“I love that movie,” Zach said with a grin.
“Lots of opportunities for the audience to get mamboed by zombies,” Zelda pointed out with a wince.
“Makes it exciting,” Fate insisted. “Interactive cannibalistic theatre is invigorating.”
“Says the freak that won’t have to heal all the Shifters who lose their limbs,” Zelda said.
Fate slapped her hands on her hips and prepared to throw a fit. “Do we have a deal?”
Looking at my beaten and battered friends, I shrugged and smiled. Zach winked. Zelda rolled her eyes and Mac gave me a hesitant thumbs up.
“Yes, Fate. We have a deal.”
Fate grinned and disappeared on the Winds of Change. Five seconds after she vanished, an exhausted Fabio poofed back.
“Zorro's good,” he said, looking around at the carnage and the new ocean on his property. “He's still weak, but he's going to be all right.”
My hand went to my mouth as a sharp sob of re-leaf left my lips. The news was beautiful.
Zach took my hand in his and pulled me close. He inhaled deeply and looked at everyone. “Thank you. All of you. I don’t have the words to explain myself, so thank you will have to suffice. Zorro and Willow have been my family—my entire world for a long time… and now our trio has expanded.”
I smiled my encouragement and squeezed his hand.
“I have a sister,” he said with a nod to Zelda then turned to Fabio. “I have a father and I have friends.”
“Dude, you fell in love with yourself waaaay faster than I did,” Zelda said, giving her brother a quick hug.
“Getting there,” he said. “I also have a mate that I would die for, but who I also want to live for.”
My heart skipped a happy beat. I knew I was glowing and that my head wreath was on blossom overload. “Back at you,” I told the love of my life.
Zach loved himself. He was finally free to love me, wholly and completely. I kissed him until my entire body buzzed with pleasure. I looked around at our smiling family and friends and blushed. “And I can't wait for us to start living… umm, a little more privately.”
Epilogue
My heart raced and my body tingled from head to toe. I struggled to catch my breath and couldn’t believe I hadn’t died of pleasure in the last three hours of aerobic sexual activity.
Zach was a freaking machine.
“Goddess,” Zach said, running his hands through his hair and smiling with smug male pride. “Was that as good for you as it was for me?”
“Better,” I said, cuddling up to him and running my hands hungrily over his muscular chest, wondering if he could do it again.
I mean, fourteen orgasms in three hours was pretty dang impressive, but as exhausted as I was, I wanted more. I would never get enough of my warlock.
“I love you, dryad,” he whispered, playing with my hair and pulling my very satisfied naked body closer.
“The feeling is mutual, warlock,” I replied.
Two weeks had passed since the slugfest, Zorro was back to his awesome self, the new musical had gone off with an insane bout of hilarious hitches, and I was in the arms of the man I loved. Plus, we'd finally gotten some of that privacy I'd been craving. Zelda and Mac had loaned us their Floating Nookie Hut for as long as we wanted it. The Floating Nookie Hut was a treehouse that Mac had built for Zelda to make up for her never having had a treehouse as a child. It was situated in a magical meadow surrounded by glorious trees and riotous beds of wildflowers. The lovely interior was one large open room dominated by a massive king-sized bed. It was light and airy and positively perfect.
We’d been holed up in the hut for three days and counting. I didn’t see us leaving for another few weeks.
“I can’t believe it’s over,” Zach said, tracing my lips with his finger.
“I can’t believe no one died,” I added with a giggle. “Did you see the look on Bob’s face when Sassy tried to eat his arm?”
Zach chuckled. “Sassy takes her acting very seriously,” he said dryly. “She claims she was performing in Canadian.”
“Thought she didn’t understand a word of Canadian.”
“My point exactly,” Zach said. “We’re lucky we have three healers in town. Zelda needed Fabio and me on this disaster. She would have been passed out for a month if she'd had to heal all the bites, bruises, amputations and head wounds on her own.”
“It was a dreadful choice of a show,” I said, laughing as I remembered Roger warbling a barely passable rap song about zombies gnawing on femurs. Half the audience left at that point, but Fate was delighted and that was pretty much all that mattered. She was the investor, after all.
Zorro had played Shaun in the interpretive dance version of Shaun of the Dead. Since he’d missed out on the debacle known as Jaws, he’d recycled his pink leather assless chaps and wore them with pride while hunting zombies, that was, of course, when he wasn’t displaying his prowess on the pole.
Bob had not only written the show, he directed it as well. Roger had composed the appallingly awful songs and did the choreography. It was outstanding that both of the men had day jobs. Their futures were not in the arts. But as Fabio had said, passion that outweighs talent can be beautiful. Fabio was correct. Sassy played most of the other characters and spoke in a different language for each one. It was mind-blowing and all kinds of wrong. It kept the audience scratching their heads in confusion the entire six hours of the show.
Thankfully, Zach and I had opted or rather begged to work on the stage crew. I was done with my acting career after getting booed by the cats as the sheriff in Jaws. Zelda flat out refused to be in the show but did agree to stand by
