“You’re the battery that drives the spells.” All the intricacy here, the level of harnessed magic—the entire system was in place to drain off Ellie’s natural witch overheating. The concealments, the ability to move to different locations, the reconfiguring all used up the substantial power she must produce.
A warm breeze moved through the plants. Ellie inhaled again and blinked, as if steadying herself to walk off her own cliff. “That is my lack of poker face.” She pointed at the new addition.
I frowned again. I wasn’t quite sure what—
She looked up at me with the most open and trusting face that any woman ever had in my two hundred years. The most frightened, too. And the most vulnerable.
And nothing else mattered. Not my fear concerning Benta. Not the cottage’s magic, or my lack of understanding. Only Ellie.
She yanked at my t-shirt. I grabbed her hands but she splayed her fingers over my abdomen. I could only bring ice to this particular table. “I’m cold.”
Warmth flowed from her palms to my flesh and I sighed.
She touched me and my body melted under her hands and I didn’t think it was her magic. It was her. I warmed because of Ellie.
It should be the other way. I was big and muscular and I should be the heat source on which she sunned, not the other way around.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Does what hurt?” My entire body ached. Every major muscle group—my shoulders, lower back, hamstrings, biceps and triceps, even my ankles—always argued and complained when I was cold. I was tight but not consistently across my whole body, which caused yanking in some parts, and bunching in others. The clamminess caused the firing of nerves meant to draw attention to when a body was outside its normal homeostasis range, that “we’re edging toward danger” borderline flu-like dullness signaling a need to recuperate.
Such were my mornings, every morning. Every day. All the time, if I wanted to admit it. The pain was a background reminder that I was reconstituted.
Ellie pushed my t-shirt higher as she moved closer. “When you’re cold? It hurts, doesn’t it?” She placed her cheek over my heart and wrapped her arms around my waist.
“Yes.” I wouldn’t lie.
She pressed against my front. “Let me help,” she whispered.
I don’t quake. But I am human, and some anticipation, some excitement, found its way to my muscles. All the feral energy from the previous night roared back. All those desires and the wants that I long ago leashed because no woman wanted a corpse in her bed.
Yet Ellie did. She did. That’s what she meant by her own lack of poker face. I could read her emotions from her magic as well as she could read mine on my face.
She wanted me, and not just because she wanted protection inside my big, frightening bubble. Or because we hated ourselves in parallel. She wanted me because I’d put in the work and found my way to her through blizzards and concealments.
I had to trust that she was going to put in the work, too.
A part of me, a small annoying part, screamed like a terrified raccoon cornered against a shed. What if she got sick of the work? What if this tolerance of my corpse-like flesh had an expiration date? Then I would be all-in with disgusted fae magic.
That raccoon wanted to return to being lost in the woods so it didn’t have to deal with the inevitable, and it would bite any hand that offered food, or comfort, or understanding.
I pressed my lips against the top of her head anyway.
Ellie stepped back. She pulled her nightgown up and over her head.
My girlfriend stood in front of me naked, except for her over-the-knee hand-knitted socks and her over-the-elbow hand-knitted arm warmers.
Every bit of my overthinking shut down. That raccoon suddenly decided that some things are worth sticking around for. I decided—my body decided—that this once, I should shut up and allow Ellie to define the moment.
It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Or maybe it was.
She grasped the warmer on her left arm to pull it off.
“Leave it on.” The words rumbled out of my chest.
The most beautiful, happy, wonderful smile she’d yet given me shone as bright on her face as the golden glow shimmered on the plants behind us. I scooped her up. The magic and its manipulations be damned. My cold flesh, too.
Time for me to dive over that cliff, that damned raccoon headlocked under my arm, into the most terrifying waves of my two hundred years.
Hopefully, none of us would drown.
Chapter 5
The sky outside had brightened—we had to be past noon—and the clouds had moved beyond their blizzard roiling and into smooth and steady. Light snow drifted down toward the skylight directly over my sunning cushion but somehow didn’t accumulate. The skylight also filtered the light, warming it more than it should under an overcast, winter sky, which benefited not only me, but also my hound, the plants, and I assumed the fish in the pond.
The magic of Ellie’s space had been thorough when building the sunroom. It wrapped us in a cocoon of feminine comfort of soft round pillows and gentle embraces. It melted my body’s stress. It gave us a nest.
I dozed in the warmth, sprawled on the bed-sized cushion under a sweet-scented, ultra-soft blanket, with Ellie sprawled on top of me—fully on top of me, with her arms around my chest and legs curled around mine. She breathed against my shoulder. Her auburn hair tickled my neck. For the first time in my life, a woman chose not to break contact after intimacy.
I could stay like this forever, warm and with her. Calmed by her weight and the rhythms of her body. My beautiful, perfect Ellie.
She snoozed and part of me was sure I was going to end up paying for this bliss.
Marcus Aurelius slept on an equally cushy doggy bed between a
