“If you are my beloved, I hope you’re right.”
“I’m one hundred percent right, Phin. Believe me when I say it. I’ve never lied to you.”
“You didn’t give two craps about spending time with me before.” That was what caused doubt and what I couldn’t seem to let go of.
“Come here.” He pulled me back into his arms and cupped my cheek as I stood. “We’re beloved. You belong to me, Phin. And I belong to you. I promise, baby. I swear it.”
He kissed me. At first, he took little sips. He knew they stoked my fire faster than just about anything. When he deepened it, I was ready for him, opening up to let him take it as far as he wanted.
It only took seconds for everything else to disappear—everything except Ossy.
The way he touched me. The way he smelled of the sea, fresh and salty, like sun-warmed skin and summer heat. He never needed sunscreen. Despite his fair hair and blue eyes, he always tanned rather than burned. He held me gently, saying the things I needed to hear, all without speaking a single word. Maybe the connection had been there all along. Maybe we’d been building it long before the reapers defected. Nothing Donn had done had stopped it from forming. I just hadn’t been paying attention before.
Not all the fear I felt was mine. Some of it belonged to Ossy. I was almost sure of that. It faded the longer we kissed, as passion heated our blood, until it was bigger than fear, bigger than just about anything. It didn’t make the danger disappear. It just made everything else seem quieter and less important.
I don’t know how long we kissed. It was long enough for me to want to climb inside Ossy and live there forever. But I knew one thing. No dick-sucking was required. We’d clearly done enough to bond.
Ossy trailed his lips along my jaw, then pressed his cheek to mine. “I’m sorry I didn’t make you a priority. It might have taken almost losing you for me to realize how much you mean to me, but I promise it won’t happen again.”
The best predictor of present behavior is past behavior, so I knew I shouldn’t trust Ossy. But sometimes a person just had to take a risk. So, with no small amount of courage, I believed him.
“Okay, Ossy,” I whispered, cupping his cheek. “Let’s do this. Let’s figure out how to conjure a door.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ossy
There was no way to know if a door appeared. Usually, it would be right in front of us, but we couldn’t see anything. Moving at all was difficult, which would have been terrifying if Phin had not been there with me. There could have been growls from ancient creatures or something worse, but nothing made a sound except for us. Not being able to see was disorienting, which was part of the problem. The only thing anchoring me was Phin. I could have been floating for all I knew if not for him.
“I can’t tell if I did it or not.”
I stood behind him, my arm around his waist. “Well, if you did, the door would be right in front of us. So let’s take slow steps forward. If you bump into anything, we’ll know.”
“Ha, hilarious.” Even though Phin’s words sounded like a protest, he still giggled.
“Hold your arms out so that when you hit something, it won’t be your face.” We took a step forward. The pebbles under our feet shifted with each step. After only a couple of steps, the ground changed from pebbles to something more solid. “We must be off the path. We must have walked far enough.”
Leaves crunched beneath my feet. It was a slight sound, but one I knew well. More familiar than I expected, considering I wasn’t much of a forest person. I was a beach guy.
“I don’t feel anything, Ossy.” His frustration was clear, coming through in the tension of his body. I rubbed his side, wanting to soothe him. When he started wiggling because it tickled, I stopped.
“It’s possible you didn’t conjure the door.” We could keep trying. We didn’t have anything else to do.
“What if we get stuck here forever?” That could be our fate. Just thinking about it wasn’t pleasant, and as much as I wanted to freak out, only one of us could, and I realized Phin was establishing himself as the designated panicker.
“We’ll figure a way out.” I kissed Phin on the cheek.
“What if conjuring a door in this realm is impossible?” That thought made a dark kind of sense. Maybe there was only one way out. Or maybe you had to be more than a beloved to leave this place.
“It very well might be.” The only solace was that we were together. We were a powerful unit in a place designed to scare the crap out of anyone. That was more than most people had in a place like this, and it gave us an edge. “We could build a cabin and stay here forever.”
Phin snorted. “How the hell are we going to build a cabin in the dark?”
“I have no idea. You’re the smart one in this relationship. You’ll have to figure it out.” I sat on the ground and pulled on Phin’s hand.
“What are you doing?” He sounded exasperated. That was how he sounded about eighty percent of the time when he talked to me, which told me he wasn’t letting his fear take over.
“I’m popping a squat. You should, too.” I patted my legs, even though he couldn’t see me. “Come sit on Daddy’s lap, baby.”
