He thought back to the night they’d first met. She’d been exhausted after healing Monique and he’d assumed the same was true when she healed him, too.
A devilish glint flashed in her eyes. She reached over and cupped his crotch, giving a little squeeze. “Not only are we extremely sexually compatible, but it looks like my Talent is compatible with you as well.”
Rickert had mentioned how the Fates may have brought them together. Maybe there was something to it after all.
His cock swelled against his fly, eager to have her touch him. “What you do to me, lass, shouldn’t be legal.”
She flashed him a grin. “Oh really?”
A few minutes later, they were back on the highway with Asher driving and Olivia touching up her makeup in the visor mirror.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said.
“What question?”
“Why the guys at Reckless are any different from me. I’m sure you care about them, too.”
“I’m not at liberty to tell you their various stories, but they’re all hiding out from the army for one reason or another. It’s practically an employment requirement to work at Reckless. Plus, they’re capable of taking care of themselves.”
“What? And you think I’m not running from the army? Ash, I’ve been staying under their radar for years. Probably longer than many of those guys at Reckless. And if you haven’t noticed by now, I’m pretty good at it.”
“That night at your apartment was too close for comfort. You call that nothing?”
“We got away from them, didn’t we?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, but you’re…you. And they’re…them.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He could tell he was losing this argument, but he wasn’t willing to give in completely. “Many of them have combat training. Former military. They’re bad-ass dudes.”
“So you’re saying if I can prove to you I’m capable of protecting myself, you’ll consider dating me?”
He laughed. “Aren’t we a little past the courting phase?”
“You tell me.”
“Considering that I’m crazy, madly in love with you, I would think so.” The words slipped from his mouth as if he’d been saying them to her for years. He did love her. With every essence of who he was and what he wanted to become.
She gasped, her eyes sparkling with emotion. Then she twirled her strawberry lip gloss in her fingers. He could tell she was cooking up something. “If I show you how capable I am, will you change your mind?”
A possible solution had been brewing in his head for a while now. If she truly loved him as much as he hoped she did, maybe she’d consider moving to the other side of the portal. It hadn’t been his home in years, but with her, it could be. Plus, she’d be further removed from the army than she’d be anywhere else.
“Maybe,” he said, noncommittally. He wanted to see where she was going with this. “But how are you going to prove that?”
“By kicking your ass.”
He almost veered off the road.
“You think you can beat me in a fight?” he asked, steering the car back into the lane. “I’m an Iron Guild warrior, lass. Only the most skilled fighters are chosen as pledges during the Warrior Games, then we go through rigorous training after that.”
She seemed unfazed. “So if I get you to submit, you’ll change your mind?”
He waited an appropriate length of time before answering to make her think he was mulling it over. “If you can beat me, yes.”
When he turned down Granite Avenue, she shifted in her seat. She’d been quiet ever since they left the highway. “So much of our world must seem strange to you.”
He shrugged. “It’s no stranger than my world would be to you.”
“I’d like that.”
He glanced in her direction. “Like what?”
“To visit Cascadia one day.”
He thought about Olivia in Cascadia, riding on the back of a horse with him. “We don’t have any of the conveniences you have here.”
“So?”
“No running water. No electricity. No purple Dodge Chargers with dream catchers hanging off the rear view mirror.”
She laughed. “I know that. Still, I would love to go one day. And if what you suspect happened to my mother is true, that means I may have relatives there. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. Even grandparents, if the soldiers didn’t kill them when they came through the portal all those years ago.”
Olivia reached back and patted Conry as they pulled up outside a quaint blue house. “You stay here for a minute. I need to lock up Mom’s cats first.”