Page 86 of Another Damned Storm

Dropping Lily off was short and sweet. I thanked her again, and she dismissed my gratitude as though anyone would be willing to put her own safety on the line to aggravate a powerful woman whose abilities and powers were as unpredictable as her mouth.

“Just do me one favor?” Lily asked. I arched a brow, and she went on. “Take care of her?”

I almost laughed. “That is my mission in life.” Whether thestubborn woman would allow me to do so was another question entirely.

When I flashed back, Never and the chairs were gone. My blood pressure spiked for a few seconds, until I opened the door to the cabin to find her inside. She was leaning on the counter fiddling with a spatula as she waited for a pan on the stove to heat up.

“Why don’t you sit, love. I will handle dinner.”

The look she gave me was six kinds of skeptical. “You know how to cook?”

“You wound me.” I pressed a hand to my heart.

That at least got a little laugh out of her. “It’s just that I’ve never seen you do it before.”

“I might point out that you haven’t cooked for me either.” That was how life worked when you lived on a ship with an onboard cook.

She held up the spatula and motioned me over. “Have at it. I’m too damned tired to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

I perused what she had laid out on the counter. “Toasties?”

“I’ve always called them grilled cheese sandwiches.”

“But I assume the preparation is the same.”

She shrugged, then spun one of the chairs around, straddled it, and sat down. “You’re the chef. Make them however you want.”

“In that case…”

It only took a few minutes to whip up four sandwiches, complete with bacon, thanks to an ingenious package of precooked strips I found in the icebox. By the time Never was halfway through her second sandwich, her eyelids were already drooping.

“Today took a lot out of you, didn’t it?” I asked.

She blinked at me slowly. “I thought I was supposed to heal faster, but I am sore all over.”

“Let’s get you into bed,” I said, taking her plate from her and scooping her up in my arms.

“Is something wrong with me?” Her inner walls came down with her fatigue and it was all too easy to sense the worry swirling inside her.

“I wouldn’t stress about your magic.” I lowered her on the bed and set to work removing her boots. “Your power still has limits, as does mine. If you use too much, too often, it can take a while to replenish. Once you’ve slept for a couple of hours, your body will recover on its own.”

I tugged off her pants, leaving her panties in place as I shoved my desire down. There was nothing overtly erotic about the plain black cotton, but they may as well have been made of the finest lace from the way my body reacted to the sight of her.

Later,I promised myself. When she wasn’t so exhausted that she was fighting to keep her eyes open.

Fighting and losing, I might add.

I was still getting undressed myself when I heard the first delicate snore slip from her lips. It took some careful maneuvering, but I managed to slip into the squeaky bed beside her and drape one of her shapely legs over mine without waking her.

That was where she stayed, unmoving, until the sun that had set shortly after we went to bed rose high into the sky. When she finally did stir, she snuggled that irresistible body of hers in closer.

“Hey.” She tipped her head back to glance up at me. Her voice was rough from a long night of hard sleep, but her eyes were filled with a softness that tugged at my battered heart.

“Hello, love.”

After several more minutes of simply being together in silence, she grudgingly rolled backward and stretched out on the mattress with a groan. “How long have I been out?”

“About sixteen hours.” Endless hours in which I had lain awake trying to find a way out of this mess.