Chapter Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Nathaniel - 1 year

"You're going to get caught," I told Roxanne through the earpiece as I watched her plaster herself against a brick wall, trying to avoid the cameras pointed in all directions.

"You underestimate me," she murmured back.

Then, in a blink, she was gone.

Just… disappeared right in front of my eyes.

"Where did you go?" I asked, clicking between the camera feeds I had set up, my heartbeat hammering in my chest.

Yes, heartbeat.

I decided not to take the cure.

What can I say? After three hundred years, it was surprisingly pleasant to be human again.

Even with the things that weren't my favorite. Like the ache in my back each morning when I climbed out of bed. Or the stomach aches from overindulgence. Even the headaches from wine.

The thing was… the repercussions of sleeping in a bed with a woman I loved, eating delicious food that I could actually taste and appreciate, and enjoying a nice glass of red wine were worth the actual experiences.

While some things were heightened when I'd been a vampire—strength, speed, hearing—so many other things were dulled. Taste, sensation, joy, pleasure, excitement, desire, it was all amplified. Addicting.

I suddenly didn't have many cracks to make about Roxy's junk food addiction. Since I'd acquired one myself.

In fact, it was a running issue in the house that I was forever eating her favorite chips.

"Magic!" Roxanne declared theatrically as she reappeared inside the very vault she had been hired to try to infiltrate. She even did little jazz hands as she said it.

"Have I told you how impressive you are?" I asked.

"Not in the past hour or so. Go ahead, praise me," she invited, smiling at the camera.

"How about I praise you when you finish the job. That necklace is heavily guarded."

"You mean this?" she asked, reaching behind her to lift up the gleaming, twelve-million-dollar necklace, waving it carelessly at me. "Child's play," she declared.

Then she disappeared again, only re-appearing when she stepped back out front of the building.

Where the owner of said necklace and his entire security team were waiting for her.

I moved out of the surveillance van to step next to her, my hand going to her lower back as she handed the necklace over to the shocked and horrified owner.

He'd insisted when he'd hired us that there was no way Roxanne could get the necklace, that he had it on the best authority that it was protected both by human and magical measures.

Roxy proved him wrong in under fifteen minutes.

It was a new record, actually.

"I… it turns out I will be needing your input after all," the man said, slipping his necklace into a suitcase that was handcuffed to one of his security guard's wrists.

"How's Monday work for you?" Roxanne asked.

"Eight?"

"If you mean eight at night, sure," Roxanne shot back, smiling. "But if you mean in the morning, then absolutely not. I don't get up until eleven," she declared, still wearing some of her sloth proudly.

"I will have my secretary call you," the man said, giving us both a nod, then rushing back into his building to secure his very expensive necklace once more.

"Not too shabby," Roxanne declared as we walked back to the van, checking her watch. "We still have time to pick up pizza and get home in time for the season premiere of The Scandalous Lives of Witchy Wives. "

Some things never changed.

And I was eternally grateful for that.

Not only because she got me addicted to that ridiculous show, but because I appreciated how there were still parts of the Roxanne I met nearly a year ago in this newer version of her.

She'd known almost immediately after coming out of the maze that her vending machine spells simply weren't going to be worth her time anymore.

She'd tapped into a much more powerful magic inside of her, and she'd been interested to find how she most liked to use it.

After several failed attempts at things like classes, private consultations, and even helping a famous actress land her dream job over her rival, she came to the conclusion that she really only harnessed her powers at their full potential when it felt like there was a lot at stake.

Like our very lives in the labyrinth.

That led to some searching to figure out a career path for her that would be both exciting and challenging.

It came to us, amazingly, through one of her silly reality TV show programs as we'd been lazing in bed naked, eating popcorn out of a massive plastic bowl.

The people on the show were talking about the uptick in heists involving witches and their magic thwarting the human security systems. And how they really wished there was some sort of consultant to work with to secure their own valuables from magical theft.

And so… a business was born.

With a little overhead provided by me, and a few weeks of hard work to prove herself, she had a business going.

She was focused and motivated and at her full power.

It was amazing to watch.

Then just as amazing to go home with her, climb into bed, and rot away eating delicious junk food and watching endless television.

"Do you want to grab some drinks and ice cream at the bodega before we grab the pizza?" I asked as I opened the van door for her.

She reached out, grabbing both sides of my suit jacket—some habits died hard—turning me, pushing me back against the van, and planting a long, deep kiss on my lips.

"This is why I love you," she said, beaming at me. "You get me."

I did.

What's more, she got me too.

For my last birthday—my first actual, human one in over three hundred years—she'd given me several journals that must have taken weeks to track down.

I still liked books about lore, witches, demons, vampires, everything supernatural.

I was actually working on a database that would have all of these old tomes scanned and available for other eyes.

Because, some day, the books, like all of us, would be gone. I wanted proof of their existence and their wisdom available to future generations.

As for my cure, it was currently sitting on my desk as a paperweight. Roxy had spelled it so it couldn't open without the spell that she kept hidden somewhere even I didn't know about.

I'd thought about the curse and the cure for a long time after we got back from the labyrinth. The conclusion I came to was that… being a human being wasn't a curse that needed curing.

It was a privilege.

A blessing.

The whole point of life was that it didn't go on endlessly. Your mortality forces you to delve deep. It makes you focus on what is important.

Like personal passions.

Like love.

And being loved.

I wouldn't trade a single mortal day with Roxanne for a millennia without her.

And that, I figured, was the whole point the witches who'd ‘cursed' me had been trying to make.

"I have a surprise for you later," Roxanne said as we ate greasy pizza and, something I never could have enjoyed as a vampire, garlic knots, as we watched the premiere of the new season of our TV obsession.

"Do you?" I asked, thinking she might have created some new spell to make life easier. Like that handy one she had for turning the light off from across the room.

"Mmhm, but you need to do something," she told me.

"What's that?"

"You need to go sit in your office and read a book. Something you will really be engrossed in. Like something by one of your fingerless nuns or eyelash-less monks," she teased, getting a laugh out of me.

It was an easy task.

As much as Roxanne found my books boring, I was always sucked in to these other times, other places, other opinions and experiences.

I guess, from the beginning, I'd always found the human experience fascinating.

It was sort of poetic, I guess, that I'd chosen, in the end, not to take the cure. To live with the ‘curse.'

There was a movement in the corner of my vision that had my face lifting from the tome on the desk.

And there was Roxy.

A dream come to life.

A fantasy made real.

She stood in the doorway of the library in a filmy white nightgown that was doing little to hide the fact that there was nothing underneath.

The darkness in the library paired with the light behind her made the shadows play with the curves of her body as she moved toward me.

Her green eyes were hungry and a little bit proud of herself as she came around the desk.

I patted the desk, remembering doing that in the fantasy I'd seen in the crystal ball in the labyrinth.

I tossed the book aside before she climbed up on the desk.

Then it unfolded as I remembered it, but made even more intoxicating by the realness of it.

In the fantasy, I couldn't truly smell her summer honey scent as I kissed up her ankle, calves, thighs.

I couldn't really taste the sweetness of her on my tongue as I ran it up her cleft toward her clit.

I couldn't feel the way her fingers drifted into my hair, tugging and crushing in equal turns as I worked her. Slow and steady. Refusing to pick up the pace no matter how much she whimpered and pleaded for relief.

I licked and sucked until she was screaming out my name. Until her body was shaking. Until her thighs were crushing my skull.

My fingers slipped inside of her, feeling how much she needed me.

But not yet.

I was too wrapped up in her pleasure to try to find my own as I teased her with my tongue, as I thrust with my fingers. Before curling inside of her and stroking that little spot that had her crying out through another orgasm.

Only then did I raise up, looking at her flushed face and neck with hungry eyes.

Reaching behind her, I cleared the desk, then lowered her flat.

My hands went to the front of her nightgown, making quick work of the ties until she was bared to me from the navel up, her perfect, full breasts rising and falling with her labored breath.

Leaning down, I sucked one of her nipples into my mouth until she arched off of the desk, moaning my name.

I teased with my tongue, lips, and teeth until she was writhing against me, until her hands were grabbing at my clothes.

Then I moved across her chest to continue the sweet torment.

Desperate tears were in her pretty eyes when I finally moved back, reaching down to free myself and rubbing my head up her cleft, collecting her desire.

"Nathaniel," she whimpered, spreading her legs wider for me.

On a low growl, I surged inside of her, feeling her walls tighten in welcome as her back arched, as her pupils blew wide, as her moan filled my ears.

This was what I gave eternity up for.

The closeness.

The connection.

The joy.

Just one last time with her was worth thousands of years without her, without this.

While my body was screaming to go fast, to push us both to that edge, then topple over together, I forced myself to go slow, to make this perfect moment in time last.

It didn't matter how fleeting the time was. It was all well spent being close to Roxanne.

My perfect, snarky, lazy, but motivated, giving, selfless, kind witch.

"Nathaniel," she cried as her walls tensed then spasmed around me a while later, taking me with her, pleasure exploding through my system, making the entire universe fall away.

"So," she said as we came back down, my head nestled between her breasts, her hand resting softly on the back of my head.

"So?" I asked, pressing my chin to her chest to look up at her.

"You're really stuck on that name, huh?"

"My name? Yeah, I'm pretty stuck on it."

"I'm just saying… you could change it. We're working on all that pesky marriage paperwork. It could be an easy fix."

"And what do you think my name should be?" I asked. "Bill? Eric? Spike? Angel?" I asked, rattling off names I remember her using once upon a time.

"Spike! Oh, Spike! " she moaned, pretending to be in the throws of ecstasy. "Ew. No," she said, wrinkling her nose. "I guess we can stick with Nathaniel," she said, fingers massaging the back of my head. "I've gotten kind of fond of it," she added.

"Glad to hear it," I said, moving up to press kisses down her jaw, then seal over her lips for a long, lingering kiss.

When I pressed up, I found myself grinning down at her.

"You're thinking about the ice cream, aren't you?" I asked, watching as guilt transformed into amusement as she let out a little snorting laugh.

"You know me too well."

"My favorite little glutton," I said, pressing a kiss between her breasts before moving away.

"My favorite former vampire," she said, moving off the desk, not bothering to close her bodice, as she leaned up to press a kiss to my chin.

She turned back at the doorway of the library, head tipped to the side, shooting me a soft look.

"Have I mentioned how glad I am that you kidnapped me?" she asked.

"Have I mentioned how glad I am that you were so easy to kidnap?" I shot back as she took a step back, flicking her finger over the sachet hanging from our front door.

One meant to keep vampires out.

This time, for both our safety.

"You get the ice cream," she said. "I'll get the TV show queued up."

Sure, I maybe only had another fifty years left in this world.

But cuddled up in bed with Roxanne and ice cream was how I wanted to spend every single night I had left.

XX