Although, probably her luck she’d end up with a monster yeast beast and—
“Lucky?” His voice pulled her out of herself.
She looked down and met his eyes.
“There you are, baby. Stay with me. Don’t think about all the what-ifs. Just be here.” He searched her face. “Unless you don’t want to be. We don’t have to do this.”
“I want to.”
“Show me.”
Lucky ground her hips against him, the friction between them sending her need soaring. She moaned.
“Take us there.”
She moved again, tentatively, and his body movements mirrored hers, taking them both deeper into a dark sea where nothing but sensation and touch mattered. Every touch, every shift, every new friction pushed her beyond bliss, and she rocked into the ecstasy.
“I dreamed of this for so long,” he confessed.
Their actions grew more passionate, more furious as they reached together for that impossible high, that beautiful place that hung among the dreams and stars.
When they reached their pinnacle together, Lucky thought for a moment that she was actually dying.
She couldn’t breathe and as the bliss exploded out from her core in concentric circles, she swore the middle of her forehead went numb and for a single moment, she actually saw stars.
They sank down on the bed, wrapped together, but instead of enjoying the moment, the release, she waited.
Lucky waited for the price of their pleasure.
She waited for something awful to happen.
The longer it took to manifest, the more fear welled up inside of her.
“It’s all fine, Lucky. Nothing bad happened. We’re here. We’re together. And it was so damn good.”
Lucky let him tuck her against his strong, hard chest. “Was it enough?”
“It was for me.”
Lucky decided that she must be a total and utter asshole because while it was good, it wasn’t enough. She wanted more of everything. More intimacy. More skin. More touching.
More of everything.
Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she’d always wanted more than what she could have.
“But,” he prompted.
“But nothing.”
“There’s more. I can feel the words waiting to be said.”
“It wasn’t enough for me,” she confessed.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t get yours, because I’ve got a wet—”
She slapped his arm gently midsentence. “I didn’t say I didn’t get mine. I just want everything. All of it. This isn’t fair. Neither one of us deserves this.”
“I’d say we both got a good start on what we deserve.”
Lucky huffed. “I can see we’re not going to get anywhere with this conversation in our current state.”
He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Don’t ever think I don’t want more from you. I want everything, too. But we can’t have it. This is what we can have. All I’m saying is I’ll take this over nothing.”
“But for how long, Ransom? How long until it’s not enough? How long until you realize you did yourself dirty by settling for half a relationship.”
“There’s more to a relationship than sex. So much more. In fact, we’d spend more of our lives out of bed than in it. So we can’t have what people think of as a traditional relationship. Who the fuck cares? It’s not about them. It’s about us. It’s about what we want our lives to look like.”
“And this . . . this is what you want your life to look like?” A small, delicate seed of hope planted itself deep inside of her and took precarious root.
“If that’s what we can have, then yes.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting his words wash over her like the balm she didn’t know she needed.
Or wanted.
Whenever she imagined a life with someone, it was never like this. Her curse was always broken. She’d never thought about a commitment to someone with . . . this thing hanging over them.
She’d been able to have sex with other men. What a cruel twist of the knife that it was the one she truly loved whom she couldn’t be with.
He pulled her tighter. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll take you on a date after our wedding,” she teased.
“See? This is perfect. We’ll have our first date after our wedding.”
She snorted. “In case you’ve forgotten, we already had a first date.”
“Anything with leeches doesn’t count.” He shuddered.
“Fair.”
She couldn’t help the sense of dread that settled on her shoulders like an icy embrace. Suddenly, she had to get away from him. Lucky was covered in chocolate and stinging waves of something she couldn’t name. Something that left a taste in her mouth that wasn’t unlike sour regret at what could have been.
Lucky realized she didn’t actually believe that this could ever work. Except in that secret place where that tiny seed had buried itself and demanded to be heard with a roar of a lion.
Stupid thing.
She had to get away from him.
From this. From these feelings that she wasn’t ready to feel.
Lucky shifted, and the bed made a sound like a dying bear.
They froze and looked at each other, waiting for what would come next.
Seconds ticked by, and when nothing happened, Lucky launched herself from the bed in almost the same manner she’d launched herself onto Ransom earlier in the evening.
“Shower!” she called out as she fled to the giant bathroom.
Ransom laughed. “You’re not getting away from me that easily. A baseball team could shower in there.”
He followed her into the shower.
Dear Lord, he was naked. Well, of course he was naked. He was getting into the shower. One couldn’t clean themselves properly if they were fully clothed.
She couldn’t take it.
But she wanted to. Oh, did she ever want to take it.
She rolled her eyes at her own thoughts.
Lucky was determined to ignore the hot, naked man in the shower with her. When he squeezed out some of the godmothers’ homemade apple shampoo and lathered it into her hair, it didn’t weaken her resolve.
Not. In. The. Slightest.
Worst lie she’d ever told.
She relaxed back against him as he worked his fingers through her hair.
“See, I told you there was more to this relationship stuff.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Ransom. At least, not until after the wedding. We need this to go smoothly.”
“All right. Let’s rinse.” He nudged her back under the hot spray and worked the lather from her hair.
Lucky missed being touched. She missed casual intimacy.
She missed human connection. She’d been so afraid her bad luck would rub off on the people she loved that she was an island.
She was getting exactly what she wanted, but it had been denied to her for so long, it was almost too much. Lucky was afraid to like it. Afraid to surrender to it.
As soon as her hair was rinsed and her body was chocolate-free, she dashed from the shower and wrapped herself in a towel. Only when Ransom exited the shower behind her, he looked like a dream come to life.
And like a dumbass, she found herself sitting on his bed instead of hers.
He grinned and with a laugh, pounced on her.
Which was totally and completely the wrong move.
The bed screamed, or maybe it was the floor. A sharp sound like a crack of thunder rent the air, but it wasn’t thunder.
It was splintering wood.
The floor dropped out beneath the bed and they both screamed as the bed dropped like a stone in the ocean to crash into the living room below.
Lucky, realizing neither of them was actually hurt, looked up into the gaping hole above and saw what seemed to be a family of mice looking down at them and wringing their little paws with what could’ve bee
n construed on a human as worry.
She blinked, and they were gone.
Along with her sanity, she was sure.
“Guess that other shoe dropped,” she mumbled.
“Right through the floor,” he agreed, obviously dazed.
She wrapped the blanket around herself and trudged back up the stairs. “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow at the dressmaker’s.”
“Lucky,” he began.
“There’s a hole in the damn floor, Ransom. It’s a miracle it wasn’t worse.”
As if in answer, the bed that had previously been in one piece cracked in half, off-loading Ransom to the floor.
He looked up at her. “I’m going to figure this out, Lucky. I swear to you.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. It’ll just be harder in the end.”
“I can see you don’t believe me. After what happened between us, you don’t have any reason to. We left each other when we needed each other most, but we were still young. I’m a man now and I’m not going anywhere. I swear.”
Chapter 8
Petunia’s screech of surprise stabbed straight through to Ransom’s spine and jarred him from a dead sleep.
He jerked up off the couch and tumbled, once again, to the hard floor. Ransom decided he was definitely too old for this. He fought to a sitting position and leaned his back against the couch.
“Petty. Can you not?” He rubbed his temples in misery.
Ransom had a crick in his neck from the too-small couch, a headache that raged like a thousand sugared-up toddlers banging on metal pots with serving spoons, and his eyes had been cemented shut with glue and sand.
“Can I not? Boy, what have you done to our house?”
Jonquil, instead of being upset, just giggled. “Petunia, it looks as if you got exactly what you wanted, judging by the hole in the floor and the broken bed.”
Bluebonnet tittered. “Oh dear. Jonquil is right.”
“I didn’t mean for them to . . .” Petty waved her hands at the mess in front of them.
“Magic has unintended consequences, our grandmamma always said.” Jonquil nodded knowingly.
Petty sighed and looked upward at the hole in the ceiling. “Where’s Lucky?”
“Upstairs. Sleeping. Like I would still like to be,” he grumbled. “We’re both okay, in case you were wondering.”
“Pish. If you’d been hurt, I’d have known it.” Petty pulled out her now-crackling wand, but Bluebonnet grabbed her hand.
“Nuh-uh. Not yet. Not until Fortune gets here,” Bluebonnet said.
“Oh, fine. It looks like you two will be moving to the castle sooner than we anticipated,” Petty replied. “Well, how did this happen?”
Ransom fixed her with a hard stare. “Exactly how you think it happened.”
“Oh. Oh my stars.” Petty blushed. “Well, I guess we don’t have to worry about that part of the relationship.”
“Can we not talk about that right now?” Ransom considered punching himself in the face just so this could be over.
“When are we going to talk about it? You’ve only got two weeks,” Bluebonnet said. “Speaking of which, we need to get some breakfast and get moving. We told you it would be an early morning.”
Jonquil just shook her head and waved her wand and yellow sparkles of magic filled the air. An iridescent bubble formed around them and Jonquil tapped it with the wand. It wiggled and jiggled.
“There. Solid. She won’t be able to hear anything we’re saying. Bubble of silence. Now, do go on,” Jonquil said.
“Thank you, sister. As I was saying—” Bluebonnet began.
“No, no more of this.” He shook his head but was immediately sorry. Ransom put a hand to the back of his neck and squeezed for a long moment. “Lucky has been through enough. Every time you guys try to throw us together and something bad happens, she’s traumatized.”
“What about you? Are you traumatized?” Bluebonnet asked gently.
“Well, no. But you have to admit, I got bashed in the face with a satanic cherry and my bed fell through the floor. My batting average is not what you would call good.”
“Tsk. Tsk. We don’t like the S-word in this house,” Jonquil reminded him.
“Sorry, Godmother.” Ransom knew they’d been called all manner of nasty things whenever the wrong humans had discovered their existence. “But come on.”
“Yes, I understand.” Jonquil nodded. “But we think we know why this is happening.”
Ransom perked. “By all means.”
“We have two working theories. Lucky was born here. Her mother was lost and alone when she came to us, and we’re wondering if because she was born here, that she must abide by fairy-tale law. She might be living out of alignment,” Bluebonnet said.
Ransom nodded. “Okay, that’s logical. Except for the part where she’s back in Ever After, so she should at least be creeping toward some semblance of alignment.”
“Maybe,” Petty said, sitting down on the floor next to him and taking his hand in hers.
Ransom looked into her sparkling blue eyes and he found a sense of peace wash over him. He was filled with a sense of love, safety, and pride. Like he could do anything.
“What are you doing, Petty?” he asked her.
“Nothing, sweet boy. Just letting you know how much we all love you. How much we believe in you.”
“Oh no,” he said, but he squeezed her hand back. “I remember when I was a kid and I thought I couldn’t do something, one of you would hold my hand like this and give me an extreme case of good self-esteem. What are you going to ask me to do?”
“The other working theory is”—Bluebonnet sat on the other side of him—“Lucky is a fairy-tale creature. What prince wins his princess without a quest or some kind of gauntlet? Maybe Lucky’s unluck is the part of the story where you have to stay true to who you are, what you know to be right. Then you get your Happily Ever After.”
“Bon-Bon, what if we just don’t get that?” Ransom asked. It was possible that he and Lucky just weren’t meant to be.
Instead of being offended like Ransom thought they’d be, the three of them clucked their tongues.
“Ah, youth.” Petty shook her head.
“To be so naïve again,” Jonquil said.
“If you have a fairy godmother, you obviously get a Happily Ever After. This is just that part of the fairy tale, kiddo.” Bluebonnet patted his hand.
“So what am I supposed to do?”
Petty grinned. “We’re glad you asked. Your quest is simply this: love her. As she is. Can you do that?”
He nodded.
“With no hope of curing her ill luck?” Jonquil added.
A brick crashed in his stomach. No, he didn’t know if he could do that. Actually, no. He was certain he couldn’t do that. “You don’t understand.”
Petty snorted. “Of course, we do. You don’t want her to suffer. So obviously, you want to save her.”
“Yes, dear. You’d be quite the jackass if you didn’t,” Bluebonnet said helpfully.
“You’ve been using that word a lot, Bon. I think we may need to wash your mouth out with Mama’s lavender soap. You’re not setting a good example,” Jonquil teased.
“But wait. So I’m supposed to love her, but not want to save her?” Ransom wondered if his dear old godmothers had taken bumps to the head. “That makes no sense.”
“It will. Listen, you two need to get ready. Our appointment for Cinderella and Fella is in approximately thirty minutes. Get ready!” Petty popped the magic bubble and shooed him toward the stairs like an errant child.
“I’m starving and Lucky will be, too.” Ransom paused on his way up the stairs. “You know we’ll both be awful if we don’t get some food.”
Lucky’s face appeared in the hole in the ceiling. “Food?”
“You’ll just have to save up your hearty appetite to try the wedding cake samples,” Bluebonnet said.
“Oh, there’s cake? I can wait for cake.�
� Lucky’s face disappeared.
At the sound of her voice, Ransom was reminded of the previous night. Of his hands on her pert breasts, the expression on her face as she surrendered to him, to pleasure.
The idea that he wouldn’t get to experience her like that again was a punch to the solar plexus. He had to put it out of his mind, though. She said she didn’t want to talk about it until after the wedding, so he’d do his best to respect her wishes.
He knocked on the door. “Can I come in?”
She opened it, dressed in jeans and a thin green T-shirt. “You look like crap,” she blurted.
“Sleeping on a couch built for fairies will do that to you.”
She snorted. “Just because it’s not Ransom-sized doesn’t mean it was built for fairies.”
Actually, it had been built for fairies. Fairy godmothers.
He wanted to tell her so badly. Anything else felt like lying.
He registered a flutter of movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked, there was nothing there. Still, Ransom could’ve sworn he saw a mouse tail.
If he caught the damn things sewing his tux for this sham wedding he was going to . . .
Well, he was going to what? Nothing, that’s what. He was going to smile and say thank you and give them some cheese or apples. He knew how the story went. The godmothers were more than capable of blasting mice out of their cottage, so if they were here, they were here because the old dears wanted them.
“Did you see it, too?” Lucky grabbed his arm.
“I thought I saw a mouse, but it was just a shadow.”
“I thought I saw them last night after we fell through the floor.”
“Maybe. I mean, it’s an old house. And you know how Jonquil feeds any animal that makes its way into the yard.”
Lucky pursed her lips. “They seem like they’re smarter than your average mouse, don’t you think? I mean, have you ever noticed how tame all the ‘wild’ animals are in Ever After?”
“The people here live in harmony with nature. There’s no industry, really. It makes sense.” He shrugged, even though every word out of his mouth stuck on his tongue like stale peanut butter.
“Uh-huh. Is there something you’re not telling me?” She eyed him.
A Hilarious and Charming Feel-Good Read Page 8