“It says I have good taste. Now...” She shook her head as if coming out of a daze. “We need to itemize the other things. Like the heat.”
Bast’s wing snapped into place. “It’s more than heat. Just short of combustion, almost.”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” she muttered. “What does it mean though? Wings, fire, heat, smoke...wings, fire, heat... Shit. Off to Google. Let me go grab the laptop. I’ll be right back.”
She rolled away and off the bed, darting out of the room before he could stretch out his hand to restrain her, or at least delay her parting. If he inhaled deeply, he could still smell her rainwater scent on the sheets and on his skin. Places where she’d touched him as they’d fucked tingled, almost as if she was some kind of live wire. His mouth still bore the taste of her.
He rolled into the spot where she’d been lying, absorbing some of the residual warmth. Finding an odd comfort in it.
No, not so odd. Every time he touched or kissed her, the immediate relief that poured through him bordered on miraculous.
“You know what’s funny?” Alice asked, walking back into the room. She fumbled with the latch to the laptop, opening it wide as she sat on the bed again. Although Bast heard her speak, he was more focused on the sway of her soft breasts and the teasing view of the vee between her legs she managed to give him while getting comfortable.
“What’s that?” Nothing could stop him for reaching for her thigh to gently trail his fingers over the velvet texture.
“That you call me ‘princess.’ It’s what my mom used to call me.”
“Should I stop then?”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “It’s just funny to me that you chose it. She got me hooked on genealogy because she said we were descended from royalty. That somewhere along the line, I’m technically a princess. Like, my great, great, great times sixty grandmother was a real princess.
“She wanted Richard to be just as interested, but he didn’t have the research bug, I guess. I like looking facts up and learning new things, you know? If my life was different, I might...”
The chimes of the system boot-up sounded, and Alice turned her attention to it. She became glued to the image on the screen.
“You might?” he prompted.
She looked up. “What? Oh...I dunno. I guess I might have become a librarian or something. Hell, maybe even a lawyer. But my life took me in a different direction.”
“I like the place life took you for purely selfish reasons. I know it’s been shitty, but if things had gone differently, I would have never met you. We wouldn’t be here together right now. Selfish, but I can’t help it.” Because damn it, he liked her. Really, really liked her. With more time, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that like shifting into something more.
Alice must have sensed something deeper behind his words because a flicker of fear crossed her features. “Sebastian...you and me, about that...there are things you should know about me.”
* * *
God, did she have to tell him? Life was so damned unfair. Why did she have to go meet some amazing guy, this creature who couldn’t have come out of her wildest or most erotic dreams, and tell him that there wouldn’t be a future between them?
The doctors called her seizures “idiopathic.” Probably Latin for “no idea.” The tests couldn’t explain why she went into mild states where she lost time or stared into space for a half a minute or less, unable to explain what had just happened. The men in white coats didn’t know if the seizures would get better or worse. But just to be on the safe side, they were betting on worse. She held on to a sliver of hope that something malignant didn’t proliferate within her, that the seizures were caused by some bad wiring. God, she hoped so.
They were happening more frequently, despite taking the anticonvulsants religiously. If she had the money—hell, if she had a lot of things—she’d go back and see about getting more tests. Maybe try to figure out if idiopathic had turned in to something pathic, but it was bad enough convincing her doc to see her just once a year so he could refill her prescription with a good conscience.