Soul Kissed by Courtney Cole Page B

waiting for you,” I murmured, stroking his collar bone. 
    “Really?”  He eyed me.  “For how long?”
    “Forever,” I answered quietly.  “You were made for me. I know it.”
    His breathing quickened and I could hear his heart race.  Cautiously, I moved backward a little bit.  We couldn’t get carried away. 
    “No,” he growled, pulling me back to him. “I never want to be away from you again.  I’ve only been alive for eighteen years, but when I am with you, I feel ageless… and I start regretting all of the years that you’ve lived without me. I’m jealous of time itself, because it was with you when I wasn’t.”
    “Silly mortal,” I laughed.  “You’re jealous of time?  Don’t be.  Time is nothing.  We can bend it to our will, laugh at it, stomp on it.  You’ll see- once this is over and we ask Zeus for your immortality… you’ll see.  Time will fall away.”
    “What will happen,” Brennan began, “If something happens to me before that?  Will I die like a mortal?”
    It felt like my stomach was wrapped in a vise grip at his words and I gasped. “Don’t even say that.  Nothing will happen to you. I won’t allow it.  And besides, demi’s are harder to injure or kill than a mortal.  It would take a lot to hurt you.”
    He nodded. “I’m not worried, simply curious.  And slightly uncomfortable having my girlfriend protect my life.  I need to learn some skills before my manhood gets sucked away.”
    I laughed again.  “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, you’ve got plenty of ‘manhood.’  But you’re right.  You need skills.  We’ll work on them again in the morning. Well, later in the morning.”
    He chuckled and we snuggled even more closely together.  I closed my eyes once again.  It didn’t matter what we had to face in order to get this curse reversed or to get Zeus to grant Brennan immortality.  I would do anything. 
     
    * * *
     
    We stood on the top arch of the Gryphon roller coaster hundreds of feet above the ground.  We were so high up that the birds sitting below us on the fairway looked like tiny specks. The wind whipped wildly around us and we constantly had to re-balance ourselves on the steel track so that we didn’t fall.
    “Why again, are we up here?” Brennan shouted to me as he balanced precariously on the edge.  He almost slipped, then righted himself.
    “Because you need an incentive.  You need to move us from here to the ground so that we don’t fall to our deaths.”
    “You won’t die,” he growled.
    “True,” I answered cheerfully.  “So move us to the ground before you fall to your death.”
    He glared at me for a moment, before his brow furrowed in concentration.  Far below us, dead leaves rattled as they blew along the ground.  Another wind gust buckled my knees and I swayed to combat it, reaching out to hold onto Brennan.  There was no way in hell that I would let him fall, but I wasn’t going to announce that.  He needed this.
    Brennan’s brow remained furrowed for a few minutes longer, then he scowled.  “It’s not happening. I’m never going to be able to do it!”
    He opened his eyes as we teetered on the thick orange rolled bars of the coaster’s track.  I wasn’t scared of heights, but being up here in the wind without anything to hold onto but each other was even making me feel queasy.
    “Just put us on the ground,” he urged.  “I can practice down there just as easily.”
    “No, you can’t,” I answered calmly, swerving into him as the wind blew sharply once more.  I readjusted my footing and glancing away from him, I stared at the lake.  We could see for miles across it from here, as well as every inch of the amusement park.  It seemed so eerie when no one was here.
    “Focus.  Picture exactly where you want us to be, focus on every minute detail of it.  Picture your limbs fading from here…and it will happen.”
    His forehead scrunched again as the wind blew his