She blinked once, absorbing the question, recognizing the distinction between what he was saying and an ordinary marriage proposal. Slowly, that smile reappeared, breaking across her face like the sun rising over the horizon.
“Yes,” she whispered, looking almost a little shy. “We’ve come this far together. I can’t imagine most couples go through more than we already have. If we’ve survived everything up to this point, I think I can survive living with you for the rest of my life.”
“Cooking me dinner, picking up my dirty socks off the floor, bringing me my pipe and slippers…”
“In your dreams.”
“Hey, I’ll take you whatever way I can have you.”
“Well, you’ve got me now.” She freed her hand and slid it around the back of his head, angling her mouth up to meet his. “In real life too, not just a dream. So you better shut up and take advantage of that.”
Chapter Seven
Maybe they were crazy. It wasn’t an idyllic setting. It wasn’t the 5-star hotel with rose petals on the bed and champagne in the ice bucket that Ellie had once mentioned. Not even close. But it was the two of them together, with the storm and the outside world—whichever world it was—temporarily shut away. With how life had gone lately, that was about as good as it got for them.
It was also celebrating the fact that they’d survived so far. It was Ellie and him and all of the passion and frustration and attraction Carter had found in her during the past months. Maybe in the back of both their minds was the knowledge that either one of them could still die pretty easily in this strange world. In either world. It was a now or never event. Maybe it wasn’t a great time to be having sex, but, then again, when was it not a great time to have sex?
Rationalize it all he wanted, there wasn’t any rationalization about the explosion of emotions that went through Carter while they made love. There was this stereotype that sex was supposed to be more impersonal for a man. That he was supposed to be able to do a girl and walk away and have it mean nothing. That might have been true in the past, but it wasn’t true now. Ellie had changed him. She’d changed a lot of things. She’d changed herself since they’d first met and she’d indicated the idea of sex with him was disgusting until he’d called her hand on it.
Boy, had she changed.
Beauty and the beast. That’s what he’d called them then, but the beast was tamed for now. In fact, Ellie was the one who seemed to want things to progress faster until Carter finally told her, half-jokingly, to slow down.
“I’m just afraid,” she admitted. “Afraid that something’s going to happen to ruin this. That this might be our only chance to—”
He got it. There’d been lots of the unexpected lately. However, if it was their one chance he sure as hell didn’t want to rush it, and he told her that.
“I get one chance to make your first time right, so let me do my thing, okay?”
She laughed, but she didn’t argue anymore. They found a pace to suit them both, and when all was said and done and they were lying there skin to skin, Carter felt nothing but relief that they’d made it this far, overcoming the obstacles, the odds. No interference from the outside world, either. For a brief time, he’d managed to forget about shapeshifters and portals and the Stones of Fire and his own role in all of it. For a brief time, Carter had been able to forget everything except his wife and himself.
Now, as she drifted quietly off to sleep, he lay next to her, awake, his mind beginning to churn. He should have been the one knocked out, considering how long it had been since the last time he’d had sex. Which was quite a while. Instead, he felt energized, possibly with the realization that Ellie was now well and truly his wife. No more talk of annulments or divorce. Ellie wouldn’t have done this if she wasn’t intent on staying. This was it. She was his forever, which meant he had to find a way out of here. She’d done her part while he was unconscious back on the beach. He had to do his.
Once she’d drifted into a deep sleep, Carter carefully eased away from her and stood to get dressed. He draped her with another blanket he found on a shelf. She didn’t stir. She didn’t stir afterward when, after getting dressed, he started prowling around the home’s small space—only two rooms—examining every hole, every corner, every cupboard, every basket and jar, every shelf for anything that might explain the mystery of where they were and why.
Clues were hard to come by. He didn’t find a single thing to help clear up the quandary. What he did find appeared to be ordinary belongings of a way of life from long ago. Something teased at the edge of his consciousness, though. Something flickered at the edge of his brain. The closest comparison he could make was seeing something out of the corner of his eye: there, but not quite there. Or was it there? It was too insubstantial, too ethereal to be certain. In fact, the longer he prowled around the home, restless, feeling the drive to do something, to act, but held captive by the tiny space’s walls, the stronger his sense grew that something was around besides Ellie and himself. He kept jerking his head to the side, trying to capture if somebody truly was in the edge of his vision. There never was, but the sensation remained, overwhelming him.
Carter couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to get out or he’d go crazy. Thankfully the rain had stopped, the storm moving on. Staring down at Ellie, he considered waking her up, but this was her first chance
