Page 23 of Even Robots Die (Even Ever After #3)

Brice

I don’t know what is wrong with that woman.

After I leave to pick up dinner and bring it to her in the new lab—because it looked like she wasn’t planning to eat at all—I stay watching over her for part of the night.

Until she finally decides to get up and go to her room.

I go to mine and try to sleep until I hear movement and a door opening and closing.

What?

Why did she go to her room if it wasn’t to sleep?

I shift to my bat form and follow her.

Yes, I know, I’ve become a stalker.

I don’t know what I expected, but it surely wasn’t Florentine going back to the lab at almost midnight, like she plans to spend the night there.

Because, there is no mistaking it, with her in what looks like the pajamas I picked for her and rolled inside a small blanket that I don’t think she really needs with the summer temperature around here, she just went back to her room to get comfy and now she’s planning to work on whatever she was doing on the holo-puter earlier.

I follow her to the lab and fly to the shelf I set in the left corner of the room, next to the door.

And yes, I installed it with the idea of resting there in my bat form. Sue me.

I perch there as I watch her settle in the seat in front of the desk.

It’s a simple chair and I now wonder if I should have picked something more comfortable if she’s going to spend all day—and all night—in front of that screen.

Except for the soft glide of her fingers on the wood under the holographic keyboard, everything is silent for a little while and then Florentine starts to yawn.

I look at the time at the bottom right corner of the screen on the wall. Two thirty-seven. No wonder she’s getting tired.

I leave the lab—luckily she left the door open—to shift back into my human form and get dressed.

I run through my mind the list of people who might still be awake and decide not to bother them.

Instead, I walk myself to the kitchen, take two mugs off the shelf, and fill them. One with burning hot coffee and the other one with instant cookie dough preparation. I add a little water, throw it in the microwave oven for ten seconds and then retrieve it.

I’m not a master chef, but it’ll have to do.

It might look like I put pressure on her to work on the machine—the infernal device as she likes to call it—but I didn’t expect her to work all night.

If she’s going to do that, though, I don’t plan on letting her fall to pieces from exhaustion.

If she’s going to stay awake all night, I might as well make it comfortable.

I walk back to the lab, leave the tray with the two cups and the spoon next to the door, and hold my hand up to knock on the door.

It’s still open, but I don’t want to spook her.

Maybe you should spook her. Maybe it’ll bring a whole new color to her cheeks.

I ponder that thought for a lot longer than I care to admit before retrieving the tray and knocking on the door.

It takes her almost a minute to disentangle herself from the blanket cocoon she made when she settled in front of the holo-puter.

Her eyes are slightly blown and red from the time she spent in front of the holographic screen and her hair is sticking up in every direction.

I can see the mark of the blanket encrusted on her left cheek and I know it’s from the way her head was falling to the side, as if it was too heavy—or she was too tired—to hold it up.

She really looks like she could use some sleep, but I won’t fight her on what she does with her time, especially since she decided to use it to help me.

I have the irresistible need to tuck one of those fiery curls behind her ear so they don’t hide the cheeks that I love to see blush, but I stop myself.

I want to make them red again.

I want to know if her cheeks would also turn red if I was buried deep inside of her.

This last thought hits me like a wall.

This isn’t the right time—one would argue it’s never the right time, though.

What is wrong with me?

Be good, I tell myself.

I don’t let her talk first, though.

So much for being good.

“If you’re going to stay awake all night, you might need that,” I tell her curtly.

I thrust the tray into her hands and turn my back to her before leaving.

I barely hear her whisper-yell “Asshat” before I’m back in my room.

I click the door closed and drop my forehead to the door. The wood is cold to the touch, but I blessedly welcome it.

I have no idea what is wrong with me.

I thought I was all broken. Unfeeling. And now I get these urges that are hitting me without any warning.

This is fucked up.

I thought the only way to get my feelings back was to go through the electric torture, but I’m not so sure anymore.

First, there was the appreciation of making her mad. Second the tingles in my hand, and now that?

I don’t even know what to call it.

Nothing has made me hard since I woke up. I didn’t even think about getting hard at all until just a minute ago.

Why would I think about how good she would look with my cock buried inside of her if my body refuses to let me even get hard, anyway?

Am I doing it again?

Fuck. I’m doomed, it seems.

Because those tingles I felt in my hand earlier? I think something similar is happening in my pants right now.

And I’m scared to hope.

Because it’s small—the tingles not anything else—but I can’t mistake it anymore.

What if Florentine could wake my brain up?

It wouldn’t solve my problem with Elhyor, though.

That problem still needs to be solved through electrical shocks.

Which means I can’t entertain the idea of getting closer to Florentine.

I can’t mess things up.

This situation, me and the people who were tortured with me in this exact castle, is supposed to be temporary.

We can’t stay here indefinitely. There is a war coming—one my daughter might have kick-started—and I can’t be stuck here while Elhyor and the rest of his men go into battle with the humans, and without me.

It would definitely look bad if I killed the one person other shifters look up to in this war against the bird shifters.

Maybe I need a cold shower.