Page 89 of Blow Me Down
More silence. His breathing slowed and deepened. I relaxed, my breathing matching his.
“I love you, too, sweetheart,” he said, his voice rumbling deep in his chest.
I didn’t say anything to that, but I snuggled into him even more, listening with pleasure to the reassuring steady thud of his heart beneath my ear.
Chapter 22
For your foes are fierce and ruthless,
False, unmerciful, and truthless…
—Ibid, Act II
“You, sir, are a poop.”
“I may be, but you love me. You, madam, love a poop.”
I glared at the man who alternately made my heart soar with joy and left me with an almost overpowering urge to throttle him. “We are not discussing personal things like emotions and who loves whom, although I’d like to point out that you declared your love for me first.”
“Keeping score, are you?” he teased.
“No. But it makes me go all warm and fuzzy that I didn’t have to pry it out of you. Back to the subject at hand— bringing an end to the blockade and providing supplies to my poor, starving townsfolk.”
Corbin leaned back in one of the chairs in Bart’s library, steepled his fingers, and tapped his chin with them. “No one in town looked to me to be particularly poor or starving. And I don’t deny in the least that I was in love with you before you finally decided to reciprocate. I’m a man. I’m superior that way.”
“I didn’t decide to reciprocate; it just happened,” I said, getting up from the big desk and marching over to stand in front of him. “And superior, my butt.”
He leaned sideways to look around at my backside. “Yes, it is, but you’re changing the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject; you are! I’m trying to bring an end to these stupid hostilities, and you keep distracting me with talk about our relationship.”
His eyebrows rose a hair. “I thought women liked to talk about relationships.”
“We do, but not all the time. Now, if you’re through discussing whether I may or may not love you—”
“Oh, you love me,” he said with a self-satisfied smile. I wanted to kiss it right off his face.
“—then perhaps we can move beyond these transparent attempts to distract me and get to the meat of the problem.”
“Your desire to repress your emotions?” he asked.
“Argh!” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air. “I am not repressing anything other than possibly the urge to wrap my hands around your neck and squeeze.”
“I’d rather you wrapped your hands around something else and squeezed,” he said with a wink. “Ever heard the ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’? There’s a line in there I think you’ll like: ‘Squeeze my lemon ‘til the juice runs down my leg.’ ”
“Corbin!” I yelled, frustrated near to the breaking point.
“What?” he asked, an innocent look on his face that didn’t fool me in the least.
“Don’t like the blues?”
“Argh!” I yelled again. “I don’t know whether to have you thrown off the island and never see you again, or rip off all your clothing and make wild bunny love to you.”
“There’s a fine line between love and hate,” he said placidly, then started laughing when I yelled a third time. “All right, sweetheart, I’ll stop, but you make it so easy for me.”
I glared at him. He held up his hands and promised to be good.
“Thathas never been in question,” I said, going back around the desk to reclaim my seat. I picked up the pre-sharpened quill and dipped it in the inkwell, trying to write without leaving huge black blotches and smears. “Now, I’m going to write up a statement that says you relinquish all claims on Turtle’s Back, then we can both sign it, and the blockade can end.”
