Page 2 of The Flame Game

I had a lot fewer issues than six months ago.

I deserved a gold star and an entire bucket of napalm for how much progress I’d made.

Quinn chuckled, which captured my attention, and he stole a gentle kiss. “Don’t worry. I’m going to have as much trouble as you when I get you into a dress uniform.”

I loved my gorgon-incubus doohickey. “Serves you right, you freak.” Aw, damn it. There I went, calling my husband a freak on our second wedding day. “I’m blaming the absurd number of cops in this building for my inability to behave like a normal adult.”

The cops snickered, which helped mitigate most of my urge to run away and hide from my ability to thoroughly embarrass myself. Then again, if I did run away and hide, Quinn would cheat and use his body to lure me to our room. Running so he’d chase me tempted me, but I stood my ground for a rare change.

Sometime within a few hours, he would lure me to our room, and I would be rewarded for handling our second wedding with a little more grace than our first. Mostly. Maybe with less grace but properly dressed. I could work with properly dressed for our second wedding.

Then again, if we got through the vows without Quinn’s relatives brawling with each other, we would be way ahead compared to our courthouse wedding.

The Elvis impersonator grinned, waited for the laughter to subside, and resumed his lecture. To my relief, he wound the whole sermon thing down, beginning the important exchanging of vows part. Thanks to my general inability to handle life normally, I’d made a single request: short, sweet, and to the point.

Wedding number three could be more elaborate after Quinn had a year to help me get over some of my more problematic issues. Blurting random shit out in the middle of my own wedding counted as one of those issues.

After some deliberation and some whining from the Devil, we’d settled on Catholic vows with some alterations offered by Quinn’s various relatives.

My husband smiled at me and said, “I, Samuel Leviticus Quinn, take you, Bailey Ember Gardener, for my lawful wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part.”

While I had issues, memorizing my lines, such as they were, wasn’t one of them. “I, Bailey Ember Gardener, take you, Samuel Leviticus Quinn, for my lawful husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part.”

Considering who my parents were—the pair I actually liked—the death do us part thing might cause us some trouble. Could the daughter of two divines and two horrid humans complete with a shapeshifting problem actually die? Did fire-breathing unicorns with a fetish for magically enhanced gasoline with some delicious additives age? What about gorgon-incubus doohickeys?

I had questions. I doubted I’d get answers, as we were related to a bunch of immortal assholes who enjoyed toying with us because they could. Three such assholes lurked in the front row, and I couldn’t tell how many of them were fucking assholes or just standard ones. Sariel, formerly known as Sylvester but forced to change his name due to our adoption of Sylvester, the gorgon whelp, lifted his hand enough so I could spot him holding three fingers up.

Damn it. The last thing I needed was three fucking assholes, also known as archangels, making a mess of the wedding. Angels, the standard assholes, were bad enough. But to have three archangels and the Devil in attendance?

I would make enough of a mess of the wedding without help, and I had a lot of help available.

The Elvis impersonator made it through the rest of the predetermined speech and informed Quinn he could kiss the bride. My husband did an excellent job of redirecting my attention to him and only him.

Somebody needed to give his tongue a hazard rating, and as he wasn’t above cheating, he enhanced his claim over my lips with a touch of his incubus influence, warning me what I’d have in store for me after the eating, the brawling, and whatever else needed to happen before we could head to our suite.

Once he finished with me, all I could manage was a whispered, “You’re pure evil.”

He grinned at me. “And now you get to stew until I get you back to our room tonight. I will be the luckiest of men.”

“Are we going to fight over which one of us is the luckiest?”

“Absolutely. But only once we’re in bed.”

Whee. “I forgot what I’m supposed to do now. You distracted me with your mouth.”

“It’s an art I’ve been cultivating with daily practice, making sure you’re incapable of even thinking once I’ve had my way with your mouth.” Quinn linked my arm with his. “Now we walk through the gauntlet of people eagerly waiting to throw things at us, as this is somehow romantic.”

“Are they flinging money at us? That would be romantic.”

Despite having mostly whispered my question, everybody laughed.

“Alas, you’re getting rose petals rather than dollar bills. You’re my bride, not a stripper.”

As I’d probably die from mortification if I even thought about stripping for anyone other than him in the privacy of our bedroom, I couldn’t blame anybody for chortling over his reply.

They knew me well, especially the feathered menace giggling a storm in the front row, who could read my mind at his whim.

I still wondered how a headless being could giggle.