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And that was fucking terrifying.
He moved back out of my arms again, checking a timer, turning off the sauce and the pot of water and draining the pasta into a colander in the sink. I watched him from the doorway, having moved myself out of the way so he could cook. Pasta drained, he dumped it into a bowl, then poured the tomato sauce over it and tossed it with the pasta spoon.
Finished, he reached up and put his hand on the side of my face. “I’m okay,” he repeated.
I nodded, because I couldn’t do anything else.
Then he pulled me down and kissed me, as though he needed to prove to me that he was alive, safe, and here.
Taavi Camal would apparently always know what I needed better than I did, because I groaned into his mouth, pulling him tight against me and lifting his feet off the floor. He wrapped his legs around me, and I staggered into the doorframe of the kitchenette, but the wall held us up.
I broke the kiss, but stayed there, my back against the wall, Taavi wrapped around me, his head tucked on my shoulder and arms around my neck, my arms holding his weight, warm and solid, against me.
“Taav?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you please stop being the target of crazy fucking murderers?”
“As soon as you tell me how, absolutely.”
I breathed a sigh into his hair, then gently put him back on his feet. “I wish I fucking knew,” I answered.
He nodded. “Me, too. Cuz it kinda sucks.”
I barked a laugh that had more than a tinge of the hysterical to it. “I bet. I can’t say I’m a fan of this side of it, either.”
I was never, ever going to give Doc or Ward shit about being worried about each other ever again. Even if both of them were magically terrifying and more than capable of holding their own against just about anything.
Yet I’ve seen both of them get nearly taken out—all it takes is to be looking in the wrong direction. It doesn’t matter if you’re a giant muscle-bound orc or a powerful warlock. I’ve had both their blood on my hands, and it fucking sucked.
I’ve had Taavi’s blood on me, too. Twice.
It was enough to make an elf think that he was the problem.
“Taavi—”
God, he knew me so well.
“If you think for one fucking second that any of this is your fault, Valentine Hart, you can take that thought and shove it up your fuckingculo,” he snapped, sharp, mismatched eyes reading me like a goddamn book.
I didn’t actually know whatculomeant, but I got the gist from context. “Taavi—”
“Don’t youTaavime,” he retorted. “If the entire FBI couldn’t figure out how to stop the Culhua, how the fuck were you supposed to?”
It was a valid point. It just wasn’t one I wanted to hear.
“I just—” But I didn’t know how to finish that thought, or, rather, I wasn’t ready to finish it. I’d known Taavi all of… Well, I’d known him for like ten months. We’d only been together for—I had to count the days—almost exactly one of them.
So I’d been in this relationship for a month, and, if I were being honest, I was a pretty terrible boyfriend. Needy. Intermittently unavailable. A complete asshole. And a coward.
I looked down into Taavi’s mismatched eyes. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Again,” he finished, his lips curved wryly.
“Ever,” I countered, running my fingers through his hair.
He caught my right hand and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of my knuckles. “We both know that’s impossible,” he murmured. “Life will happen, toes will get stubbed and fingers cut.”
