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Authors: Carol Oates

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BOOK: Shades of Avalon
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In the end, Triona allowed Zeal to live even as Amanda lay dead in my arms. It was only through magic that she was alive today. Running my fingers lightly up Amanda’s side under the comforter, I kissed her shoulder. “Feed me then, woman.”

Her body jerked in reflex, trying to get away from my fingers. Amanda was ticklish.

“Feed yourself, caveman,” she snapped back.

“Cavemen cannot live by burnt Pop-Tarts alone.” Cooking wasn’t among my superhuman abilities or my human ones. I leaned in, trailing my lips across the back of Amanda’s shoulders and lingered at the base of her neck. I smoothed my hand across her stomach to pull her closer to me.

This time her body didn’t jerk—it was more of a flutter accompanied by a soft sigh as she released her death grip on the pillow.

She allowed me to roll her back so my body half covered hers. Her eyes narrowed. I saw the smile she was fighting in the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. Fingernails scraped up the back of my neck, into my hair, and I could tell food wasn’t far away. All of a sudden, food was the last thing on my mind.

“This is coercion, husband,” she accused, her voice still husky from sleep.

I leaned in again, satisfied with the improvement of her mood when she tilted her head back to give me more access to her slender neck. My tongue peeked out from my lips, swirling a small circle over the artery below her ear where I felt her heart begin to pick up pace. Amanda tasted of vanilla too. Her fingers curled, gripping my hair tighter.

“It certainly is, wife,” I breathed against her warm skin and kissed my way up her throat and across her jaw. I barely kept myself from groaning.

I’d also discovered something almost primal and animalistic in the basic genetic nature of beings like me. Fighting brought out my claws…literally, and I was still adjusting to the whirlwind of my heightened emotions. My love for Amanda occasionally bordered on obsession with her safety, and my desire for her often burned hot enough to melt the polar icecaps. I worked hard to keep myself in check but found it difficult considering my nineteen-year-old human side only added fuel to the hormone fires.

“I thought you were hungry?” Her voice was soft and teasing. One index finger skimmed a line down my back, creating a warming shiver over my skin, and toyed with the elastic of my boxer shorts.

I was about to ask her if she wanted to stop when her body tensed and both hands went to my shoulders to push me away. “Crap, Ben, what time is it?”

I clung to her, using my weight to keep her pressed into the mattress. It didn’t take much effort despite her protests.

“It’s early,” I replied, nuzzling into the soft, fragrant curves of her body.

“What time, Ben?” She pushed harder, sounding frustrated and wiggling from under me. She reached out one arm and snatched her phone from the bedside table, looking at it with wide eyes.

“Crap, crap, crap, crap!” Amanda bounced from the bed when I finally relented and flopped onto my back.

She thundered around the room like a mini tornado, grabbing clothes for both of us. Most of our things were still in unpacked boxes, just the same as the ones littered though every room in our new home. We’d been too busy to unpack.

Without even looking, and muttering “crap” to herself repeatedly, she managed to toss a pair of jeans directly at my face. I chuckled quietly because that was the extent of Amanda’s profanities.

“Move, Ben,” she demanded, turning to me a little crazed and wild-eyed, clinging to the balled-up gray sweater in her arms like a drowning woman to a life preserver. Our recent activities had left her cheeks flushed, and a pair of my boxer shorts hung low on her hips instead of pajamas.

I grinned like an idiot, madly in love with this magnificent, disorganized, disaster of a girl.

She stamped her foot when I didn’t move. “Triona is leaving in two hours.”

“Amanda, my sister has known you since you were six years old,” I started as I flung back the covers, immediately hit by the low temperature of the room against my bare chest. “She knows you have never shown up on time for anything.”

I approached her slowly, thinking about the double shower in our bathroom and watching her eyes soften and relax. I reached out with my mind and used my most reassuring and calming voice. “Besides, I know a way we can save time.”

It was a neat little trick—many Guardians possessed the ability to influence the minds of others—although it didn’t work on everyone. At first I did it without realizing. However, I had been practicing and over time learned to control my powers more efficiently. Now it was as easy as stretching. I felt my thoughts ribbon out from my consciousness like tendrils of almost translucent smoke. The wisps curled through the air and wrapped around the minds of others, soaking through them until my desire seemed like their own.

Amanda’s arms loosened, and one eyebrow arched perfectly. She knew me too well. I smiled sheepishly.
If all else fails, turn on the charm.

“It’s our honeymoon.”

“There I was thinking our trip to Italy next week will be our honeymoon.” She smirked, walking us toward the door of the master bath with small steps.

I could hear as Amanda’s blood pulsed faster, matching my own. Her scent intensified, taking on a darker note, a heady fragrance of excitement. Her pupils dilated infinitesimally.

“That can be too.” I shrugged. “But maybe we should practice some more.”

Amanda’s hand fell by her side, and the sweater dropped to the polished floor as her smile widened. She continued to back up, passing the doorframe into the other room and shaking her head. There she stopped, lifting her hands to press against my abdomen as soon as I was within touching distance. In bare feet, the top of Amanda’s head just about reached my chest.

“Tempting.” Her soft sigh was mesmerizing, hanging in the air between us and making the air thicken with anticipation.

My stomach curled with excitement. I lifted one hand and gently smoothed down her erratic hair, laughing lightly when it refused to cooperate.

Moments like this one brought back the memory of the battle at Tara with vivid clarity. In one bloodcurdling moment, when my brave, human girl took a sword for me, my world stopped spinning. Everything seemed to slip sideways and out of focus. I heard the metal turning inside of her, twisting in her chest, and slicing through muscle, scraping and shattering bone.

I remembered every day how I failed to protect her, unable to do anything but stare as her complexion paled and life faded from her eyes.

Amanda went to Tír na nÓg that day, the Otherworld.

When I brought her back from there, she was different…touched by magic. Amanda wasn’t exactly human any longer, nor was she Guardian.

“I love you, Amanda. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love you,” I said, hoping she understood the sincerity of my words. The solace I found in being with my true soul mate was something I still struggled to put into words—the feeling of loving someone and feeling so completely loved and accepted by that person.

No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t fully empathize with Caleb, my sister’s soul mate. I could never stay away from Amanda while she grieved my supposed death like Caleb had with my sister…not even for her own good.

“I love you too.”

I pushed thoughts of anyone else from my mind and cupped her cheek, leaning down to kiss her softly.

Her hand slid up my chest and wrapped around my neck. Mine slipped down, gently nudging her sharp hipbones backward.

“What are you doing?” She smiled against my mouth, her warm breath making my lips tingle.

“Conserving water,” I replied, reaching my foot behind me to kick the door closed.

“Ba…da…ba…ba.” I slapped the steering wheel in beat to the music and ignored the glares Amanda shot me because we were a little later than we’d intended. The music pumped through the truck while I indulged in a serious display of seated dancing.

As soon as we returned from Tara to Camden, Maine, Uncle Lewis had put me right back to work alongside him as a carpenter. Uncle Lewis was my dad’s brother—the human side of my bloodline. He and my Aunt Carmel raised Triona and me after the Council murdered our parents in a faked car crash. It didn’t matter to either of them I had just come into the massive fortune my ancestors had amassed. “Pride comes from a salary, not an inheritance,” Lewis always said.

My only extravagant purchases had been a nice house—clear on the other side of town from my family and Amanda’s—and this serious piece of driving machinery. I justified it by saying we needed a decent truck. Winters in Maine were harsh—thick blankets of melting snow still covered almost everything from the mountain trails to Main Street.

Many of the businesses in Camden shut down for the winter. They were just beginning to open up again, preparing for the deluge of tourists who would hike up Mount Battie or head out in windjammers from the bay. We had already said goodbye to the sports enthusiasts that frequented Camden over the cold winter months, all headed off to fresh powder some other place. Maybe I didn’t need to be quite so ostentatious in my choice of vehicle, but she sure was pretty. I carefully swiped some dust from the dash and smiled.

“I’m going to think you’re having an affair with this truck.” Amanda smirked, giving me a side eye.

“She’s a beauty,” I sighed. “But not nearly as beautiful as you.” I reached over and ran the back of my index finger over her cheek. I loved that I could still make her blush.

Amanda slapped my hand away playfully. “My husband, the smoothie.”

Mmm, smoothie.
My stomach grumbled again because I still hadn’t eaten.

Amanda switched her attention back to the pamphlets about potential colleges in her lap, making my thoughts run in a different direction. She still hadn’t managed to complete a full course thanks to traipsing off to London with Triona less than a year into her two-year design program. Then the whole dying thing kind of wiped the gloss off foreign study for her. She wanted to come straight home from Ireland, and I wanted to make her feel safe.

“Tell me again why you need to go to college when the business is already doing so well.”

Amanda’s smile faded, and she forced out a heavy breath through her teeth. “There’s always going to be some idiot who thinks I can’t put colors together or choose furniture because I don’t have a diploma that says I can. I want to do this right. Besides, I want to do more than make rooms look pretty. I want to create the entire space from the core of the building. I want to put flesh on its bones.”

Amanda was as determined as the rest of us that her whole life wouldn’t change because of what happened over the last few years. Sometimes I wondered how realistic it was.

What made an average human life so special? We weren’t the people we thought we were. The world we thought we lived in never existed. We were so much more than human now. Guardians lived for centuries. We were beautiful, faster, and stronger. We weren’t susceptible to human illnesses or disease, and injuries healed with supernatural speed. As long as I lived, magic protected Amanda and she would never succumb to her human mortality. I couldn’t deny the part of me wanting to embrace it.

However, for Amanda, her close brush with death had made her even more determined to succeed within the human world. Amanda had always been considered a little flighty, even by her own family—a little spoiled, nosy, disorganized, indulged, and a gossip. She had so much more going for her if someone took the time to see.

Amanda loved without limits, and she was as fierce as an angry lioness when it came to protecting those around her. She was brave, thoughtful, and loyal.

I glanced sideways and glimpsed her reaching into her bag to pull out a big Ziploc bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies. She held the open bag out to me. Amanda was also a fantastic cook.

“I knew there was a reason I married you, woman,” I told her, smiling and stuffing one whole cookie into my mouth.

“I knew there was a reason I would divorce you eventually, caveman.” She giggled, brushing away crumbs from the front of my jacket.

My cell phone rang, and her smile suddenly disappeared. We both knew it was someone calling to see why we weren’t there yet. Surely they could have used their imagination.

Amanda picked my cell up from the compartment between us. “Hello.”

BOOK: Shades of Avalon
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