Seduction of a Psychopomp: Erogenous Hand Holding and Other Ways to Tame your Reaper (The Boundlands, #3)

by Elsie Winters

But my very short list of priorities now included a new addition, and everything that had belonged there previously had by necessity shifted down one place to make room for her. The fae had given me this woman as my wife, and what she wanted mattered far more to me than what they wanted, or even what my family expected of me.

Couldn’t mortals die from dehydration? I’d never had to keep something alive before. This was entirely removed from my area of expertise.

Would it be strange to have a crush on your own husband?

Life and death will fade away and every version of this planet will crumble into dust, and I will still belong to you.”

This man was a gift. He had become my safe place and my favorite source of comfort. Even though I didn’t like the thought of being so utterly dependent on anyone—especially the way I was on him—I couldn’t think of a better person to have to depend on.

“We’ve been here for months. We are married in every sense of the word, and I will not be leaving him.” Though I’d made myself abundantly clear—at least I thought so—in my assertion that I belonged with her for eternity, other than our wedding ceremony, this was the first time she’d made such a declaration. Her words might as well have been enchanted for all the power they held over me. This strange alchemy that was love settled deep enough in my bones that even the wrath I felt toward this man began to be soothed away. He was nothing to me, but the woman seated in front of me on my wraith? She was everything.

The haggish looking spirit had grotesque skin that reminded me of maggots behind the other-worldly glow it cast. We were a contrast in color, its garment a ghostly white that matched its face and mine as black as night. It flexed its fingers as it watched us—macabre-looking, skeletal things on disturbingly long hands and arms that stretched down past the knees of its spindly, spider-like legs. Enormous, tattered, leathery wings stretched over its head—deformed structures that could never have carried it if it had a physical body. It was an angel whose outward form was now a reflection of his inner corruption, the way a tumor corrupts the healthy tissue it once was.