A Grim Love: Can't Fight Time (4 page)

"Aren't you cold?" Grim asked her silkily, his blue-diamond eyes flashing with restrained power.

As if on cue, goose bumps popped up on Nina's skin and her entire body shuddered. Grim smiled slowly, his look changing from a relaxed smirk into the smile the Big Bad Wolf might have given Red Riding Hood right before he ate her. "Here you are, standing with Death, and you're not cold or frightened? Did you somehow think you were safe?" Grim asked harshly, taking a menacing step towards her only for Nina to take a step back.

But as soon as she retreated, she stopped herself.
I don't retreat!
The thought stuck in her mind like glue. She didn't back down or cower. If he had lied about not killing her and he was going to do it now, then she'd make damn sure she was standing on two feet and in his face while he did it.

"Are you threatening me?" Nina snarled, pointing her finger at his chest and taking a brazen step towards him.

She watched Grim cock his head in contemplation, and look right through her, as if he didn't even see her anymore. The thought scared her, and her defensive instincts kicked into high gear. "I'm not some dog that will lie down when threatened. If you want to kill me Grim, then you better be prepared to take me kicking, clawing, and screaming, because I'm not frightened of your alpha male horseshit!" Nina hurled the words, ready to fling her bag at him, and then bludgeon him with it!

Grim just stood there and blinked slowly, looking like he was observing some type of new animal. After a moment his features began to relax and his body took on the relaxed looseness that characterized most people his "age." Very calmly he took a step back; "You are a curiosity,
Amica,"
he finally said with a lopsided grin as he turned and began walking again.

This time, Nina hung back, trying to get her emotions--and her fears--under control. She watched Grim stop and cock a brow, before she begrudgingly readjusted her bag and began walking towards him.

"You'll have to forgive me, Nina; that was rude. But the kingdoms are a... sore subject with me," Grim said as they crossed a street and began walking down a biking trail.  

Still feeling a little pissy because of his earlier behavior, Nina’s reply was clipped and sour. “You don’t have to talk about it; I’m not going to force you. So we can just walk in complete silence.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Nina saw Grim’s lips twitched in an obvious attempt to hold off a smile, but she ignored him. Only his exaggerated sigh drew her attention; “
Amica,
you wound me. I said I would answer
all
your questions, and I will,” Grim said with a slow, confident smile, drawing the word “all” out and putting some unnecessary heat behind it.
Unnecessary because even though he was a prick ten minutes ago, I could still jump his bones now, does he have bone?

Nina chose to ignore that blatant invitation to ask him
all
the questions on her mind, and all but tapped her foot, waiting for him to continue. “I am
of
the Bloodspurn kingdom,” Grim said quietly, as the trail shifted from concrete to dirt and the thin grove of trees thickened until they blocked the afternoon sun.

Well, that’s a weird way to say it,
Nina thought as Grim’s natural cold began to penetrate through her layers of clothes again.
Can’t he turn that off?

Nina rubbed her arms as she they continued walking further onto the trail, the scenery beginning to take on that weird serial killer movie vibe.
Wait! He said “of” not under or a part of. Actually if you just change “kingdom” to “line”, than it sounds like he’s saying he’s a royal!

“You’re a royal.” It wasn’t a question.

Nina had been pragmatic about her entire conversation with Grim, trying to look objectively at her situation. Finding out he was of some weird reaper royal birth didn’t even chart with her top ten most interesting things Grim had said. If anything, finding out he was someone higher up on the food chain explained why he was just lazing around and talking to a human.

Again Grim stopped, and Nina turned to regard him, crossing her arms under her breasts. She didn’t like when he stopped, or rather she didn’t like it now. Last time he had been a class-A prick and Nina didn’t have the desire to see that side of him again. But then Grim was, if nothing else, full of surprises.

“You are a curiosity,
Amica
. Never have I met a human so utterly fascinating. You are perhaps the only human I have ever met who has accepted what should be impossible without even a blink of your pretty chestnut eyes,” Grim said to Nina slowly, raking his gaze down the length of her as his last comment penetrated Nina’s mind.
He thinks my eyes are pretty?

Nina just shrugged, and struggled not to blush as her eyes caught the very obvious tent in his jeans. “I see the world for what it is, and like I’ve said this entire time: if I can see it and touch it, it must be real. No hallucination would last as long as you’ve lasted and no psychotic episode would have this amount of clarity and cohesion. If I had been having some sort of episode or breakdown, then it would have probably ended a while ago, or there would have been a lot more signs that this isn't real.” Nina shrugged again and uncrossed her arms to shove her cold fingers into the back pocket of her jeans, staring at the pebbles dotting the path. “None of that has happened.”

A sudden shift in the air, a feeling of icy cold, alerted Nina to Grim’s sudden presence right in front of her. She lifted her head, wondering if she was going to have to tell him to back up and then leave, because she did not deal with temperamental men.
I get enough of that at home.

But her mouth never uttered a single peep as Grim’s soft, cool lips shut down any angry words that might have come out.
Is he kissing me?
The thought was so shocking that Nina reflexively opened her mouth to ask that very question just as Grim swooped in to take the air right from her lungs and her tongue right from her mouth. He covered her, arms locking around her frame, tilting her back and covering her so that all she could see, taste, smell, hear, and feel was Grim. Everything was Grim.

Nina didn’t have that logical and pragmatic shell wrapped around her that would have screamed how strange it was that Death was making a move on her. Or how weird that at every other moment he had seemed cold, even freezing to the touch, but now? Oh, now he literally burned her, scorched her in a way that was both pleasure and pain.

It was the heat that invaded the body just before you froze to death. How funny that, wrapped in Grim’s arms pressed so close that every part of her body was touching his, she should feel that now. Did that mean she would die soon?
I don’t want to die yet.

Nina forced her fear back down, burying it deep so it wouldn't ruin her moment. Because kissing Grim was the best thing she had felt in a long time. In fact, she hadn’t felt this happy and content since before her mother’s murder.
And even if it’s only for a little while, I’m going to hold onto it.

CHAPTER FOUR

“You’re shivering,” Grim said against her lips when he finally drew back.

“I’m fine. Keep going,” Nina replied, not even caring of how like a romance novel reject she sounded like.
Bella ain’t got nothin on me!

“No,” Grim said, pulling away from her and manifesting a winter jacket out of thin air. “It’s getting late, and you should be getting back.”

Quickly, he wrapped her in the coat and then stepped away to give her space.
Oookay? What the hell happened in the last two seconds that I missed?
Nina shrugged into the coat while giving him the funniest look. Not even ten seconds ago, he’d been all over her, practically consuming her, and now? Now he was acting like it never happened.

Nina felt her temper shoot up as she watched his blank face for any sign of emotion.
Not even a twitch of a brow! The man looked like he’d been carved out of freakin’ granite!

“Alright, then,” Nina said, clapping her hands together as she smiled too brightly at him. “How’s that old saying go? Oh, ‘don’t call me; I’ll call you’? Yeah, well, see ya,” Nina said as she turned and marched back up the trail.

“Nina, please--” She could hear Grim plead, but she just flipped him the bird and kept walking.

Like I said, one temperamental man in my life is enough!
Nina thought as the trees opened and revealed the last rays of the setting sun.

***

“Come out!” Grim said, not bothering to raise his voice but making sure his tone reflected his displeasure. He was sure Nina was pissed off at him at the moment, but the fewer people who knew about her the better. He had broken too many rules already, but he was willing to bear the punishment if it meant Nina was safe.

“Not even going to say hello, Brother?” Uriel, his youngest brother asked with mirth.

Grim pivoted in a slow circle, casting out his power so that Uriel could feel he was not in a mood to play. At his feet a mist began, seeming to originate from his displeasure alone. Slowly the mist began to thicken to a fog, traveling up his body like an amorous lover, until it covered him completely.

“Ever one for the theatrics, Grim,” Uriel laughed, as his brother’s form became indistinguishable from the thick fog. And then all at once it left, leaving Grim the epitome of the Grim Reaper he was.

“You know I do not ever take this form for shits and giggles, Uri,” Grim said angrily, his voice coming out as a dancing of bones and the howl of the dead.

Humans weren’t wrong about how reapers looked when they were completely decked out; in one hand he held a black and silver scythe, the blade covered with mystical writing that only the oldest reapers still spoke. A black cloak that seemed to engulf light, as if complete darkness was the only finite thing in the world, draped over his form.

The skeletal form he had acquired from having lived so long, that, after so many centuries, his skin and muscle melted off his bones like a sick parody of an ice-cream cone melting in the sun, leaving ivory bones. Grim detested this form, but he could guess why his brother was here, which meant his true form was a necessary evil.

“I don’t know why you insist of brooding about your impending succession. To be the next king of the Bloodspurn line is quite the honor!” Uri said as he shifted from foot to foot and tried not to look directly at his brother.

Grim knew that Uri had yet to begin “shedding,” and was still a bit freaked out by the whole process. Grim could understand why; it wasn’t a happy event when the skin you had been walking around in for all your immortal life suddenly started to fall off and turn to dust. Not only that, but the entire process was extremely painful, because after you saw pieces of your skin lying at your feet, a sick compulsion to remove the rest took over.

Grim could still remember his “shedding,” the months seeming to drag on as he looked like a zombie reject, until one day his voice seemed to come from his rattling bones and a mystical scythe had appeared at his side, announcing that he was now truly a “Grim Reaper”.

“Perhaps you would like the honor to have hundreds of reapers under you, depending on you, relying on you? Maybe you would like to carry the burden of continuing the Bloodspurn line--of playing chess in the king’s seat with lives?” Grim’s unnatural voice rattled at his brother, his scythe glowing ominously as his power once again leaked out and surrounded his brother in a cloaking miasma.

“Is that what you want, little brother? Power?” Grim said slowly, his voice coming out as a whistle of sound through bone.

His form lacking eyes, a mouth, a heart, everything seemed to be commanded consumed by the power he wielded as effortlessly as he glided closer to his baby brother. One bony finger reached up, the cloak shifting down as Grim traced a line on his brother’s cheek. He leaned forward, his body and scythe seeming to grow and encompass the other reaper until fear leaked from every pore and fouled the air.

“I would give up every claim I have to the throne if you could be even half as responsible as you claim to be. I would kiss your fucking feet, if for one second I thought you could carry the burden of the Bloodspurn name as you so desperately want to. Come little brother, prove me wrong! Prove to be that you have become the Bloodspurn king!” Grim cackled as he drew his cloak tighter around him, his power seeming to retreat along with him.

His brother had no concept of the life Grim had waiting for him, had always had waiting for him. As the second son of a Reaper king, the chances of Uriel being a successor dropped to almost zero, and because of this his life had been considerably easier. But Grim did not envy his brother’s life, because as it stood that he was just that, weaker.

The kid looked ready to shit his pants from a simple transformation and a few harsh words.
No. He isn’t ready and probably never will be; which leaves it up to me.

Grim sighed as he folded his hands into the folds of his cloak, letting his scythe just stand next to him like a patient dog. “I’m getting tired, Uriel. Relay the message and then let’s go back,” Grim said finally.

“I w-was--” His brother stuttered, looking like he might
actually
shit his pants. Of course that bodily function was gone unless they drank or ate, which his brother wasn’t known to do. No, he was just scared as Hell, and right he should be.
The next king is supposed to be feared; any sense of weakness could leave him open for an attack.

“Father wants you. The ceremony is in four months’ time, but we need you to put your seal on a few letters to the other kingdoms. Plus father wants to talk to you about your... e-engagement again.” His brother whispered the last part, knowing how Grim felt about his arranged marriage.

Strategically, marrying the first daughter of the Castoff king would be the best plan. It would ensure neither kingdom attacked the other, and hold a truce between the two for another few centuries at least. But with the Castoff kingdom, it would only ever be a temporary truce, as their kings always wanted more power and control.

Already reports of Reapers in the Darklore kingdom going missing and strange ashes of the “true death” were being found. It was rumored that the Castoff kingdom was responsible for those disappearances and likely deaths, but without any concrete proof the Darklore king refused go to war and potentially lose the entire kingdom. Not to mention that, if the Darklore kingdom did attack without suitable evidence, the Bloodspurn kingdom would have no choice but to side with the Castoff. But neither would the Castoff kingdom attack the Darklore openly with no proof of heinous transgression, because if that happened then the Bloodspurn would take the side of the Darklore kingdom and the Castoff kingdom would not stand a chance against two kingdoms, no matter how powerful they had become.

Politics, politics.
It gave him a headache most of the time, and if he wasn’t so sure that his human body would never age, he would swear that he had noticed stress lines around his mouth and eyes.

“Come, then. Let’s go and greet Father and Mother. I’m sure they’re dying to know why I’m in the human world,” Grim said silkily, wondering if his brother would catch the hint.

“Not that I would tell them. What you do for your last for days as a bachelor is your own business, Grim,” Uri said, waving his hand to materialize a portal between worlds.

“I’m glad you understand, little brother,” Grim said gravely, entering the portal with his scythe floating beside him, held up by his own magic and will.

Uri entered after him, and Grim wasn’t able to see the sly smile curve his lips or the flare of triumph and something more in Uri’s eyes. No, all Grim could see, could think of was Nina.
Please be alright until I get back,
Grim hoped fervently, before he turned and began to walk the path that had been set out for him.