Still astonished at the idea that he owned an Enclave house—and not simply a house, but one with a cliff view, she said, “Why don’t you live there?”
He gave her a look.
“Right.” An Enclave home was not the kind of place you lived in alone. “Is it vacant?”
“No, but the angel who leases it from me is leaving for another territory in a month. Will you choose the new paint and furniture with me?”
“Are you sure you trust my judgment? You’ve seen my idea of interior design.”
“Your apartment is my favorite place in the city.”
“Sweet talker.” Realizing she was being soppy and silly, she nonetheless kissed him, one of his arms wrapped right around her waist, her hands on his face, and a smile on both their mouths.
“Ahem.” The interruption was courtesy of Illium. The blue-winged angel hovered in front of them, his hair disheveled and a red lipstick mark on his cheek. “Do you not have a room?”
“Do you?” Janvier responded with a raised eyebrow.
“Many, many rooms.” Flipping backward, the angelic male dropped down like a bullet.
“I think he’s been drinking his own brew.” Ashwini pointed out Illium’s acrobatics below them just as the sky exploded in color, fireworks painting the velvet black.
Janvier’s laugh was deep, delighted. “Sugar, remember—”
“One of your best ideas, cher.”
Secret rules, she thought, her eyes on his profile as he watched the sky rain color, secret play. When he met her eyes, his own reflecting the sky, she said, “Full throttle.”
The smile faded from his lips, raw emotion in his voice as he repeated the vow. “Full throttle.”
Epilogue
Ash spun out with a kick. Stopping it with one hand, Janvier pushed at her foot in a way intended to make her lose her balance. Wise to him, she shifted her weight and, grabbing his other forearm, twisted under and back—or would have if he hadn’t broken the hold to spin around to face her . . . and they were back to where they’d been before she’d chanced the kick.
Facing one another, legs spread and forearms up, grins on their faces.
“Truce?” Janvier asked, blood pumping. “I’m getting kind of hungry.” He also knew that her body had to ache by now.
His Ashblade had rebuilt her strength with teeth-gritted focus after waking from the transformation to vampirism with, as she’d put it, “muscles like noodles.” It was, however, taking time for her to regain her endurance. Not everyone had this severe a physical reaction to the process, but neither one of them was complaining about the side effect. Because she’d also woken with her mind alert and active, her personality unaltered.
“Truce,” she said, lowering her arms to stretch up on her toes before coming down flat on her feet and reaching up to rub the back of her neck.
He just watched her, drank her in. The time she’d spent unconscious during the transition had been the loneliest of his life, the breath-stealing pain of it not yet faded. But it wasn’t the most powerful emotion that held him prisoner. That was naked joy.
“Hey.” Dark eyes on him, his lover drew him into a slow, hot kiss that was a stamp of possession. “I love the way you look at me.”
“Good. I intend to do it for eternity.” Clasping her hand in his, he drew her to their home. As he’d told her, it wasn’t grand, but it was perfect for them. With four bedrooms, there was plenty of space for friends and his family to drop by—which the entire clan would be doing en masse in a month’s time—and the polished wood floor of the sprawling living area gave Ash a built-in dance studio.
The first time she’d danced for him, he’d felt as if she’d gifted him with her soul. It was a gift he treasured with ferocious protectiveness.
“Look,” she whispered, pointing to the happily exhausted form of their new chocolate-colored mutt of a puppy. “He’s adorable, but what’s even more adorable is when you try to teach him to do tricks and he just wants to lick and love you to death.”
“I am not giving up,” Janvier vowed. “He will fetch something for me eventually.” They’d adopted the scraggly furball after someone abandoned him as a newborn at Dr. Shamar’s veterinary clinic, and right now, he was dreaming doggy dreams on the verandah, dark against the white of the walls.
Ash and Janvier—with help from Guild and Tower friends—had stripped the old paint a month earlier and put on a fresh coat of creamy white. It suited the house with its delicate cornices and wraparound verandah. Inside, his Ash indulged her liking for color, turning each room into a warm, welcoming haven.
It was the pieces she’d restored and saved that he most loved.
She was the one who’d figured out how to polish up the double swing with an iron frame that he’d found in a junk shop, the two of them working together to create the large flat cushions for the seat and the back. The rejuvenated swing sat on the back part of the verandah, facing their small but breathtaking view of Manhattan.
Taking a seat on the swing, the puppy curled up underneath in his favorite spot, the two of them unlaced and took off their boots and socks. “Yesterday,” Ash said, eyes sparkling, “when Bluebell dropped by, I asked him to take off his boots before he came inside and he accused me of having an unnatural relationship with our wooden floor.”
“Does he not know it is a most decadent ménage à trois?” Janvier slapped a hand over his heart. “My dear, honeyed floor, let me count the ways I love thee.”
Ashwini laughed at the languid seduction of his voice. “She is a divine other woman.” It was in the two months directly after she woke as a near-immortal that she and Janvier had worked on the floor. She’d been painfully weak then and the repetitive motions needed to strip and polish the wood had acted as low-impact physical therapy.
Four months on, every time she looked at that floor, she remembered lying in the then-empty room with Janvier, the sun’s kiss on their bodies and their hands linked as they discussed their plans for the house . . . and for the future. There was, of course, no way to see the malformation in her brain, but six months on and she felt no different from prior to her Making.
“The countdown is now frozen in amber,” Keir had told her, his hands gentle on her face, “or as close to it as matters not. Live without fear.”
The echo of Arvi’s words had made her eyes burn, her breath stuck in her chest. The hole in her heart that was the space where Arvi and Tanu had lived would always hurt, but she would honor the gift they had given her. For the first time in her life, she no longer knew when she would cease to exist, and that was a wonderful gift.