“The Earth moved?”
“Well, only around the Pacific Rim…” Rising up onto her knees, she took the edge of his earlobe between her teeth. “…so you needn’t get too impressed with yourself.”
He twisted, caught her around the waist, and they fell back on the bed locked together.
“Hey! Watch the tail!”
“Oops, sorry, Austin.” As Dean sat up, Claire rolled off the bed, grabbing a pillow in one hand, scooping Austin up with the other. “And thanks for reminding me that you’ll be starting out in the bathroom tonight.”
“Oh, please. I have no interest in watching the two of you do whatever it is the two of you are intending to do.”
“I’m not so much concerned about the watching,” she told him, adjusting her hold, “as I am about the commenting and the criticizing.”
“Look, if you can’t take a little criticism…”
“Good night, Austin.”
He glared at her as she set the pillow down just inside the bathroom door and then set him on it. “This is cat abuse. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
“Would a salmon treat forestall litigation?”
“No. But a salmon might.”
“Dream on.” Handing over the treat, she pulled the door closed. “Feel free to join us after we go to sleep.”
“Uh, Claire…” Dean nodded toward the door. “How can he join us if that’s closed?”
“A closed door has never stopped a determined cat.”
“Uh-huh.” His T-shirt stopped halfway up his torso. “So you’re saying he can come out any time, then?”
“No.” Smiling, she reached into the possibilities and laid them against the latch plate. “He can come out when that wears off.”
Austin’s indignant, “Cheater!” was muffled but distinct.
“I’m sorry, Claire. This has never happened before.”
“You’ve only done it once before.”
“And this didn’t happen!”
Rising up on one elbow, she bent forward and kissed him softly. “Just relax.” Kissed him a little harder. “Everything’s going to be fine.” Kissed him with more enthusiasm. Stopped kissing him. Leaned back. “Or maybe not. You’re so tense I could bounce quarters off you…well, off most of you.…What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Is it me?”
“You?” Her question had been delivered with a total absence of emotion. Without his glasses, he couldn’t tell for sure if she looked hurt or angry. “It’s not you. It’s nothing.”
“And I know when you’re lying, remember?”
Dean sighed and surrendered. “Okay.” He stared up at the tiny red dot on the hotel room’s smoke detector and thanked all the gods who might be listening that Austin was in the bathroom. “I can’t stop thinking about what happened the last time, and it’s got me some caudled up, I can tell you.”
“Shouldn’t those be happy thoughts?” Deep burgundy fingernails tapped against his skin in a way that should have been enough to raise a reaction all on its own. It wasn’t.
His cheeks flamed. “Not those thoughts. I keep thinking about how we made an angel.”
“And you’re worried it’ll happen again?”
“No…”
“You’re worried it won’t?” His silence was all the answer she needed. “But we don’t want it to happen again.”
“But you want it to be that good.”
“Well…”
“Good enough to make an angel.”
“Yes, but…”
“That’s some good.”
All at once, she understood. “You’re afraid you won’t be that good again!”
A faint “I heard that,” sounded from the bathroom.
Dean closed his eyes. That was all he needed to finish the night off right.
Resting her chin on his sternum, Claire considered the situation. She supposed she could see how ripping a hole through the fabric of the universe big enough to slip an angel through the very first time he had sex might cause Dean some performance anxiety. She didn’t know what to do about it though. “Dean, you can’t expect to make an angel every time.”
“I know.”
Now she was really confused. “Well, then…”
“It’s not about knowing. It’s about knowing.” He waved his outside arm for emphasis, hoping that its shadow movement through the dark would add clarity.
It didn’t.
“It’s me, isn’t it?”
NINE
VAGUELY AWARE HE WAS BEING PULLED FROM SLEEP, Dean sighed deeply and arched his back. He could feel the sheet sliding away, warm air currents brushing against him, and…His eyes snapped open. “Claire, what are you doing?”
She smiled up at him. “Solving the angel prob…” Glancing down, she sighed. “Okay, should have worded that differently.”
“Claire!”
“I just thought that if you got going without thinking about things, momentum would keep you going. And it was working.” In the dim winter light seeping around the edges of the hotel curtains, she looked distinctly miffed. “I should never have said the ‘a’ word.”
He fumbled for his glasses. “Claire, I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“You’re both pathetic.”
Ears burning, Dean dragged a blanket around his waist and slid out of bed. “I’ve, uh…you know…bathroom.”
“Try a verb,” Austin snorted from a pile of Claire’s clothes on the unused bed.
As the bathroom door closed behind Dean—and then opened again as he pulled the blanket inside—Austin leaped carefully to Claire’s side. “Do you want me to talk to him, mano a mano?”
“Thanks for the offer, but no.”
“Why not?”
“Well, to begin with, you had your mano removed.”
“Not my idea.”
“Still.” She stroked the velvet fur between his ears with her thumb. “I think this is something Dean and I have to work out on our own.”
“You mean something Dean has to work out on his own. It’s not actually about you.”
Claire shook her head. “You’re wrong.”
“Of course, I’m wrong.” Austin sat down and curled his tail around his front toes. “This has nothing to do with a young man who desperately wants to make you happy and, because of an inadvertent angelic evocation, is afraid he’ll never be able to make you that happy again. Oh, no, this has to do with you being older and more experienced so that he’s intimidated. Or it has to do with you being a Keeper because he wouldn’t have caused an angel if you weren’t. Or it has to do with you being a Keeper and therefore responsible for everything under the sun.”
“That was sarcasm, wasn’t it?”
The cat sighed.
