Chapter 41 Experiments in Backbreaking
When we got to the door, I punched in the code, and he carried me over the threshold but didn’t put me down. He was walking straight to the bedroom.
“I can’t get into bed, I’m soaking wet.”
“Mmm,” he rumbled.
I laughed. “From the rain, Tadhg.”
“Bath, then?”
“Yes, please.” My arms were around his neck as he changed direction. I ran my nose up his neck and then bit his earlobe teasingly. “But only if you’ll join me, you filthy animal.”
THERE WERE FIVE days when the ferries did not run.
Five days of cooking together, five days of curling up by the fire, five days of coffee together in the morning and tea together in the afternoon, five days of reading fantasy side by side on the sofa with our legs entwined under a blanket, of driving rain making a melodic racket on the roof and of thunder crashing overhead as we had passionate, wild sex, and gentle, romantic sex, and even lazy, slow side-by-side sex when we were far too tired and sore for any sex at all but just couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
We watched movies and made popcorn on the stovetop.
We read our favorite lines out from the books we were reading.
We laughed, and teased, and even had a couple of spats over small things that were almost immediately forgotten and smoothed over with kisses and more sex.
We walked Finn in the rain together, all of us soaked and muddy, and we comforted her together when the thunder got too scary.
We finished all of Curse of the Flame Hunter by the fire with a glass of wine, or in bed after a stormy walk, and started Binding of the Spark Mage, and would listen, gasping and biting our nails and discussing wizards’ duels and the politics of the Nightbound Realm until the tension, or the excitement, or my goodness the smut, invariably led us back to bed, or floor, or counter, or tub, moaning out until our throats were dry and scratchy.
We were happy. So utterly happy. I reminded myself that I was on vacation, reading books and getting incredible sex from a gorgeous man.
That would easily explain the glow. It would explain the ease in my smile, the warmth in my chest, the fizz in my blood.
It was chemicals, science—easy to explain.
When we snatched a rare few bars of phone signal in the storm, I called my parents and lied to them, which I never did, telling them everything was normal and going as planned.
I didn’t know why I did it. And when I called Simone, I confessed to her that I couldn’t remember feeling so happy before, maybe ever, and that I was having trouble walking, and then she was insufferable about it.
I didn’t ever sleep in my own room. I didn’t let him walk Finn alone, though he always offered. I didn’t seek out time to myself. Because I just didn’t want any.
Until the end of day five, when our incandescent happiness burst like a soap bubble.