“But now, Cora, I know you were not,” he also semi-repeated, this time softly but also firmly, that tender look back in his eyes.

I swallowed.

It was Tor’s way of apologizing. And it was a good way.

Then I decided I’d had enough. I couldn’t take more. He was going to get to me and he couldn’t. What he did hurt, too much. And anyway, he didn’t belong in my world and I didn’t belong in his. It was unnatural and anything could happen. Nature had a way of righting itself, sometimes violently.

I’d given in once, giving him all I had and taking what I could get in return.

And I loved it.

But it could be taken from me. He could be taken from me. At any moment a blue mist could form and whisk him away.

I had to stay on target. I had to sort out my life. And I had to guard my heart.

Which was going to be hard with a seasoned warrior obviously intent on laying siege to it.

But I had to try.

“Do you want to watch TV?” I asked into the void, his eyes flashed his displeasure at my change of subject then they settled.

“Will you rest if we watch this… TV?” he asked back and I nodded. “Then yes, I’d like to watch TV.”

I sucked in breath then turned, leaned down the couch, opened the drawer to my side table and grabbed the remote. I hit the button and resolutely ignored him as I switched channels until I found an innocuous sit-com. Then I settled in, partly turned away from him, and focused on TV (mostly for my sanity).

Not long after, I heard his plate hit the coffee table then the remote was slid from between my fingers.

My head twisted to him and I cried, “Hey!” but like a man, of his world or mine, he took over the technology, hitting buttons on the remote so the channel changed, the contrast changed, the volume changed and then he found a decent volume along with a cop show.

Figures.

Then he tagged me around my chest and pulled me down to lying beside him, wedged against the back of the couch, as he stretched out on his back, head to a pillow against the armrest.

I pushed up and snapped, “I was comfortable.”

“You’re more comfortable now,” he returned, telling the God’s honest truth.

“Am not,” I lied, pushing up on his chest.

“Cora, you are.”

“Am not!”

The hand attached to his arm that was wound around me slid up to the back of my neck and he pulled me inexorably forward until I was close to his face.

“You promised, we watch this TV, you’d rest,” he reminded me.

“Yes!” I clipped.

“Then… rest,” he commanded.

I glared at him. Then I saw the determined look on his face.

I knew what that meant.

So I informed him, “You’re annoying.”

He chuckled and forced my cheek to his chest.

I kept my body perfectly solid to communicate nonverbally that he was a jerk.

That was, I did this until I fell dead asleep.

Chapter Twenty

Crash into Me

We were on our way to my parents’ house, Tor driving.

Yes, Tor driving.

Earlier that day, when we went out to my car (which had not disappeared but had enough pop cans, chip and candy wrappers in it to water and feed an army – taking them all in, and thinking of all the takeout cartons I tossed out the day before, I was thinking the other Cora was no longer skinnier than me), Tor flatly refused to sit in the passenger seat, demanded a lesson and refused to believe that he’d need more than one lesson and practice (much less an actual license) to drive around in a city. With no choice (he didn’t give me one), I showed him around the console, explained the basics, he started up the car and away we went.

No joke.

He was a natural. He even figured out the road signs and traffic signals and only asked what a few of them meant.

I was not freaked out that I was sitting in a car with a beginner from another world behind the wheel.

No, I was freaked out about the fact that I decided to tell my parents the truth hoping, since they were hippies and had open minds, that they wouldn’t think I’d gone around the bend.

And I was also trying not to think about my day with Tor.

Which had been, even in my gray, dreary, colorless world, what only Tor could give me.

Magic.

* * *

I woke that morning in my bed to a mild headache, a few aches and pains and to hear my shower going.

The shower meant Tor hadn’t been flung back to his world sometime in the night.

I rolled to my side, glanced at his pillow and saw the dent.

I knew Tor, after watching television late into the night, had carried me to my room. When he put me on my feet by the bed, still exhausted and half asleep, I disrobed, found a clean nightie, yanked it over my head, then collapsed into bed, falling back to sleep the instant my head hit the pillow.

And seeing the dent, it was apparent Tor slept with me.

Oh well, whatever.

I decided since the ibuprofen had eventually worked the day before and I now had coffee that I would head to my pill stash in the kitchen which was a room that fortunately also housed the coffeemaker. So this was what I did.

Tor came in after I set the coffee to brewing and he was wearing nothing but one of my forest green towels (they weren’t girlie, which sucked, I liked girlie, but they were the only thing (as well as the rust accent colors I used) that didn’t look putrid against my bathroom suite).

As I stared at his chest coming my way, he greeted, “Morning, wife.”

My body jolted to alert but not in time. I was swept up in one of his arms and his head was descending. He gave me a hard, warm, close-mouthed kiss then broke his mouth from mine.

As I tried to get my head together, he glanced at the filling coffeepot, opened the cupboard over it and pulled down two mugs, not loosening his arm while saying, “I like these indoor waterfalls you have.”

“What?” I asked dazedly and his light blue eyes came back to mine.

“Your indoor waterfalls. These, and your front room, the color of your sheets and the night garments you wear, so far, are the only things I like in your world.”

“Um… you mean shower,” I told him.

His brows went up. “Shower?”

“Yes, like a rain shower except it’s a bathroom shower.”

“Ah,” he murmured, his lips twitching, “clever play on words.”

I hadn’t thought of it like that but it was true.

“Tor –”

“I need food,” he announced, moving to the refrigerator, opening it and he did this taking me with him with his arm still around me.