“It has everything to do with that. I’m hoping you slip a few times. That will teach you to let my grandfather toss you like that.”
“Oh, come on. He has arms of steel. There was no way I was able to keep my hold on him. Give me a break.”
“More like stone, but that’s fair. Was your pride stung, my beautiful?”
I held up my bitten hand, which didn’t bleed nearly as much as I thought it should. “No, but my hands and arms were.”
“I have noticed you were given a rather high dose of his venom. The angels are likely making sure his venom doesn’t kick in until the victims are somewhere more appropriate.”
“Victim is not the word I would use. The blessed. The receiver of great gifts.”
“The soon to be incredibly frisky.”
“Yes,” I purred. I scrambled out of the water, grabbed hold of his hand, and dragged him towards the nearest set of elevators. “Merry Christmas to me!”
Four
Are you ready to surrender?
After at least four days of being under the influence of the venom, I decided I would need the help of an archangel to restore me to being a functional human rather than a fire-breathing unicorn turned succubus with a taste for gorgon-incubus doohickey. Quinn wouldn’t stop smirking, not that I blamed him.
He ruled our hotel suite, I was putty in his hands, and I hadn’t come close to exhausting him. In the four whole days we’d kept each other company, we hadn’t opened a single damned present, I could barely move, and I wanted to drag my rather happy husband back to bed. Again.
“Are you ready to surrender?” Quinn asked, his tone amused.
Through a feat of extreme willpower, I’d managed to keep my hands off him for thirty minutes, long enough to eat a meal. I’d lost track of the time, the day, and anything else important. I’d lost my sanity along the way, too. I’d only eaten because he’d insisted on it, getting dressed and refusing to remove any clothes until all the food on my plate disappeared into my stomach.
“We could go back to bed,” my mouth contributed.
Damn. My mouth was going to get me killed one of these days.
“We could, but we have presents to open.”
“If you want me not taking you back to bed long enough to open presents, you need to tell your grandfather to turn this off, or I’ll kill us both. Or at least me. I might not make it.” Well, I’d probably make it back to bed, but I’d have to crawl to get there.
“I’m not even tired. Incubus,” he reminded me.
Evil, evil gorgon-incubus doohickey, using his sinful body against me in the best ways possible. In my last gamble to restore sanity, I replied, “I don’t know if we can keep the children pawned off on your grandfather much longer.”
“That’s not a problem. They’re having a good time, and they’ve never gotten to interact with other hives before. They’ll be fine. Once you fully surrender, I can help with your little problem, not that I view it as much of a problem. You purr in your sleep, you’re warm, and I enjoy tiring you out.”
I narrowed my eyes, and it sank in I’d married a gorgon-incubus doohickey. “How much of my problem is your fault?”
“Right now? All of it. The venom only lasted six or so hours. After that, I was enjoying myself. Why not encourage you to show more of your wild side? I’ve been having a great time. How about you?”
Evil, evil gorgon-incubus doohickey! “You’re going to pay for that.”
“I’m sure you’ll try to make me pay for making you among the happiest of women alive. Is it my turn to be fed steak and grapes in the tub?”
His smirk drove me wild, and I debated if he needed his clothes. As it was one of his favorite sets of pajamas, which he tended to put on in the mornings before getting ready for work so he wouldn’t prance around the house naked, I restrained myself. “Okay. You win. I surrender. I seem unable to overwhelm a gorgon-incubus doohickey. But I am expecting a really good reward for surrendering. You might talk me into feeding you steak and grapes, but honestly, I have problems. I’d probably make the steaks and eat them before bringing them to the tub.”
“You really would, too. Your surrender is sweet, and it only took you four days,” my husband teased, and he kissed my cheek. The delicious incubus influence he liked tossing around eased to something I could ignore if I wanted. “I’m leaving a little going, as if I totally remove it, you’ll probably fall asleep on me, and that would rob you of time to open presents. Four days is apparently my limit on how long curiosity can eat away at me before I need to know what is in all of these boxes. I might perish if I don’t find out what is in all of these presents.”
“We absolutely couldn’t have that happen, now could we?”
“Absolutely not.” My husband strutted across the suite, which was overwhelmed with presents, and he went to work sorting through them. The only places without presents piled everywhere were the bed, the couch, and in the bathroom, with narrow pathways linking them. “I got a present for you, so you get to open that one first.”
Damn it! “But I didn’t get anything for you.”
“You ran through the snow as a unicorn to adopt an ocelot for us. As I like cats, that counts. Sure, Avalanche is really your kitten, but I pretend she’s mine when you’re not looking.”
As my gorgon-incubus doohickey did an excellent job of making my common sense dribble out of my ears, I made a mental note to thank our various relatives for putting up with us at our worst. “Please thank your relatives for watching over our pets.”
“Already done. Anyway, our pets are with our kids, as they would whine without the pets around.”
“We’ve lost our pets to our children, haven’t we?”
“It seems so. I’m strangely okay with this. They’ve been really careful with them, too. There have been no accidental petrifications. Apparently, their father impressed upon them Daddy and Mommy time was sacred, and my grandfather somehow convinced them you needed an entire week’s worth of Daddy and Mommy time.”
“Your grandfather is the best grandfather.”
“All of them are, and I’m happy to share them with you, although you’ll find you have tolerable grandparents now. Ra didn’t want to overwhelm you, so you’ll meet your grandparents gradually. Honestly, I think Ra is more worried you might be ambushed the instant the rest of your family learns of your existence. Your mother remains a mystery.”
“Because of the moon phase.”
“Right. Apparently, when she has been around, she’s been dragging your father off somewhere, and nobody is brave enough to disturb them.”
I giggled. “Hopefully they are not indulging during any possessions this time.”
My husband found what he searched for in the pile and returned to the couch, placing a red-wrapped gift on my lap before sitting beside me. “Yes, I will continue to pretend I’m actually helping you with any technical stuff you may ask when you want attention and don’t know how to ask me for it.”
Busted. “Perkette snitched on me, didn’t she?”