Page 1 of Unwavering
Sex?
Or shoes?
In what twisted world would I have to choose?
Ha! I was a poet and I didn’t know it. I have layers, y’know. There’s more to me than a pretty face and an eternally 30 year-old body and a magnificent closet and the whole queen thing and the ruling Hell gig.
(What? There is!)
“Oh my God,Elizabeth Frankenstein Taylor!”
“What? What?” I straightened up in such a hurry, I almost fell off the kitchen stool. “Are you okay? Are we under attack?” I looked wildly around the kitchen. “Did you lose your phone again?”
“I have been talking to you for five minutes about tonight and you’ve been gaping at me with your mouth open muttering ‘sex’ and ‘shoes’ for almost that long.”
“Okay, Marc, but...don’t call me Elizabeth.” What had my mother been thinking? Who stares down at a newborn and says, ‘welp, no need to think about this one second longer, let’s go with Elizabeth Taylor because no one will ever tease her’? “And we’ve been over this—my middle name isn’t Frankenstein.”
The zombie’s (chilly) hands settled on my shoulders and yeah. It was a little alarming. He bent in close. Dentist close. Or doctor close, which made sense—Marc was an M.D. “When my face is pointed at you and sounds are coming out of my mouth hole, that’s usually an indication that I’m talking to you and would like your attention.”
I wriggled free from his clammy grip. “Usually?”
“Sometimes I’m just bitching,” he allowed. “Under the right circumstances, it’s better than Valium.”
“Right. Look, I’d love to hang and chat about whatever it is—“
“Lying!” he declared. “You are looking me in the face and telling bald-faced falsehoods and would be dead to me if you weren’t already.”
“—but today is a special day. It’s—“ I broke off and listened. “Ooh!”
“You look like Petey the dog when you cock your head like that.”
The kitchen door swung open, revealing my tall, dark, handsome husband. Eric Sinclair, king of the vampires and ruler of my cold, sporadically beating, undead heart.
“Oooh, ooh!” It was downright embarrassing how just the sight of my husband reduced me to things like “oooh!” It’s also possible I might have jumped up and down a little.
Sinclair beamed. “My own.”
Marc let out an inelegant snort. Which is probably redundant. (I don’t think it’s possible to elegantly snort.) “I think you should’ve waited until the sun was at your back, Eric, it would have been way more dramatic. Go out and try again.”
“Don’t listen to Marc,” I said. “He’s grumpy about...uh...” What had it been? Something about pads. Or heat? Did he want potholders? Or some of those big puffy oven-safe mittens? I’d buy him a thousand. Just...later.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Marc,” Sinclair murmured. The kitchen door was swinging shut behind him as he advanced on me like a big cat. A lion, maybe. Or a sexy ocelot.
“I haven’t actually told you my problem,” was the aggrieved reply. “And Betsy didn’t, either. Which, in itself, is kind of the problem.”
“I have every confidence the situation will be resolved to your satisfaction,” Sinclair continued, and it wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t. Tallandgorgeousandbrilliantandsexyanddynamite in bed (literally! we did it next to a pile of sparklers last 4thof July). He was an embarrassment of riches.
But the strangest thing about my husband? Besides his predilection for baking homemade dog treats for our puppies, Fur and Burr? He thought I was irresistible, too. Which madenosense, but I sure wasn’t going to argue.
“I hate you,” someone—Marc, I wanted to say?—was whining, “almost as much as I hate your wife.”
Then Sinclair was right in front of me, sliding his big hands past my waist, down the backs of my thighs, and then he lifted me to him like I weighed as much as a damp handkerchief. Take it from a gal who has been six feet tall since the eighth grade: when a guy effortlessly picks you up, it’s so. Fucking. Hot.
Then—whoosh! The kitchen door was swinging again. And we were on the right side this time.
“Wait! You never told me where annnnnnd they’re gone.”
“Marc required your assistance?”
