Page 125 of Priceless

A laugh hiccuped through a sob. “Keep saying things like that and I’ll be a mess.”

“I’ll happily clean up your mess with my tongue.”

I swatted him on the arm before he kissed me again.

And kissed me and kissed me and kissed me until his knot eased and we came apart, though I didn’t want to.

Everett didn’t let me put my underwear back on, wanting me naked beneath the dress, and it felt right. He tossed them in a trash can on the way back down the hill, making me laugh.

His hand never strayed from mine as we left. We didn’t speak. We didn’t have to.

I understood now why people came to this place and offered things. No matter if the gods these ancient people worshipped were real, it wasn’t about that. It was about the offering. Walking up to an altar as one person and walking away as another.

Before and after.

Closing my eyes, I rooted the sensation in my mind and my memory. My husbands would never let me go back to before.

Just like them. There would always be a before and an after, and I could never go back.

43

OREGANO

(HERB OF MAGIC)

MEANING: SOOTHING; WILL BANISH SADNESS

MICAH

________

Iwoke to the sound of gasping. Ocean sat straight up in bed next to me, chest heaving, staring into the darkness of our hotel room.

“Ocean?”

She startled, looking over at me.

Moonlight drenched the room, and I could see her just enough to make her already dark eyes look nearly black. And she was panicked.

“Are you okay?”

She laid back down slowly, curling toward me. “I think so.”

We were in the center of the bed, the others asleep farther away. I pulled her in and tucked her head beneath my chin before arranging the blankets over us once more.

“Just a bad dream,” she murmured.

I stroked my hand over her hair and watched the way the faint moonlight shone off of it. The world was made of shades of blue at the moment, and my wife was no exception. I loved the thought of painting her with nothing but those shades that reminded me of her name.

“Want to talk about it?”

She shook her head where it rested in the crook of my shoulder. “I’m better now. I don’t get them that often.”

Quietly, I began to purr. Not enough to wake the others. Just enough for her to feel and relax into me. Which she did.

When she and Rett had returned from the ruins, they’d found me knee deep in charcoal sketches of anything and everything. Because drawing was the way I could process my thoughts. I couldn’t just sit and let them run, and while I’d been digging through the problems with the launch, I’d needed to think.

But I hadn’t realized how long I’d been doing that, and my eyes were burning when Rett came into the office in the penthouse and dragged me out to go to bed.

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