Fantastical (Fantasyland #3)(57)
Author: Kristen Ashley

He was staring at the plate and before he had to ask, I answered.

“Cheetos, they’re kind of, cheese flavored snacks.”

He took the plate and can and his eyes came to me. “The only thing I recognize is the bread. The rest is clearly not natural.”

He was right about that.

“We’ll go to a grocery store tomorrow. Now you’re eating processed food because the selection isn’t all that hot at the corner store.”

“You went to the market?”

“Yes.”

His face turned slightly ominous again. “Cora, I told you to rest.”

“I know you did Tor!” I snapped impatiently. “But I couldn’t. My house was a mess. My bathroom a pit. My sheets dirty. And I had to figure out what Cora had done with two months of my life. I couldn’t lie in bed and rest. I tried. My mind wouldn’t let me. I had to get things sorted so I sorted them. I survived. I’m breathing. So now, will you do me a favor and just bloody eat?”

He stared at me. Then he grinned.

Then he noted, “My wife likes order.”

“I’m not your wife,” I shot back.

His grin turned to a smile as he turned to the door and muttered, “You will be.”

I looked at the ceiling.

Bloody hell.

Then I followed him to see he was moving to the round, four-seater dining room table I had in the corner.

“What are you doing?” I asked, he stopped and turned to me.

“Preparing to eat,” he answered.

“I don’t eat at the table,” I informed him. “No one in America eats at the table unless it’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, a birthday or they’re weird.”

He looked at the table in a way that nonverbally said he felt it was strange I owned a set of furniture that I would use only three days of the year (this, a look from a man who had three entire dining rooms) then he looked at me. “Where do you eat?”

“On the sofa in front of the TV,” I replied, walked to the sofa and, no other way to put it, collapsed mainly because I needed to. I was exhausted and my body was beginning to ache again.

He followed, sat next to me, looked about him and then lifted his bare feet up to the coffee table and put his plate on his lap. I took the can from him, he watched as I popped the tab, his brows going up at the hiss then his lips twitched. He took it back, sipped at it, swallowed, shook his head, set it on my side table and commenced eating.

I watched, waiting for a response.

After three Cheetos and his second bite of sandwich, when I got no response, I prompted, “Well?”

He swallowed his bite of bologna and cheese sandwich and stated, “It’s not bad.”

I felt my mouth form a small smile.

“It’s also not good,” he went on and for some reason, I burst into laughter.

When I was done laughing I noticed Tor was not eating. He was watching me with a look so tender it was a shock when I felt it slice clean through me. The pain was so perfect, it felt exquisite, better by far than any orgasm he’d given me (and he’d given me lots and all of them were good) so I bit my lip and looked away.

I was trying to shove that feeling out of my soul when Tor murmured, “Only you.”

It took a lot but I forced my eyes to his face to see his were moving around the room.

I shouldn’t ask, I really shouldn’t ask but I asked.

“Only me, what?”

His eyes came to me. “Only you could put color in a colorless world.”

My lungs seized and then I followed where his gaze had been and I saw my space through his eyes.

I’d painted the walls a soft peach. I’d strung string after string of fairy lights covered in sherbet-colored daisies all around the top edges. I’d chosen carefully selected, but all fanciful and vibrant, prints for my walls. I had a comfortable armchair in bright pink with a deep purple chenille throw tossed over it, at its foot, a grass green, poofy, rectangular ottoman. We were sitting on a peacock blue sofa with sunshine yellow and orangey-red toss pillows. On the square coffee table in front of us was a collection of glass orbs, all of different sizes and colors. The dining room table was glass topped but the chairs were covered in raspberry fabric, a huge glass vase in the middle of the table with whirls of multiple colors swirling through it. There was a wide rug over the wood floors that reflected nearly all of the colors I’d chosen for the room, not in a dizzying way, but a subtle one (I thought). And all the lamps in the room had different bases and different colored shades, turquoise, lilac, pink, royal blue.

Oh f**k, there was that exquisite pain again.

I turned my head to him, saw him sitting on my sofa in jeans and a tee, feet up, eating bologna sandwiches and Cheetos, chasing it with a Coke, looking relaxed and totally at home after a day out, by himself, in a world that couldn’t be any more different from his home and it hit me.

“And only you,” I blurted.

His eyes held mine when he asked quietly, “Only me, what?”

Oh well, might as well say it.

“Only you could be catapulted into a different world, a world totally unlike your own, and take it all in stride.”

He wasn’t just taking it in stride. Just like in his world, he seemed in command of the situation. Not only at-ease but like he had it all under control and I suspected, with very little effort, if he didn’t have it under his control, he would.

Just like always.

I loved that about him and I hated that I loved it.

Hoping to hide my feelings, I babbled on, “When I got to your world, I was totally freaked out. The first ten, fifteen minutes, I thought it was a dream. The rest I knew wasn’t and I was scared shitless.”

“You forget, my love, I was prepared for your world,” he told me and I felt my brows draw together.

“You were?” He nodded. “How?”

“You told me about it. About the cars and the buses and the planes and the asphalt and the sidewalks. You told me about the buildings made of glass rising into the sky. People talking to other people on their phones in the streets. Others sitting in front of those…” he hesitated, “boxes, tapping at them with their fingers.”

“Computers,” I reminded him, stunned.

He remembered everything I told him.

Everything.

He smiled. “Computers.”

“You thought I was making it up,” I whispered and his eyes went dark.

“But now I know you were not.”

“You thought I was,” I semi-repeated.