When I open my eyes, Dace is propped on his elbow, his gaze freely roaming my face. “I never get tired of looking at you.”
I bite my lip and grin. Trying not to think about the mascara smudges under my eyes, the sheet creases marking my cheek, my hair lying limp against my forehead. I just smile like I believe it, and return his adoring look with one of my own. “You know, I think I’m actually beginning to like your new look.” I bring my fingers to his brow, brush the tips against his long sweep of bangs. “Who knew Lita had such vision?”
He catches my hand in his and looks at me as though he’s about to reply, but instead clamps his lips shut as though he thought better.
“I know what you’re thinking.” I rise onto my elbow, fluff my pillow a bit, and lean back against it. “It took me a while to come around, but I truly do mean it. This new look really highlights your face. And you know how I feel about your face . . .”
He shakes his head. Shoots me a look that invites further elaboration.
So I drop a few kisses onto his forehead, his chin, his lips to better illustrate. And just like that, I’m lured right back into the magick of him.
But with a full day of training and appointments ahead, I force myself to push away from the bed and follow the haphazard trail of clothes I left on the floor late last night in my rush to be with him.
“That’s it?” Dace inches his way up the headboard to watch me get dressed. “You just love me and leave me? Is that how this is?”
“Yep.” I retrieve my shorts from the crumpled heap on the floor and sneak a leg in, followed by the other. Performing an exaggerated shimmy as I ease them up over my hips in a move that is admittedly performed purely for his own viewing pleasure.
“Tease.” He retrieves my bra from under his pillow and flings it at me, chasing the word with a grin.
“You’re the tease.” I catch the bra in my fist and struggle to get the clasp and straps properly situated.
“How do you figure?” He rubs his chin, shoots me a playful look.
“You’re the one who won’t move in with me.”
“Oh. That.” In one fluid move, he’s off the bed and searching for a clean pair of jeans from the folded-up pile in the plastic laundry basket that stands in for a closet. An attempt to evade a conversation I’m determined to have.
“I really don’t get your resistance,” I say, and not for the first time. “I mean, we’re together pretty much all the time anyway. And if we lived together, I wouldn’t have to leave here every morning, and you wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep this place going. You know, two birds, one stone.”
His fingers freeze on his zipper as his gaze lifts to meet mine. “How can you say stuff like that?”
“Like what?”
“Two birds, one stone. Sheesh, Daire, you’re guided by Raven. How do you think he’d feel to hear you say that?”
“You changing the subject?”
“Did it work?” He cracks a mischievous grin.
“Not even close.” I frown and pull on my tank top, then sit on the old wooden trunk shoved in one corner and slide my feet into my sneakers.
“Okay, I admit, I’m old fashioned. There are worse crimes, you know.”
“Old fashioned?” I make a sound between a snort and a laugh. “Please.” I roll my eyes, scrape my long, tangled hair back into a ponytail. “Nothing old fashioned about what we just did.” I nod toward the bed, hoping to glimpse a blush at his cheeks. It’s not often I get to see such a thing.
“I’m old fashioned when it counts. Which means we’re not going to live together because it’s convenient, or saves money, or whatever other reason you want to drum up. When we do live together, and I fully intend that we will, it’ll be because we’re properly wed.”
“Properly wed?” I shake my head. Make a face of distaste. Go about adjusting the soft buckskin pouch Paloma gave me, the one that holds the collection of magickal talismans I earned during my Seeker training, along with the beautiful turquoise heart Dace gave me. “Don’t you think we should maybe graduate from high school first? And then, oh, I don’t know, go to college, then on to grad school. Rack up a whole slew of impressive degrees, score the job of our dreams, win a ton of promotions, and then, when there are no more summits to scale,
we settle into the fiction that is the happily ever after of holy matrimony?”
Dace shoots me an appraising look, whistles softly under his breath. “Wow, someone has marriage issues.”
“I grew up on movie sets.” I shrug at the memory. “Surrounded by celebrities who were either falling in and out of marriages every ten seconds, or cheating on the spouses they had with anyone who was willing to bed them. All of which may have left me a tiny bit jaded.”
“A tiny bit?” Dace quirks a brow, pulls a worn, gray V-neck T-shirt over his head. The one that molds to his chest, clings to his abs, and accentuates his biceps, leaving me no choice but to force my eyes away if I’ve any hope of getting on with my day. “It’s not like I plan on proposing tomorrow, or even next year. Just . . . someday.”
“Fine,” I say. “We’ll deal with your someday when we get there. If we get there. But I’m warning you—no public displays. No stadium jumbotron half-time proposal. No hiding the ring at the bottom of my champagne glass. Nothing you’d ever see in a movie or some cheesy reality TV show.”