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He grinned. “Your birthday suit — och, I understand the words now.”

The bed was covered in fancy pillows. I plowed them off to the fancy rug-covered floor and pulled back the blankets and started to slide in between the sheets, except I was probably completely filthy, having been in the eighteenth — I sighed and climbed off. “I have to take a shower first. I don’t want to get out of bed but I have to, and this totally sucks. But you have to too, the thread count on those sheets is too high for us to be this disgusting.”

Magnus followed me into the giant bathroom. I used the bathroom, remembering I didn’t have any period products with me, because those assholes stole my bag when they kidnapped me away from Lizbeth’s bedside. God, she was going to be so worried. Madame Greer would be so worried. I hoped they wouldn’t have repercussions for helping me, for hiding my things.

I checked, though, and it looked like my period was basically over, which was good.

While Magnus used the bathroom I turned on the shower, warm, very warm. I climbed in leading him behind me. We stood together under the water, arms around each other, not speaking, just holding each other as the water rained down.

After a while I wondered if we might both be asleep. I pulled away by a step and poured shampoo in my hand. He dutifully leaned forward. I rubbed the citrus scented shampoo around, massaging his scalp, working it through his shoulder-length hair. He moaned happily.

I said, “I saw you had your eyes open in the car when your mother was driving us here... That was new.”

He chuckled. “One of them.” Then he added, “I kent I had tae watch where we were goin’ tae protect ye. I will do anythin’ tae protect ye.”

“I love you.”

“Aye, mo reul-iuil, me as well.”

I lathered up my own hair and we stood smiling, looking into each other’s eyes with piles of lather on our heads, steam all around, and it was lovely. Like being at home in Florida in my time, that kind of lovely.

I rinsed his hair, bubbles sliding down his muscles, and rinsed my hair, and we both waved the shower wand around our bottoms. I conditioned our hair and rinsed that, too. Toward the end it was getting kind of hot, temperature and sexy-wise, but still — tired. Magnus ran his hand down my back and then caught sight of his fingernails, dark with blood. His focus changed to scrubbing his hands.

We just needed to take a nap. This was all to get us to be able to go to bed without mucking up our sheets with blood and dust and dirt and grime from the past.

“Perfect.” I declared. I grabbed towels from the pile and Magnus and I wrapped them around our heads and our bodies and finally we crawled onto the bed and slid into the sheets. I climbed in under his arm, across his chest. He adjusted my hair-towel, so it wasn’t smothering his face.

His skin was fresh, steaming, warm, faintly smelling of citrus and spice. I hugged my arm across his chest. My body went heavy. I was very close to sleep but right before — before I even knew that I planned to say anything, I said, “Lizbeth had a baby — it was...” I nuzzled into his side. “I don’t know...”

Magnus’s body stilled with listening.

“It was scary, and overwhelming but happy also, plus crying and...” I wiped the corner of my mouth. Gravity was dragging my lips down and I was drooling on Magnus’s chest. “I just...”

I dragged a finger back and forth down his bicep. “I was thinking we should, I don’t know... like try again. I mean, I know it’s not a good time, that there are a lot of reasons.... but I want that and maybe we could talk about it, soon — trying, I mean.”

Magnus asked, “Tae have a bairn, Kaitlyn?”

I nodded up against his chest. “Yeah.”

“Aye, I would like that.” He tilted my face up and found my lips and kissed me. Sweetly and softly. “Aye,” he said again. “Just nae today, I am verra sleepy.”

I tucked my head back onto his chest. “Yeah, me too. I just meant we should talk about it. Make a plan. But I would like to.”

He said, “Me too,” and then we both fell asleep.

45 - KAITLYN

Iwoke up a bit later totally disoriented. We were in Lady Mairead’s apartment, at some strange hour in some unknown century, and we slept in total trust that she wouldn’t kill us.

Why was she still alive? Oh right, because even though she wanted to kill me she was also keeping us alive. The thread-count on her sheets was quite nice though. Like I could live in this bed.

Magnus rolled onto his side and pulled me close, groggy and not fully awake. He pulled my leg up to his waist, and yes, he was fully awake. I tucked in and wiggled closer and nuzzled into his neck. My lips pressed on the thrum of his heartbeat. His fingers dove between my legs, pulled me forward, drew me closer — he slid inside. It was all so urgent but also sleepy, insistent yet lazy. Wake up sex was awesome like this, familiar, and necessary, but then my excitement was building as he pushed and pulled against me and I held on around his musclebound back, moaning into his neck, breathing this moment, him, into my lungs. This brought clarity — Magnus. Waking in his arms, meeting the future together. He rolled onto his back pulling me up and on him. His hands rubbed down and held my ass, close, tight, firm, I arched back — ohgodohgod —

There was a soft knock on our door.

I collapsed down on Magnus’s chest. I whispered, “Is the door locked?’

“Aye.”