Chapter 1 #2
Mickey gasps. “I have a perfectly normal amount of shit to put up with,” he says as Joy, one of his undead, fixes his hair while Tommy, another undead, brushes the wrinkles out of his shirt. Tommy was a medical examiner before he died, which is why Mickey brought him back to life.
I snort. “Mickey is perfectly normal… you hear that, Torin?”
“I can hear Mickey just fine, but I can’t hear any of the words from the man who betrayed me,” Torin says.
“Betrayed you? I just wanted to show you the wonders of our world, Torin. I wanted to show you what you worked so hard to save.”
“I would have worked a little less hard to save this world if I knew I was saving shit like this,” he grumbles as he glowers at the roller coaster.
It must have been rather traumatic if he would let our world go to ruin just to end roller coasters.
Even so, I gleefully pull him over to the screens that line the exit so we can see the pictures they took of us during the ride.
We were in the front, so we should have a pretty good view of our faces.
“Right there,” I say when our pictures come up. I get a good laugh after seeing Torin’s face. His eyes are wide, he has a death grip on me like he’s going to save my life from the drop, and still… he looks far too sexy. I just look like I’m having fun and Mickey… Mickey looks like he’s dead asleep.
“Were you sleeping?” I hiss.
Mickey appears offended that I would even ask. “No… I just closed my eyes for a minute. I like to close my eyes when I’m on a roller coaster.”
I gesture at the picture. “You look like you’re over there dead asleep! Look how relaxed you are! Look at the way your body is being tossed about!”
“Definitely not,” Mickey says, stifling a yawn.
“I want this,” Torin proclaims as he points at the screen. “How do I take it?” He grabs the whole screen like he’s just going to tear it off the wall and take it home with us.
“I have to buy it. I’ll get you one,” I say, taking a picture of the information needed to purchase it online.
“I will hang it above our bed and remember it as the day you tried to kill me.”
“I didn’t try to kill you,” I assure him. “What about a snack? Will that make you forget the error of my ways? You’ve never had popcorn, have you?”
“I’ve had corn. It is edible.”
“No… it’s different,” I say. Kit gets excited when I head over to the popcorn stand she’s been staring at, like she thinks that if she forces me to look at only that stand, I will eventually cave.
Obviously, it worked since I buy a large bag.
Kit can eat her weight in popcorn—it’s a good thing she’s a familiar and not a real genet with the way she eats—and Torin strikes me as someone who will happily eat the entire bag.
I open it up and hold it out for him while Kit makes an offended noise that I didn’t give her first dibs. He takes one little piece and eats it before I see enthusiasm cross his face as Kit reaches her little paw for the bag, straining to pull it to her.
“I want this for every meal,” he says, grabbing a handful.
“You say that about everything you eat,” I remind him as Mickey grabs some too. I hold up a handful to my shoulder so Kit can loudly crunch it in my ear and leave popcorn chunks all over my shirt, which is less than pleasant, but she’s pleased.
“Okay… so after careful examination, we now know that roller coasters are not your jam… but what about a water ride?” I ask.
“I like water,” Torin says.
“He likes water,” I tell Mickey.
Mickey shrugs. “He might survive.”
Torin suddenly looks concerned as I haul him off toward the raft ride. He ends up enjoying this one, at least, or he might have dragged me right out of the theme park and let the world fall to ruin just so he wouldn’t have to ever go again.
“Let’s do this 3D one,” Mickey suggests as he points.
“What, so you can nap some more?” I ask.
Mickey gives me a look. “Am I judging you for how you’re enjoying your time at the theme park?
No, no, I’m not,” he says before turning to the wagon Tommy’s hauling around.
I assumed it was for a cooler or something, but I soon find out it’s just to haul Mickey from one side of the park to the other.
“Let’s see how I can explain a 3D ride to you,” I say as I stare at Torin.
Mickey lounges back in his wagon so he can look up at us. “Hey, Torin, you remember that video you keep making me play of you straddling Riley’s back while his naked ass gives you a pony ride?”
Torin smiles happily. “I sure do.”
“So pretend like that’s a big screen with things moving around, yeah?”
“Can that be on the screen?” Torin asks.
I glare at Mickey and contemplate using my magic to pop the tire of his precious little wagon.
I could easily do it with the ice magic I have stored in the pendant I wear around my neck.
All it would take would be pressing my finger against the third notch in the pendant and Mickey would be forced to use those useless legs to walk.
“Showing that video anywhere would be illegal.”
“I like doing illegal things,” Torin says.
“Well, it’s too illegal to do,” I mutter as we make it to the 3D ride.
For this one, we get onto an open-sided bus that throws us all around while the screens on the sides make it look like we’re moving and involved in a high-speed chase down a mountain.
At one point I get thrown so hard, I practically fall into Torin’s lap, and I look over at Mickey who appears rather displeased by this ride.
Kit is having absolutely no trouble hanging on and seems to be enjoying the ride as much as Torin is.
“Finally find something you can’t sleep through?” I ask Mickey.
“I haven’t slept through anything!” he complains as he’s thrown forward and lands halfway onto Torin’s lap. “What the fuck is this thing? It’s making me grope Torin, and I like what I feel.”
“You really don’t need to,” I say, pushing him off Torin.
“I’ll protect both of you,” Torin promises. He wraps us both up with his strong arms and holds us so securely that neither of us flop around anymore, which just leads to me glaring at Mickey who looks so fucking smug while he tucks his head against Torin’s chest and wraps his arms around his body.
“Your pecs give me so much comfort,” Mickey says as he presses his hand against one and beams up at Torin, long eyelashes fluttering.
He really is such a cute guy, so I give him an extra scowl.
I know Mickey isn’t actually groping my man.
I’m well aware this is his form of teasing, and I’m playing along with it because it’s more entertaining than getting my head bashed on the wall of this bus.
“I’m throwing you out of the palace,” I growl.
“What did I do? I simply complimented the man’s pecs,” Mickey says before he leans over and acts like he’s going to bite one.
“Don’t make me fuck you up and get us thrown out of the park,” I whisper to him as I try not to grin.
“You think someone would carry me to the exit if you do?”
Torin isn’t paying attention to our conversation, too busy jerking back as he stares in surprise at something on the screen. He’s over there getting his mind blown while we’re fighting over his pecs. “What was that? I bet it also feasts on balls!” Torin declares quite loudly.
“For sure,” I say before the “bus” slams into the “river” and we’re sprayed with water. Torin fights to look past me and over the edge to see what’s happening. “It’s special effects.”
“I don’t know what that is, but this is definitely better than that other thing you tortured me on.”
I grin. “That’s understandable.”
Torin ends up loving it and insisting we ride on it again, which surprises me when he hates car rides so much. Even though Mickey obviously hated every minute of it, he chooses to ride it again just so he can gleefully look at my face while Torin holds both of us tightly for all of round two.
Once we’re off and I convince Torin that the ride might jumble my brain if we go one more time, we head over to a bench that Tommy has reserved for us after refusing to ride the bus from hell for the second time.
Mickey, exhausted after doing very little, slumps down on the bench, leaving Torin and me to wander off to find food to bring back to him.
Of course Mickey gives us a list because he seems to be planning on eating his body weight in junk food.
“Are you having fun or just mostly being tortured?” I ask Torin.
He glances down at me and smiles. “I’m very much having fun. The thing you called a roller coaster leaves much to be desired, but I quite enjoyed how much fun you had on it.”
I try not to look flustered by that. I’m still too caught up in my own thoughts about who I am and what I’ve done to ask him where exactly we stand in our relationship.
He’s declared more than once that he’s a god of love, that he has never settled down and has always had a surplus of men and women for his “nightly exercises,” but since I met him, he hasn’t even looked at anyone but me.
I think he’s still dealing with the fact that for the first time in a thousand years, there’s one single person who has drawn his attention, and I’m struggling to accept that the person is me…
especially after the whole “horseman who destroyed his world” issue was dropped on me.
So that leaves me unsure where we stand and feeling unable to ask… like I don’t deserve to ask. But he never goes a day without making me feel like I’m extremely special to him.
Now I just need to handle what it means to know that the person I’ve supposedly reincarnated from is the one who killed everyone he loved.
“I want to do that,” Torin says as he points, pulling me out of my thoughts.