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"Darlin’, I’m going to sue for broken promises. You got this squirrel ready to bury his nut, and now you want to have a fashion show? I’ll see that cute little tush in court, you keep this up."
"Darlin’, that is above my paygrade," he’d scowled. "And requires conditioning that, one, I’m not invested enough to undertake, and two, you are not experienced enough to administer. That’s like offering me an ice cream cone on the other side of a dung heap and then setting the dung on fire. I don’t need the ice cream that badly." "But you love ice cream," she reminded him, kissing his throat as he harrumphed. "Yeah, well, I love cake too, and there's a sexy lil’ cake in the kitchen that I can help myself to any time the cake desires. I can live happily with cake. You can keep your ice cream."
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"He doesn’t need a girlfriend, Silva. He needs a wife. A wife and at least three children, close enough in age that there’s never any downtime. You can’t threaten an infant, and a toddler isn’t going to care how many color-coded checklists he makes. He’s really good with kids, did you know that? He’s been my kids’ favorite babysitter since I started here. A hobby that’s not this place, one he can only do on Sunday mornings, that too. That’s what he needs. I’ve never in my entire life known anyone more tightly wound than that man. He needs someone to unwind him. You’d be a perfect unwinder,
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Silva had lost track of the tears she’d shed during the numerous drives back to Cambric Creek — for reasons that had very little to do with Tate, yet were entirely about him and the way he treated her. It was more than just feeling desired, she had decided, more than the intoxication of his independent life — she felt seen when she was with him, seen in a way she’d never before experienced.
It was her favorite fantasy: one that involved no dramatic confrontations with her parents, no compromises on her lifestyle, and no shift in her social circle. Tate would simply appear at her side, welcomed by her family and accepted by the elves in her community; accepted because it was clear he and Silva belonged together, embodying her most favorite storyline — fated mates.
"You were beautiful," he interrupted her whirling thoughts. "So confident. You knew exactly what you wanted...like I said, refreshing."
"Nanaya was an ancient goddess," he explained with an arched eyebrow, "of sexuality and pleasure and war. She was worshiped under many names . . . Inanna, Ishtar, Tašmetu . . . I thought it was a fitting sobriquet. That’s what I’ve been calling you in my head all this time."
"I think I just ejaculated part of my spine." "If your spine and your balls have been negotiating space with each other, that has nothing to do with me."
"What does that even mean anyway? ‘A girlfriend. A boyfriend.’ Who gives a fuck? You can call me your watermelon king, for all I care. Those are just titles for everyone else, right?" "Yeah," she laughed. "I guess you're right. I think of us as a couple. Do you?" "Oh, we're definitely a couple. If you tell me we're not, it's going to break my heart. Tate will call to yell at you, and then he'll be very smug and superior and I honestly cannot deal with that, so please don't do it to me. An uncommitted, poly adventurous couple."
"Bluebell, it's not healthy for a man to let the plumbing get backed up this long. A bad humor, I think that's what they called it in the dark ages. And the cure was draining it." "The cure was draining your blood!" she exclaimed, laughing in outrage, "with leeches, not a blow job!" "They obviously had the translation wrong, but they had the spirit."
"It doesn't make a difference where in the world I am, Bluebell. This is what comin' home is."
She thought back to that night in the fall, the jumping flames of the fire that wasn't there, reflected in his eyes as clearly as if he had stood only inches before it. It was that fire that had returned, and the blood in her veins thrummed to see it. "I’ll kill him for you, dove, if you want. I just might kill him regardless."
"How rude of me," she said, squeezing the skin below his watchband. "Tate, this is Wynndevar." She exaggerated the pronunciation of the old Elvish name, giggling as if it were the funniest thing she'd ever heard. The whole world seemed to wait then, spinning silently in space as her heart fluttered about her chest. There was no coming back from this now, she thought. "Wynn . . . this is my Tate." Hers.
"You have everything to lose. And if you had an ounce of sense in that beautiful little head of yours, you’d go back into that club right now and ask that perfect purple cunt to take you home. You have everything, dove. Don't throw it away for someone like me."
"I think it’s my decision on who I should throw my life away for, don’t you think so? What’s the point of having everything if I’ll never be happy?"
"You're my heartbeat, Silva. You're the pulse in my chest and the blood in my veins. You want to rip me open, dove? Take a bite out of my heart? It already belongs to you, so you can do as you wish, and it doesn't matter what you call me. You’re the only reason for breathin', and if you come to your senses and kiss me goodbye in the morning and then put me out of your mind, it won't change a thing. It won't change what you are. You'll always be mine, Silva. That doesn't mean you should want me as yours."
"I'm going to pretend you didn't just say it's a letdown that you're not able to commit genocide with your giant turkey dinosaur thumbnails anymore."
She wanted to know everything; wanted to climb into his skin, wanted to examine and analyze his memories, and nothing less than all of him would do.
"Have you eaten yet? I can run down the street while you’re closing up and grab you someth—" She’d cut off on a squeal as she was pushed precariously to her back, his long fingers hooking under the sides of her lace panties, dragging them down her hips. "I haven't . . . but I'm about to."
She loved him, and she wasn’t going to let anyone stop her from getting what she wanted. Not her mother, not her grandmother, and certainly not him. She was his heartbeat, he’d said, his home.
"You’re smart — no, brilliant. You work in a male-dominated field and you ran lead on your department’s last big project. That’s nothin’ to sniff at, Bluebell." "I improved a jerk-off machine for minotaurs. That’s on my resume now."
"I’m going to be the one to take you by the hand, and I’m going to build you a bride fire so big it’ll burn for a year. Do not even think about taking that from me. I don’t know what’s put this bee in your bonnet, but put all your big feelings back in that lil’ bag of yours and swallow your teeth for another day. You want to be in charge of everything else? Fine. But I’m asking you, and that’s that."
