John had holstered his guns, and though his smile was grim, it was a smile.
She halted where she could only glimpse the body of the man inside.
“Is he okay?”
John shrugged, hands on the butts of his guns. “He breathes. I was hoping you might manage to wake him. They must have kept him asleep somehow.”
“Then…”
She stepped closer, felt her mouth spread slowly, up-curving into a hopeful smile, felt her heart attain that relieved glow that someone she needed to touch, to see, to feel with her, was alive. They had found him. Her eyes watered.
It was Xander. He seemed pink and healthy, though thinner. His clothes did smell musty but after weeks of travelling like this, she wasn’t going to mark him down for laundry problems.
Another step, and her hand grasped the edge of the coffin. Voice hushed, she spoke, almost fearing to wake him too suddenly, to damage his heart, to shock him… “Xander?” She feared something unpredictable and unknown to her.
Was this even the man she remembered?
“Xander?” Nothing still—no movement, apart from the rise and fall of his chest. She must give him time to recover. “He looks healthier than one might expect after all this time in here, in this horrid coffin. You’re right. He must have been wakened at times, and so…” She looked to John. “Have you searched for any drugs on these dead Thulians?”
Grimacing, she indicated the room and the bloodied bodies lying in grotesque arrangements on the ancient, blue-tiled floor. A few Thulians were tangled with each other. More than a few of their chests or heads exhibited gaping holes.
“We can, and I will, but I thought a swifter method might be…” He shrugged, eyebrows rising. “If it is true love then a kiss might work?”
As in the fairytale?
“John… You are serious? From me?” My goodness. “That would be altogether too fantastical.”
Yet she studied Xander’s face, his mouth, craving a kiss for some strange reason, now she’d thought about the idea.
“Is it not worth a try?” He took her hand and pulled her to where she could lean in and kiss Xander. “I want you to.”
And if it didn’t work? Oh phooey.
“Okay.” She leaned over Xander, noting the solid handsomeness of his square jaw and the fairness of his short hair, with that cute curl showing wherever it grew a little longer. And she stretched some more and leaned some more, until the edge caught her waist and she slid.
Mere fractions of air separated her mouth from his. Po looked at Xander for one more moment then she did what she really, really wished to, even though a sliver of dread remained to mock her.
What if he never woke? Why would her kiss work?
And yet, yet, a miracle, or magic, or something wonderful at any rate, happened. Xander stirred, his breathing deepened. She was sure his eyelids flickered.
The barest second after her lips had pressed to his, he shivered then began to kiss her back. His lips moved under hers. His arm crept up and pulled her closer. Po sighed and all of the tensions of the past days of travel and terror and whatever other t’s might fit the situation, fell away from her.
This was the perfect end to their adventure.
As they kept on kissing, she felt rather than saw him move his other arm to lever himself upward, bending at the waist. The kiss kept going.
He was warm, and a man, and making her hotter than seemed appropriate in public, apart from the prince’s banquets. One of his hands cradled her jaw and then… she felt John move in behind her, and he laughed softly, and he too held her, around the waist with a hand to each hip, then one hand slowly slid downward to her ass.
“Hey,” she whispered glancing behind her.
“Yes?” John’s question was impossible to answer, here, now, sandwiched between them.
Xander’s hold on her jaw shifted, and he traced around her mouth as he looked at her. “Hello, my beautiful princess.”
An unexpected shyness arrived.
She covered his hand with hers, toying with his fingers, feeling the bumps where fingernails grew, the hardness of old callouses from swordplay or hard work.
He didn’t know what she and John had been… doing. What if she were wrong?
What if he hated that she’d said yes to John, and shared herself with his brother? How could she tell him? Though he must have noticed where John was standing—too close for a mere friend.
His gaze flicked past her shoulder, and she realized Ruth and Shades had moved outside to let them have privacy.
“Thank you, both of you, for coming for me.”
“Of course, we did.”
“We’re brothers. Of course I came, though I had to convince the princess.” He squeezed her butt, and she pretended not to feel it. Not yet. Too soon. This was the wrong place to say such intimate things.
If Xander recalled the vow, he’d decided it was no longer noteworthy.
Then Po remembered what had begun this. A sense of wonder suffused her next words. “I… I woke you with a kiss.”
She could barely believe it herself.
“Mmm. Forgive me, Po, it was his idea.” Xander cleared his throat. “I took the antidote earlier.”
“What?”
“You have to admit it was a perfect romantic moment.” John chuckled.
“Oh! It was not.” Well, a little. “Apart from all the dead people?” Po levered herself away from Xander, then cleared her throat due to being flustered. She backed from her men—and was flustered even more—to think she’d called them her men.
“Who do I hit first?”
“Not me, unless you want yourself to get yourself in trouble and upended, with your butt bared while I do nasty things that will give poor Xander a heart attack.”
That made her brain cease to turn over.
Had he
