Page 16 of Tides of Time

Her lips wrapped around the lip of the glass, and Orion swore he’d cum in his pants at the simple action despite not having been hard a moment prior.

“Let me take up more of your time. Dinner. Tomorrow night. I know this is crazy, but I can’t shake the feeling I’m supposed to have met you. I promise I’m a fantastic cook, and you’ll have nothing to fear joining me at my home.”

“Yes,” she responded so fast he thought he’d asked an entirely different, easy-to-answer question.

“You will?”

She nodded, a curtain of hair falling in front of her face.

“I don’t have anywhere to be for a few days, I came looking for adventure.”

“I thought you came looking for someone like me?”

“And couldn’t you be one to bring me adventure?”

Blood pounded through him as if she’d somehow torn down every wall and desire he’d ever had and saw right through to his soul. He’d wanted that - to be someone’s safe space and adventurous partner.

“I’ll get you my address. Tomorrow at six?”

“Tomorrow at six,” she nodded, her eyes fixed on his as if there were nothing else in the world more important for her to look at than boring old Orion Levi.

SEVEN

“You’re perfect,”Ariana mocked what Orion said to her anytime he found her standing before a mirror in their home. She hadn’t cared how she looked to anyone but him, and his words never failed to make her feel like the most special woman alive.

“Then why don’t you feel perfect?”

She dropped onto the bed of the hostel she’d wormed her way in to. She shouldn’t have taken off without the bag she’d packed, but Ariana knew she’d needed to leave quickly last night or never be able to. Laying in his arms had always been her favorite part of their relationship. A single delay could have jeopardized her willingness to hope this worked.

“But it is working,” she looked at the woman in the mirror and tried not to care that the dark black dress she’d stolen was slightly larger than required.

The man she had shared a meal with just the day before was nothing short of perfection. Every aspect of him, from his chiseled physique to his charming smile, made her heart flutter. He may not have as many years of experience as a siren, but to her, he was already her perfect husband in every way.

Orion Levi was as perfect a human as he was a siren.

All that was left to do was get a job so she could stay near him. She knew where he would go - where he would lose his life - but it wasn’t somewhere Ariana could hang around and wait.

She’d never survive.

Perhaps if she’d been gifted with invisibility, all would be well, but that was not the case. Time travel didn’t work inside of itself. She couldn’t hop around and hope she found him. Ariana’s gift required her to go from a traveled time back to the present. If she did that, she might not have a way to get back to when she needed to save him. No, she would stay here and save him the old fashioned way.

Sort of old fashioned.

It could be weeks before the fateful day, but she couldn’t think of a single useable skill in her arsenal. Before her death, Ariana had been a general practitioner - something utterly impossible not only in the seventies but in the Middle East. She needed to find something, maybe waitressing, if she wanted to be around and fall more in love with Orion every day.

Glancing at the circles under her eyes in her reflection, Ariana exhaled and walked out the door.

Seventeen minutes later, she stood outside the address she’d already known by heart but had written on a piece of paper to not spook Orion. She made a good show of gripping the paper as she walked to knock on the door.

It flung open, revealing a sinfully sexy Orion in nothing but a pair of jeans resting low on his hips, showing off his muscular, tanned body. She swallowed back a wave of desire and couldn’t help but wonder if this outfit was intentional. Her husband was not a tease, but he did know what she liked. Perhaps he knew because women before her liked it.

The thought drew her lips down into a frown.

“Shayna, that is not what a man likes to see when he greets a woman at his door.”

She didn’t need to ask what Shayna meant, he used it all the time to call her beautiful in his language.

“Perhaps I’m not used to seeing men casually naked.”

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