we watch this… TV?” he asked back and I nodded. “Then yes, I’d like to watch TV.”
I sucked in breath then turned, leaned down the couch, opened the drawer to my side table and grabbed the remote. I hit the button and resolutely ignored him as I switched channels until I found an innocuous sit-com. Then I settled in, partly turned away from him, and focused on TV (mostly for my sanity).
Not long after, I heard his plate hit the coffee table then the remote was slid from between my fingers.
My head twisted to him and I cried, “Hey!” but like a man, of his world or mine, he took over the technology, hitting buttons on the remote so the channel changed, the contrast changed, the volume changed and then he found a decent volume along with a cop show.
Figures.
Then he tagged me around my chest and pulled me down to lying beside him, wedged against the back of the couch, as he stretched out on his back, head to a pillow against the armrest.
I pushed up and snapped, “I was comfortable.”
“You’re more comfortable now,” he returned, telling the God’s honest truth.
“Am not,” I lied, pushing up on his chest.
“Cora, you are.”
“Am not!”
The hand attached to his arm that was wound around me slid up to the back of my neck and he pulled me inexorably forward until I was close to his face.
“You promised, we watch this TV, you’d rest,” he reminded me.
“Yes!” I clipped.
“Then… rest,” he commanded.
I glared at him. Then I saw the determined look on his face.
I knew what that meant.
So I informed him, “You’re annoying.”
He chuckled and forced my cheek to his chest.
I kept my body perfectly solid to communicate nonverbally that he was a jerk.
That was, I did this until I fell dead asleep.
