Page 52 of The Interdimensional Lord's Earthly Delight

She glowered back. “You better not.”

“Lishelle, you have to go.” Despair sharpened his tone. “There’s at least a dozen mercs from what I can guess, and they’ll hurt you to hurt me since I can’t pay themoff with love baubles.”

“We’re getting out of here together,” she said. “This castle is huge. You must have a secret tunnel to escape or something.” When he hesitated, the blaster wavering, she hurried to his side. “We’re not going to make our last stand until it’sreallythe last. We fight to the end.”

For a seemingly timeless instance, he stared down into her eyes.

Then he grabbed her wristand started running.

The abrupt reversal rocked her head back on her shoulders and left her stumbling, but she kept ahold of her bottles as she righted herself and kept pace.

“Where are we going?”

“The escape tunnel.”

She couldn’t hold back a choked laugh. “You actually have one?”

“Doesn’t every castle?” He led them past the dais and deeper into the hall where the passageway shrank to lessimposing measurements. The pounding behind them dimmed.

Her brief amusement faded even quicker. He’d taken that suicidal stance when there was an escape? “If there’s a tunnel, why didn’t we—?”

“What you said,” he interrupted, “about deserving happiness.” He yanked her around a corner where a steep ramp angled sharply upward against the inner wall of an open courtyard. “If you think being afraidof a black hole means you weren’t deserving, then me sacrificing all those girls means Ishouldbe shot.”

“That wasn’t you,” she protested. “That was Blackworm.”

“I mean the maidens who offered me their love in these very ruins.” His breath caught, and she didn’t think it was because of the hard climb that was taking them higher through the castle. “The goddesses judged me and found me wanting.Theyleft mewanting, forever.”

Behind them, a massive crash echoed through the castle corridors. Lishelle gasped—was that the taste of plasma-scorched stone on the back of her tongue? They came to a split in the ramp, each arm going higher yet, and Tynan paused.

He pulled her into his arms.

“Uh, is this the time?” Despite her waspish tone, she snuggled into him.

“I’m waiting for the mercsto catch up.” He gave a quick glance toward the courtyard below.

“Then why—?”

He laid one fingertip over her lips. “Lishelle,” he murmured. “The goddesses cursed me to bless the love of others and never feel its joys myself. But they never expected a beautiful alien to save me.”

She gazed up at him, forgetting the mercenaries probably swarming the great hall right this second. “An alien?”

“You,” he clarified.

“Me?”

His smile was radiant. “Brash, mouthy, delightful as any sin that would tempt a god to fall. I don’t deserve you, Lady Lishelle, but I want you anyway.”

He bent her back over his arm. Even with doom so close on their heels, his kiss became everything to her: hot and needy and sweetly chaste all at once. She caught her breath, not quite a sob, and tried to hold him,though her hands were full of ghost-mead. She’d always had trouble holding on because of old ghosts, but she was done with that now, she swore to herself.

When he finally lifted his head, he took one of the bottles from her and tossed it over the side of the ramp to the landing below. They were high enough that the chiming crash took a moment.

He aimed the blaster downward and with a singleshot ignited the puddle.

She flinched. “They’re going to see that.”

“That’s the idea.”

“We have an idea?”