Page 192 of Taken By Touch and Torment

Rune laughed. “Do you know how?”

“Uhhh…”

Rune laughed harder, and I glared up at him.

“I’ll teach you, Little Flame. You’re a quick learner,” he murmured, tilting my chin up. “You might want to take off your clothes first.”

I looked down at the bottom of my cornflower blue gown billowing in the water. “Right.”

“There’s more,” Rune said.

“How could there possibly be more?” I gestured to the vast landscape of shimmering blue touched by Helia’s radiance. “Than this?”

“I brought you the next two chapters,” he said. “To read on the beach, when you inevitably tire yourself out learning to swim.”

At the adorable hesitation in his usually assured features, I melted.

Now I really did jump up and down, making Rune roll his eyes as water splashed.

“I can’t wait to read them.”

“Don’t get too excited,” he said. “You know what happens when I finish the book.”

My stomach dropped at that reminder. I crossed my arms. “I’m not ready yet.”

Rune chuckled. “I’ll make sure you’re ready.” He tucked strands of my hair behind my ears—a futile effort, considering the wind would undo his work with the next gust. “You’ve already sung in front of a crowd, remember? Three times now.”

“The first time was a succubus oopsie accident,” I said quickly, remembering when I’d accidentally seduced a crowd of witches and shifters with my voice in Lumina’s park. “The other two… they were small crowds, and you had to literally dominate the fright out of me.”

Rune had forced me to sing in a couple small venues around Aristelle, in front of strangers. I’d only ever been an opening act, just for a song or two.

It had been horrible. And exhilarating. And I’d hated it. But I’d also loved it.

Besides, I’d been rewarded with ice cream.

“And I look forward to the domination required to get your bright red ass out onto the opera house’s stage,” Rune said.

That was our deal. Rune finished his novel, and I performed before hundreds, just like he’d always dreamed.

Just like I had always dreamed. Before, I thought I’d have to wait for my next incarnation. Now, Rune was stubbornly insisting I live out my every last fantasy, no matter how grand or unachievable they each seemed.

“You have a long way to go,” I said, in an effort to soothe my racing nerves at the mere prospect of standing on that enormous stage.

Rune shrugged. “Maybe it’s a novella.”

“No. No way. No cheating.”

He laughed. He flipped me around, undressing me himself. “You’re keeping your underwear on. I don’t want to have to murder the locals.”

When he left to place my dress with our belongings on dry sand, I turned and gazed out at the rising sun. I remembered how I’d felt right before I left Crescent Haven, imagining great adventures and even greater loves.

What the gods had given me was infinitely more magickal than anything I could’ve conceived of myself.

“I’d do it all over again,” I said softly when Rune returned.

The waves were as magnitudinous as our intertwined power, his thorny shadows and my deceptive, beautiful webs of desire.

Rune placed his hands on my waist as the tide rolled in and water rose up around us.

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