Page 65 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 2

“We’ve either been fighting for our lives, trying to stay sane, or fucking,” I said indelicately. Gabriel huffed out a quiet laugh, and I pressed forward again. It wasn’t really a kiss. I just wanted him to feel my smile against his lips. “There’s a lot I should catch you up on. There’s kind of a situation with Damien, and the whole thing with my magic, and—” I interrupted myself to kiss him again.

“We should talk about all of it,” he agreed, then brushed his lips against mine.

“Definitely,” I said, kissing him deeply.

“Definitely going to talk,” he said sagely. The kiss landed while my mouth was still open, and he dragged his teeth tenderly over the curve of my lower lip. Love you—I’m sorry—I missed you—I love you—I want you…

“Gonna talk in a little bit,” I suggested. Somehow, my hand ended up buried in Gabriel’s hair, and I tugged at his curls. He groaned against my mouth.

“In, say, forty-five minutes or so,” he agreed. He pressed a hand to the small of my back, easing me a little closer until I was practically in his lap. He ghosted a bite over my jaw, pressed a kiss to my neck.

“Maybe an hour,” I said. The buttons on his shirt were tricky to do without looking, but I was very motivated.

“An hour and a half,” Gabriel suggested.

I laughed, giddy and breathless.

The bed was close, but the floor was closer. He bore me down onto the carpet and I wrapped a leg around the slim line of his hips, digging my heel into his thigh to keep him close. I love you—I want you—I need you—I’m so sorry I hurt you—you mean the world to me-—I love you…

In the end, it took us two hours.

23

GABRIEL

We did talk eventually. We talked about the unexciting practicalities, the wishes, the compromises we were each willing to make. It wasn’t pulse-poundingly erotic or sweepingly romantic. At a certain point, Evangeline brought out one of the battered notebooks she preferred and began to jot down notes. At that point, there had been a brief tangent while we discussed the relative merits of lined paper versus grid paper, although I had made an impassioned argument for the merits of the thrillingly newfangled dot-grid. At that point, she’d told me I was cute, and we’d gotten distracted for another half hour or so.

Neither Evangeline nor I had ever been in a real relationship before. Evangeline was a busy woman, and she was the first to admit that opening her life up to others didn’t come easily to her. I, on the other hand, had moved through the centuries with casual trysts and short-term flings. Up until extremely recently, I hadn’t thought I wanted a romantic relationship. Evangeline seemed immensely pleased with herself about having proved that idea wrong.

In the end, we’d made sure that things would be better. Relationships required work, work neither of us were used to doing, but at least now we’d laid the groundwork. There was a crawling anxious feeling telling me it wouldn’t be enough, that all it would do was set a clear framework for my failures, but part of me that sounded remarkably like Evangeline shouted that feeling down. She and I were in this together.

Unfortunately, we could only avoid the outside world for so long. We had to strategize, which tragically involved getting cleaned up and properly dressed. It was probably a good thing the room had such a comically small shower or we would’ve gotten distracted again.

I was sitting on the bed while Evangeline showered, trying to gather my thoughts. It proved to be something of a challenge. When the shower squeaked off and the bathroom door swung open, I perked up like an eager dog hearing its master come home. She came out wrapped in my robe, which, again, caused most of my higher reasoning to exit the building. A bead of water slid down the long, pale column of her neck, tracing over the edges of a love bite I’d left above her collarbone. I clenched my hands in the bedspread and turned away as she dressed, not out of a sense of modesty but out of the knowledge that we had places to be.

Unfortunately, she still looked gorgeous in jeans and an oversized sweater. The sweater was familiar.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re doing this on purpose,” I said accusatorially.

She laughed and came over to stand in front of me. “I have no idea what you mean,” she lied cheerfully.

I brushed a hand over the soft knit of the sweater—my sweater—where it dipped over her waist. She ducked her head down to kiss me, and I hummed.

“I have a request,” I said hesitantly when we parted. I fidgeted a little as she waited for me to continue, then I stood and went over to the drawers. I withdrew the small bundle of fabric that held my toiletries and unrolled it onto the bed, picking out a small bottle of golden-green oil and a wide-toothed ivory comb with an intricately carved handle. “Would you…?” I asked, waving a hand vaguely at my nearly dry hair.

Evangeline hesitated. “Isn’t that, like, a big thing for vampires? I thought grooming each other was just for family.”

“It is,” I said.

She blinked at me, then blushed faintly. “Oh,” she said softly. “Oh. Okay.”

She picked up the comb and began to work the macassar oil through my hair. It was expensive stuff, carefully perfumed with a scent that would linger but not overwhelm the enhanced senses of supernatural beings. The delicate scents of vetiver, oak moss, and ylang-ylang wafted up around the two of us.

“I can do your hair as well if you’d like,” I murmured, lost in the quietly meditative state that always fell over me when someone did this.

“Oh, I was just gonna hit it with a drying charm,” Evangeline said dismissively. “That’s what I usually do.”

I cracked an eye open and peered over my shoulder at her. She made a disapproving noise and fixed the curl she’d just put into place. “Have you considered that may be why your hair is… how do I put this? Somewhat unruly?”

---