Page 17 of The Flame Game

“I’m sure you’ll try to make me pay for making you among the happiest of women alive. Is it my turn to be fed steak and grapes in the tub?”

His smirk drove me wild, and I debated if he needed his clothes. As it was one of his favorite sets of pajamas, which he tended to put on in the mornings before getting ready for work so he wouldn’t prance around the house naked, I restrained myself. “Okay. You win. I surrender. I seem unable to overwhelm a gorgon-incubus doohickey. But I am expecting a really good reward for surrendering. You might talk me into feeding you steak and grapes, but honestly, I have problems. I’d probably make the steaks and eat them before bringing them to the tub.”

“You really would, too. Your surrender is sweet, and it only took you four days,” my husband teased, and he kissed my cheek. The delicious incubus influence he liked tossing around eased to something I could ignore if I wanted. “I’m leaving a little going, as if I totally remove it, you’ll probably fall asleep on me, and that would rob you of time to open presents. Four days is apparently my limit on how long curiosity can eat away at me before I need to know what is in all of these boxes. I might perish if I don’t find out what is in all of these presents.”

“We absolutely couldn’t have that happen, now could we?”

“Absolutely not.” My husband strutted across the suite, which was overwhelmed with presents, and he went to work sorting through them. The only places without presents piled everywhere were the bed, the couch, and in the bathroom, with narrow pathways linking them. “I got a present for you, so you get to open that one first.”

Damn it! “But I didn’t get anything for you.”

“You ran through the snow as a unicorn to adopt an ocelot for us. As I like cats, that counts. Sure, Avalanche is really your kitten, but I pretend she’s mine when you’re not looking.”

As my gorgon-incubus doohickey did an excellent job of making my common sense dribble out of my ears, I made a mental note to thank our various relatives for putting up with us at our worst. “Please thank your relatives for watching over our pets.”

“Already done. Anyway, our pets are with our kids, as they would whine without the pets around.”

“We’ve lost our pets to our children, haven’t we?”

“It seems so. I’m strangely okay with this. They’ve been really careful with them, too. There have been no accidental petrifications. Apparently, their father impressed upon them Daddy and Mommy time was sacred, and my grandfather somehow convinced them you needed an entire week’s worth of Daddy and Mommy time.”

“Your grandfather is the best grandfather.”

“All of them are, and I’m happy to share them with you, although you’ll find you have tolerable grandparents now. Ra didn’t want to overwhelm you, so you’ll meet your grandparents gradually. Honestly, I think Ra is more worried you might be ambushed the instant the rest of your family learns of your existence. Your mother remains a mystery.”

“Because of the moon phase.”

“Right. Apparently, when she has been around, she’s been dragging your father off somewhere, and nobody is brave enough to disturb them.”

I giggled. “Hopefully they are not indulging during any possessions this time.”

My husband found what he searched for in the pile and returned to the couch, placing a red-wrapped gift on my lap before sitting beside me. “Yes, I will continue to pretend I’m actually helping you with any technical stuff you may ask when you want attention and don’t know how to ask me for it.”

Busted. “Perkette snitched on me, didn’t she?”

“You have been thoroughly caught, but I will indulge, just please stop checking out weird porn on my laptop. Or any laptop. Please.”

I snickered. “I wasn’t really watching them. I was looking for ideas. They’re not even all that good. Most of the time, the poor women look bored. You just made the best expressions, so I had to find weirder things to blurt out to see what you’d do.”

“Maybe I should make one of your presents a promise to endure one or two instances of your insanity a month, especially as I now know you were badly trying to get my attention.”

“But your expressions are the best!”

“Just my expressions, huh?”

Double busted. “What you do after you make those expressions is also the best. I win from top to bottom. And in the bedroom. Or, if I had found a particularly naughty kink, somewhere on the way to the bedroom.”

He bowed his head and sighed. “Children are going to make our adventures far more restrained.”

“Babysitters,” I reminded him.

“We can’t get a babysitter every time I want to take you to bed, Bailey.”

“Quinn, I love you, but if we went to bed every time you wanted to take me to bed, we would never leave bed. We’ll somehow survive.”

“But are you sure?”

As always, he made me laugh. I took my time admiring the pretty paper on the package, debating if I wanted to go through the ritual of trying to determine what was in it before tearing my way inside.