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“Poor, Zel.” His fingers found muscles that’d worked hard to eject something my stomach had decided was poison. My head drooped. “What can I do to help, babe?”
I sighed. “You let me sleep. That’s enough.” I rallied my muscles and pushed up from the bed. “I’m gonna shower and have some ginger tea.”
“Is there anything you can eat?”
I shook my head. “Not now. Maybe later.”
He pulled the covers up and yawned. “Nap time.”
I leaned over and kissed him. “Sorry about the rank breath.”
“Yeah, that’s fucking foul, but I don’t care.” He grabbed me and kissed me harder, his tongue sliding across my lower lip. He released me and said, “Or maybe I do.” Drew pulled a face and wiped his arm across his tongue. “Ack. It’s like Frenching a corpse.”
I laughed. “You were warned, Mr. Katterman.” I headed for the bathroom and a long, hot shower.
“Can I join you?” he called hopefully.
I paused in the doorway. “My brain says, ‘Yes,’ but my body says, ‘Fuck off.’ And I’m siding with my body on this one. Sorry, lover.”
“Ah, that’s okay. I’ve got my hand and my memories.”
The shower helped unknot some tight muscles, and I emerged from the bathroom still tired as fuck but feeling more human. I pulled on gray leggings and a dark-blue, slouchy sweater and went downstairs to the kitchen, leaving Drew sprawled across the bed, his breathing slow and deep. Normally, I’d be returning from a morning run about now, but there’d be no jostling my carcass today or tomorrow. My whole digestive tract felt on edge, though the nausea had eased. At least I wasn’t puking blood; I’d done that before and that was some scary shit.
In the kitchen, I refilled the kettle and put it on the stove to boil. Lulu meowed and twined around my legs then sat on her haunches and reached up. I couldn’t resist her cuteness and picked her up for snuggles. She purred like mad and smashed her fuzzy face against my cheek.
“I love you, too.” I sat at the kitchen counter. Frank leaped onto the chair beside me and I obliged him with ear rubs and chin scratches.
Sighing, I slowly rotated my head and arched my back. I wasn’t just sore from puking; my joints were stiff and achy too. The sudden surge of inflammation throughout my body last night would take a few days to ease. When I returned to running, a lot of it would be released, but that wouldn’t happen until my gutty-works calmed down. That meant über careful eating for the next few days, extra rest, and tons of tea and water.
Unfortunately, it didn’t mean a break from work. “Well, kitties, that book won’t wait.” I stood, plopped Lulu onto my chair, and made that cup of ginger tea.
I stood a palm-sized wooden letter R on the stairway half-wall before descending to my office. It told Drew I was downstairs recording, so he’d tread lightly when he came down from the third floor. Aithan had given it to me, along with another to hang on the front door. Which I did when I reached the first-floor hall. I smiled. The man was handsome as fuck and pure gold.
Stepping outside, I shivered. It was a cold, gray Seattle morning. The wind whipped my hair across my face and sent fallen leaves tumbling across the driveway to accumulate against the third townhouse’s garage door. Our complex was U-shaped, and that unit was the largest at nineteen hundred square feet. But Will’s two-car garage also captured every leaf Seattle threw at it, and I didn’t envy him.
I hung the second R on the front door handle then went back inside to my office.
As an audiobook narrator, I had one of the best jobs in the world, in my opinion. That’s how Drew and I met. Three years ago, he’d hired me to record hisDragon Dominationseries. He wrote reverse harem romance — stories in which the female lead had multiple lovers, simultaneously, and didn’t have to choose only one by the end of the book. Drew’s writing was campy and racy and so goddamn much fun to narrate. Even theDominationbooks, which were much darker than theStarshipseries. He knew how to write fierce, sexy female characters that readers loved.
Sadly, I was not narrating one of his books today. My agent had called in a favor with me after someone else called in a favor with her. I was recording a seven hundred sixty-two-page paperweight calledWhite Eagle, Red Poppy. You’d think from the description —Romeo and Julietset in feudal Poland meets time travel fantasy in contemporary Detroit — the book would be at least interesting. Buuut, no. I was gagging on all the purple prose and historical minutiae.
But I could recreate accurate Polish and Michigan accents, and the author was paying through the nose for them.
If my three-story townhouse was my haven, the dark-gray vocal booth dominating my office was where I entered new worlds. Inside, I sat at the small table, turned on the monitor, and pulled up my digital audio workstation. Blue, pyramid-shaped acoustic foam covered the booth’s walls, blocking all extraneous sounds from corrupting my audio files. Headphones on, I openedWhite Eagle, Red Poppyto the next chapter, checked my levels, and started recording.
Nikodem’s gray eyes grew stormier as Mona Wrona fluttered her long, black eyelashes at that stinking coward Krzysztof Bukowski. She swirled her vermillion silk skirts, daring eyes to follow the hem, inviting gazes to seek her flesh. Had the girl no sensibilities? Had she no dignity? How could Nikodem present her before the archbishop after she spoke so intimately with such an un-Christian monster as the Butcher of Chojnice? Did she not realize scandal followed her? Did she not see she cast Nikodem as a fool? Did she not care for his acquaintance? His reputation? His place in Kasimir’s court?
The Bohemian woman, with her alluring green eyes and silken golden locks, her ample bosom and bold laugh, her wanton contours, her blushing, bewitching, beguiling manners was so foreign, so compelling as to urge Nikodem toward the cliff of insensibilities, indiscretions, and indelicate thoughts. He gazed upon her as a tyro soldier gazes upon the battlefield, stumbling amidst the debris of broken bodies and ruined lives, stunned by the waste and destruction, unable to turn away from the allure of the danger, the madness, the bloodlust and driven onward by the unholy urge to possess that which another man possesses. Or, in failing that, destroy it and himself in the doing.
Two agonizing hours later, I hit the STOP button, pulled off my headphones and rubbed my eyes. “This is a nightmare.” I saved the file, stepped out of the booth, and collapsed on the blue loveseat. My head throbbed. Recording this book was like pulling teeth without Novocain.
I called my agent’s office, needing a sympathetic ear and a way to recover from this historical shit-show.
“Seung, Bradford, & Beale. This is Dwayne. How may I direct your call?”
“Hi Dwayne, it’s Zelda Gordon. Is Holly available?”
“Zeldaaa. She’s still here. Hold on, I’ll transfer you.”
