Dragon Soul (Dragon Falls, #3)(70)
“Oh hell, that’s me, isn’t it?”
His smile was one of pure satisfaction when he took my hand and led me from the room. “When we do it, we do it properly.”
“Uh huh. And how are we going to explain that to the cabin’s occupants?”
He gave me a roguish look, kissing my fingers as he said, “If they say anything, I’ll offer to pay for a new cabin, all right?”
“All right, but stop swaggering around like having sex so hot you burned my shape right into the wall is a point of pride. We’re never going to be able to have nice things if we keep burning them up every time we make love.”
Fifteen
I would like to report that the two days following that memorable chase were uneventful, but that wouldn’t be even remotely true. The next day started benignly enough, though: Rowan texted everyone he had ever heard of and several to which he’d received referrals.
Mrs. P did much to enrage me by sashaying around in a manner intended to aggravate me. And aggravate she did.
“Why do you look at me that way?” she asked, flipping her waist-length hair back with a practiced move. “It’s not like I told your man to leave you.”
I pursed my lips. She wore a fairy costume, complete with gossamer wings, nearly see-through low-cut bodice and skirt, and a bag of glitter she called her fairy dust.
“For one, that costume you’re almost wearing was supposed to be mine. We agreed that you’d be the cheerleader and I’d get to be the fairy.” I gestured down to my cheerleader pleated miniskirt and cotton sweater. “I’m too chubby for this outfit. Your skirt is longer.”
“But it suits me much better. See? My bosom is perkier than yours now.”
She had a point, damn her. I made a mental note to ask the laundry if they’d managed to clean the Xena outfit yet. Thus far, they’d taken their own sweet time cleaning the items we had daily taken to them. I shook a pom-pom at her. “And for another thing, I saw you trying to score a few points with Rowan earlier. I didn’t appreciate it, and if you try it again, you’ll find your lovely long hair tied in a knot around your throat.”
She laughed, a silvery, tinkly sound that made me very aware that I had what was politely termed a smoky voice, but was really just plain ole rough and unattractive. “I was, I admit. Not that I could bed him here—my beau would know and not be happy with me. But I did want to see what sort of man you had and whether he would remain true to you. I think he will.”
“I know he will,” I said without as much conviction as I’d have liked.
“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?” she said, tossing a handful of fairy dust on my head and laughing her way to her bedroom to change for some time at the pool.
I threw a pom-pom at the door and returned to the project of attempting to convert the pair of shorts that came with the cheerleading outfit into suitable underwear.
“I’m feeling distinctly like a third wheel,” I commented later that day, when Mrs. P and her coterie of priestesses trooped into the room fresh from the swimming pool.
“We asked you to come swim with us, but you refused,” Mrs. P said, tossing off her swimsuit cover-up and heading into the bedroom.
“You didn’t miss much, although your friends were up there being nosy again,” Bunefer said, plopping down on the window seat.
“May and Gabriel?” I asked, wondering what they were up to.
“No, the two old ladies. Gidget and Moondoggie.”
“Ken and Barbie,” I corrected. “I think they’re just dying to be of help. They are some sort of cherubs or something from a divine place. Kind of a heaven.”
“The Court of Divine Blood?” one of the priestesses asked. Ahset, I think, although I got her and her (biological) sister Henit mixed up. She looked thoughtful. “Henny and I spent a summer being apprentices in the Court, and I don’t remember seeing them. But then, I didn’t meet everyone.”
“That’s what they said, and I don’t see why they’d lie about being cherubs. I mean, that’s kind of an odd thing to claim if it’s not true.”
She shrugged. “After they left, the captain came around and told us to stop being so loud and to stop scaring off other passengers, and all sorts of other mean-spirited things like that, which of course Ipy wasn’t going to stand for. She read him the riot act about passengers having the right to play in the pool as they see fit, and if we wanted to have music and drink shooters while we were swimming, then that was no business of his, and oh, all sorts of other things like that. All in all, you probably were better off not being with us.”
“Goodness. Sounds like you guys had quite the time of it.”
“It would have been far more fun without the captain harshing our mellow, I’ll tell you that!” Bunefer said before heading into Mrs. P’s room.
Gilly entered the cabin at that point, a large beach bag in her arms. She looked around, a faint frown ruining her normally perky expression. She marched into the Mrs. P’s room, then came out to ask me, “Is Ipy in your room, by any chance?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“She’s not here. Ipy never takes a leave without designating one of us as being in charge of Aset’s protection.”