Her arms went up around his neck as he took her mouth, devoured it, captured it until Toni felt faint. She wanted this man, wanted to know what he looked like naked, wanted to stop wondering what his hands would feel like on her flesh—
“Hey, Flawless! Quit eatin’ her face off and get the hell in here before you knock her up. The last thing we need is magical fairytale babies!”
Nina?!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! she mentally shouted as she and Jon pulled apart in guilt.
Jon’s eyes instantly found hers and they held self-reproach. “Milady, my apologies. I’ve risked your honor and good reputation.”
Pressing her hands to her hot cheeks, she took in a shaky breath. She’d been kissed before, and at one point or another she was sure she’d been kissed well, but it was nothing like Jon’s kiss.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Where I come from, we kiss all the time.”
His eyes went wide and one eyebrow rose. “Out in the open when public eyes are upon you?”
Toni snorted. “Uh-huh. It’s not inappropriate to make out. Maybe not in, like, the Shop Rite, but when you’re alone in the privacy of your home, no one gets upset.”
“You do this in your land without an escort—this dating? It’s unheard of here.”
“As long as you’re an adult and you’re both consenting.”
“I take back what I said about staying here. I think I like your land better,” he said, his chuckle deep and husky.
She shrugged with a smile, her pulse still slowing but her thoughts far away. “I don’t know, I think I like Shamalot. It’s magical.”
“There is plenty of magic to be had, but we do not have phones and nets and dating. We’d do well to learn from your kind.”
“Either way, there’s nothing to worry about. Besides, who would care if my reputation were soiled anyway? No one. So you’re safe.”
Jon grabbed her hand and captured her gaze. “I would care, milady. I would care greatly.”
She had to look away from his intense stare. “We should get back inside,” she whispered.
Toni rose to leave, her hand slipping from Jon’s. But it wasn’t without reluctance as the warmth of his flesh dissipated.
Making her way inside to where Marty and Wanda sat sipping coffee and eating the sandwiches Hamish had made with a very animated Nina, Toni couldn’t help but smile to herself.
Nina was okay.
That was all that mattered right now. Her brother, what she’d told Jon, their kiss…it would all have to wait.
Sneaking up behind Nina, careful not to unsettle the birds curled up in her hair, Toni wrapped her arms around her neck and gave her a hug—a long, hard one just before she planted a wet kiss on the vampire’s lean cheek.
“I’m so happy you’re better. There’d be no reason to get out of my tent every morning if you weren’t around to offend me and call me ugly names.”
The quick acknowledgment Nina gave by squeezing her wrist was all Toni needed just before she flicked her hand. “I could tell how happy you were. So happy, you almost sucked Flawless’s lips right off his GD perfect face, huh?” she joked on a growl.
Everyone laughed, even Toni.
And in that moment—a moment she was sharing with people she was coming to like—she felt less alone, less like there was no point to getting out of bed each morning.
She liked that. She liked that a lot.
“Ye like the lass?” Dannan asked just outside of Ellesandra’s, both of them leaning on the fence with their elbows, watching the rise of the new day.
“Why do you ask?”
Dannan chuckled and winked. “’Twas evident when ye almost gobbled her face off out here last night. ’Twas more evident by the happy tune ye whistled as ye prepared for today’s journey. True love’s kiss is grand, aye?”
That made Jon pause. Was that what this was? Love? Nay. So soon? They’d only known each other a mere few days now.
He was intrigued, yes. The very thought that someone might hurt her back in her land incensed him. To the point he wished to travel to her Jersey, hunt this Stas down like he’d hunted so many before him, and chop his thieving head off.
Thinking of Toni helpless, alone, out in the cold while she camped and had no home to call her own, enraged him.
Thinking of her lips over and over, soft, tasting of the sweetest strawberries, before he finally found sleep last night almost drove him to dive into the cold snowdrifts piled up outside Ellesandra’s path to the front door.
But love?
“What do you know of true love’s kiss, ogre?” he groused, annoyed that he’d been called out. “It’s nothing but a silly legend made up by a bunch of maidens who have too much time on their hands.”
“Then yer mother is a silly maiden? I think she might box yer ears for sayin’ as much, lad.”
Jon turned to look at his longtime blue friend. “My mother? What do you know of her romance?”