“I want you,” he whispered like he was saying,I miss you.
His thumb swept softly up and down my thigh with painful restraint, representing a million things he wanted to say but couldn’t.
I turned in his arms. Sought his lips with mine.
Atinybit of warmth flared inside me—the first touch of magic I’d felt since we’d taken the potion. Our lips met, and the warmth ignited into fire, giving me hope. “We don’t need magic,” I said. “Show me how you feel yourself.”Show me we’re not so different now. Show me the mind I care for won’t forever be trapped in the body of a stranger.
Bryce deepened the kiss, lacing his fingers into my hair. I went to graze my teeth over his lip, but my jaw froze, leaving my mouth motionless for several awkward seconds.No teeth. Got it.Probably, inflicting any pain, even light pain in the name of pleasure, wasn’t allowed.
Bryce pulled away and gave me a blank look. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” I pulled him back. My tongue stiffened, forming unplanned words. “We should engage in sexual intercourse.” I nearly melted from embarrassment. I’d wanted to suggest he bend me over the nearest surface and do some of those depraved things with his mouth he was so good at, but I guessed that kind of explicit language didn’t represent heroism well.
“I’m going to—” He swallowed. “I’m going to make sweet, sweet love to you in the light of a full moon for hours. So gently.”
I imagined the things he wanted to say were too filthy for his heroic mouth too. The potion had made him exactly like every other character in this world. He was a giant, freakishly happy cheeseball, and I half expected him to start trying to sell me a ShamWow or something.
With a feeling of impending doom, I recalled reading anarticle about how Batman wouldn’t go down on Catwoman because it wasn’t “heroic.”
I should have thought this through more.
We kissed again, all slow lips and long, dramatic sighs. I could practically hear the soaring dramatic music.
Bryce pulled back. “I have the sudden urge to light many candles.”
What the hell?“Whatever do you mean?”
“Every moment with you is meaningful and should be treated as such,” he said robotically.
He scrambled out the door and disappeared for a long while.
It took him several trips to gather enough candles to satisfy him. The act of lighting all of them took long enough that I propped myself up with pillows and was almost asleep by the time he was done.
“There, that’s better.” The mattress sagged as he crawled up beside me.
I cracked open an eye, and my heart sank. His mind might still be trapped inside his body, but I knew that Bryce was truly,trulynot himself because he’d essentially created a fire hazard. Lit candles covered every available surface.
“Wow,” I sighed dreamily, swooning with happiness I didn’t possess. “I feel good about the number of open flames near my soon-to-be-sleeping body.”
Bryce beamed. “I am glad you are glad.”
He leaned over me, pulling the covers over his shoulders like we were in a PG-13 movie.
The mood was effectively dead.
We both looked at each other, smiled like it was the happiest day of our lives, and simultaneously claimed to have headaches.
I left Bryce asleep and went outside for some fresh air. I leaned against the inn, cool night air raising the hairs on my arm.Focusing on breathing, I let my mind work out the complicated feelings churning in my head.
We’d taken the potion for the wrong reasons. Well, objectively, they were the right reasons, but subjectively, they were the wrong reasons forus, and now everything was ruined. I crammed myself back into a life that wasn’t mine. I gave up Nothing, and it cost me everything. Maybe I was likable now, but I felt as unlovable as ever.
I’d once again started chasing perfection and a quintessential Happily Ever After, but I realized now that wasn’t what I wanted. What I’d had with Bryce in Ohio before coming to this world felt more like a Happily Ever After than anything I could achieve now.
All I could do was hold on to the small scrap of hope that, somehow, Bryce liked the old me—the me I was before we even came here. Then at least a piece of our relationship could still be real.
“Are you all right, Lady Courtney?” The blacksmith leaned over the porch railing, looking down at me.
“Quite fine,” I said. “A lovely night, isn’t it?”
