Page 46 of The Fantastic Fluke

Sucker.

“Thank you, Gideon. You’ll never know how much I appreciate you being there to help Sage.”

* * *

My father didn’t come backout of the office that afternoon to yell at me, which was mildly surprising. Maybe he was still afraid of Iris’s threat. Or hell, maybe he’d decided to fuck off to someplace where he didn’t hate all the people. The moon, maybe.

The afternoon at the shop was quiet, and the walk home even quieter. And when we got there, I really didn’t like the look in Gideon’s eyes. He was staring at me intently, and I could see him thinking about his promise to Iris.

I was going to be the one who paid for that, I suspected.

“We’ve been doing a half-assed job of this so far,” he told me, confirming my every worry. “We need to make sure you’re ready for it when these assholes come for you. We’ll make them sorry they tried.”

I sighed and dropped onto the couch, staring up at him, trying to mimic Fluke’s pitiful sad eyes. It probably didn’t work as well in green as brown, but I could try, right? “Have you considered the possibility that they murdered you too? If a living version of you couldn’t be ready for them, how could I ever?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, making his broad shoulders look enormous. I was glad I was sitting down, because having to look up at him when I was standing was bound to give me a crick in my neck. At least this way I could lean back on the couch.

An imaginary breeze caught his duster, making it billow dramatically in the air behind him as he stared. The answering electric jolt through my whole body was probably not the response he’d wanted to his impressive muscles, but it made me sit right back forward again. He was already annoyed. Me getting a hard-on watching him wasn’t going to help.

Come on, though. He was six and a half feet tall, with gold blond hair and deep, soulful brown eyes. Who wouldn’t be attracted to him? Asexual people like Beez, that was who, and I was not one of them.

No, my gaze trailed down his enormous pecs, to his slim waist, and... well, Gideon didn’t seem the kind of guy to stuff a pair of socks down his pants to impress anybody, so I was duly impressed.

I started, realizing I’d been ogling his package, and looked back up at him. Oh gods, what if he was one of those old school “one man and one woman” people?

He looked thoroughly unimpressed.

Shit.

“I’m dead, Sage,” he pointed out.

I glanced away, turning slightly to one side and running a hand nervously through my always-messy black hair. “I know. Believe me, well aware. I can see the kitchen archway through you.”

At that, he groaned. Instead of walking away or berating me, he dropped into his usual position on the coffee table across from me and leaned his elbows on his thighs. “That’s not what I mean.”

I still didn’t look at him, so he reached out to touch my knee. His hand slipped right through, giving me a chill. I shivered and turned back to look at him. “I get it, okay? You’re dead.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I—Wait.” The look he gave me was pure, sarcastic, amused Gideon. I’d known the man less than a week, but I knew that expression so well it was like I’d been born knowing it. I took another less-covert-than-I-thought look down at his groin, mostly hidden by his position, but not quite.

He couldn’t possibly mean something good by “I’m dead” could he?

It wasn’t like I was unattractive, okay? I was... fine. Guys hit on me. They wanted to sleep with me. Small and twinky as I still managed to look at near-thirty, they were usually even the big alpha types I found attractive. But guys like Gideon were something else.

He wasn’t just strong, tall, and beautiful, he was... Gideon.

Still, I scooted forward on the couch until our knees were nearly not-touching. “What about when you were alive?”

“It’s been a long time,” he hedged, then sighed and shook his head. He slid forward on the coffee table, spreading his legs to bracket mine, unnecessary as that was. He reached up and let his hand hover just an inch away from my cheek as he stared into my eyes. “Sage. I can safely say that if I could, I would most definitely touch you.”

I decided, for reasons I couldn’t even give myself, to be a petulant brat. “Sure you would. Push me right down onto this couch and”—our eyes met, locked, and I had to shake my head to look down at my own knees—“force me to learn convergence magic.”

“Oh, now you can say it,” he whispered.

“Yeah, well. You inspire things in a guy. Porn things.”

His face was inches from mine, and I could feel the phantom chill of him. I tried to pretend it was warmth, as it would be if he were a huge warm living version of himself.

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