Completely Smitten (40 page)

“I have some questions,” Ariel said after a long moment.

“Okay.” Darius picked up his sixth cookie, then realized he hadn’t eaten the fifth. “Fire away.”

“How come you magic people get more than one soul mate and we mere mortals get only one?”

“Huh?” he asked.

“You heard me.”

“I did,” he said. “I didn’t understand you.”

“Well, I figure it like this,” she said. “You live for thousands of years, and I only live for maybe seventy-five. If I’m your soul mate, then you only get to be happy for, maybe, fifty years. And that’s not fair. No matter what you’ve done—considering that you said it wasn’t genocide or anything—you don’t deserve that.”

“I guess not.” He was feeling a bit confused. Why was she going on about this?

“So I want to tell those Fates or is it the B Powers—?”

“The Powers That Be.”

“Them,” Ariel said, “that you deserve better than this. I mean, Blackstone and Nora are both magic, so they get the rest of their lives together. I don’t know about the other people you’ve put together, but I assume their lives are pretty similar.”

He nodded, not sure what to say.

“So I want to tell off those people in charge of your life. They haven’t been nice or fair to you. And that’s wrong. How come no one can see what a good person you are? Is it because you’re sarcastic or because they put some other spell on you to make it seem like you don’t do half the things you do and only I can see what you do because I see magic around the edges?”

He stood. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her. She was defending him. He had told her the truth, let her go, and she had come here, ready to defend him. What had he done to deserve her?

“If I asked you to marry me,” he asked, “would you do it?”

She took a deep breath, tilted her head, and looked at him sideways. Then she blinked, as if she were coming out of a deep sleep, and said, “No.”

All the hope he’d been feeling a moment before faded. He sat back down in the chair.

She came toward him and knelt before him, taking his hand in hers. “It’s not because I don’t love you. I love you more than anyone, Darius or Andrew or Andvari or whoever you are. I didn’t think it was possible to love anyone like I love you. But marrying you just isn’t fair. I won’t live long enough to approximate anything like happily ever after with you.”

Damn the rules. The Fates were even going to screw up his chance at being with his soul mate. But the Fates were right; if he told her that she could live as long as he did so long as they were a couple, he’d always wonder if it was the lifespan that kept them together.

“What if I tell you I’d take you for five minutes, if that’s all I had?” He leaned toward her. Their faces were only inches apart.

“I’d say you’re a fool. You can do better.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t. I’ve lived long enough to know that you’re the only woman for me.”

She paled, and his heart sank even farther. She didn’t want him. When she finally had to choose, she didn’t want him. She had tried to hide it under a rational argument, making it sound as if she didn’t want to be unfair to him. And maybe she didn’t. Ariel was an inherently kind person, and he was asking her—forcing her—to live in a world that she hadn’t even known existed a few hours ago. Talk about unfair. He was the one who was being unfair.

“You’d take me for only five minutes?” she asked.

He nodded. “And I’d cherish every single one of those minutes for as long as I lived.”

She stared at him for a long time. He couldn’t read the emotion in her green eyes. She was probably thinking of a way to leave him, to let him off easily. But he wasn’t giving it to her. This was his last chance, and he wasn’t going to screw it up.

“Five minutes,” she said again. “Out of four thousand years?”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes and he felt bereft, as if he had already lost her. “Ask me again.”

He had so expected her to say something else that her words barely registered. “What?”

“Ask me again. That question you asked earlier. Ask me again.” She opened her eyes, and he saw pleading in them, but he wasn’t sure what it meant.

“If I asked you to marry me, would—ah, hell.” He pulled her off her knees, stood, whirled them both around until she was sitting in the chair. Then he knelt in front of her. “Ariel, will you marry me?”

“It’s not fair,” she whispered.

“Answer the question,” he said, taking her right hand in his left.

“I’d be the only one who’d benefit from this.”

“No, you wouldn’t, Ariel. Five minutes, fifty years. It’s about living happily in the moment, not ever after. Ever after doesn’t exist for anyone. We all die, eventually. Even those of us who have long lives. It’s about living day to day, the best way you can, not knowing what will happen next.”

He was drowning and she didn’t seem to know it. He had allowed himself to hope and he knew it was wrong. The door would slam and he’d be here, alone, knowing that he had no future at all. But he had to try.

“Ariel,” he said, “will you—”

“Yes!” She flung herself into his arms. “Oh, God, yes.”

She was kissing him or he was kissing her, and he barely noticed that they had fallen back onto his hardwood floor. In fact, he would have lost track of everything if Munin hadn’t decided to create a threesome by licking both of then-faces at the same time.

Darius shoved the puppy away, but Munin wouldn’t back off.

“Not now,” he said to the dog.

“What?” Ariel looked mussed. She would be so beautiful after lovemaking. She’d be beautiful during lovemaking. She was beautiful all the time.

“He doesn’t want any secrets between us.”

She froze. “There’s more?”

“There’s about three thousand years of more,” Darius said, giving her one last chance to back out.

“I’m not talking about history,” Ariel said. “We all have that. You said secrets.”

He nodded. “I had to wait until you answered my question. The Fates made me wait.”

“The Fates?” She sounded as if they were the devil incarnate. “What about them?”

“They said that our lifespans will match.”

Her eyes teared. “You’ll die young? Dar, that’s still not fair—”

“No, Ariel,” he said. “Yours will match mine. You’ll never have magic, but you’ll have a long life like Blackstone and Nora and me. If you want it.”

“If I want it,” she said.

He nodded. She was so ethical that this might bother her too.

“They made you wait because they believed I’d marry you for the long lifespan.” Her eyes narrowed. “Where are these Fates? I’d like to give them a piece of my mind. They don’t treat you right.”

“They treat me fine,” he said, gathering her in his arms again. “Considering everything I’ve done, they treat me more than fine.”

Ariel frowned. “I still don’t like them.”

“You don’t have to.”

She slipped her arms around the back of his neck. “But I’ll take the gift because I can spend more time with you.”

He kissed her again. Munin sighed happily and headed back to his puppy bed. Ariel slipped her hands through Dar’s curls and pulled her face from his.

“And for the record,” she said, “I love you. Every facet of you. And I’ll take you, long life or not. You can tell that to your Fates.”

“I’m sure they know,” he said. “They told me they always watch the good parts.”

Ariel’s eyes widened. “They’re spying on us?”

Darius reached a hand over his head and spelled the room into complete darkness.

“Not anymore,” he said. Then he dipped his head, found her lips, and began a kiss that neither of them pulled away from.

And as he kissed her, he realized he had been the one who had fallen off a cliff, and she had been the one who had saved him. Not with magic, but by believing in him, and by caring for him, no matter how ugly he was.

“One more thing,” she whispered out of the darkness, as they paused to catch a breath. “I believe in happily ever after, not just happily in the moment.”

He smiled, hoping she could feel it, even though she couldn’t see it. “So do I,” he said as he bent down to kiss her again. “So do I.

“