Chapter 10: Instinctive reactions

Yep. He ate her.

It's in moments like this that I totally understand his instinct to do it. I mean, you are there, in the bridal chamber with a screeching bride in front of you.

There are few things a man will do to shut up a woman in that situation. You either kill her or kiss her.

The Lindorm killed her and ate her. Well, I kissed and... oh... You don't have to know the rest. No kiddies allowed in this part of the story.

The king wasn't happy with the terrible ending of the first royal wedding and he was very aggravated when his son demanded a search for a new bride.

Unfortunately same fate awaited the second bride his father found for him, also a princess, who had the same equal terrible demise.

After eating the first two, the Lindorm went again to his father, the king, and demanded a new bride. The king tried to explain that no other king would send a princess to him, as he had eaten the previous two thus inciting war.

The beast demanded a bride... and the king, desperate, went in search of one between his own vassals. Until he finally found her.

NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS

I opened my eyes to the singing of some insistent birds close to my head, which chirped happily as they greeted the first hours of the day. I looked up and saw that there was a small cage with two budgies by the window, the two birdies singing to each other as they danced around the cage, moving their wings and jumping from one place to the other.

I looked at the beautiful patchwork hanging as a decoration beside the window, noticing the skill of the artist in making a fascinating mix blue and greens. I was sure that I wasn't in my own bedroom and bed, assumption which became a certainty when I felt someone sigh against my naked chest. I looked down and found Laura's face glued to my chest, her deep sleep doing nothing to erase the dark circles around her beautiful green eyes, which were currently closed.

I studied her face more and noticed under the first light of the day that she had freckles all over her nose and cheeks, which she had carefully covered with make up the previous day.

And if my memory serves me well, she is all freckles. And I do mean everywhere.

She finally crunched her pretty freckled nose and blinked, her eyes slowly adjusting to the light entering our small nest.

Finally she opened her eyes and her gaze landed on my face, meeting my gaze for a while without showing any emotion in them.

"Hi."

I shouldn't have said anything, because that was enough to jumpstart her brain.

She finally registered who I was, where I was and what we had been doing for a good portion of the night and … well, there's no other definition for it: she freaked out.

"Oh... shi..." She jumped out of the bed, turning her back to me and stumbling out of my reach, grabbing a throw blanket from the floor where we had let it fall during our tryst last night and wrapped herself in it, visibly shaken by what happened.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh.. what's wrong? How stupid I am! Again and again I commit the same mistakes, stupid stupid stupid!" She wailed at herself, slapping herself on the forehead, angrily, before she ran to the bathroom, leaving me dumbfounded by her actions.

"Was it something I said?"

NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS

When she left the bathroom, she was already in her work clothes and pointed the bathroom to me so I could get ready to work. She kept her gaze firmly on the floor and stayed mute, showing clearly that there would be no love sighs or compliments for the night.

I cleaned myself the best I could and thought about my car, where I kept an extra set of clothes for emergencies just in case.

But I rarely used it for this kind of emergency.

I came out of the bathroom ready for work, eager to go to my car to get my fresh things and found her in the tiny kitchen, preparing us something to eat.

"Take some coffee and toast and we can go."

"I have to get my stuff out of the car, I have some fresh clothes in there."

"Go, I'll have the eggs done by the time you come back," she said without lifting her eyes from the fridge, digging for bacon and a piece of brie cheese.

I stared at her back and bit my lip, uncertain if I should or not... ohh man... "Listen, about last night..."

"It was a mistake, which won't be repeated." She said firmly and shut the fridge's door, grabbing some herbs and mixing with the egg in order to prepare an omelet.

"Ah. That's what you think. A mistake."

"Yes, so no reason to rush to your little friends and say what a great stud you are for balling the new agent."

I stared at her horrified, "I would never do that."

She started cutting onions, maybe to justify the tears that were filling her green eyes as she looked at me, anger simmering in her voice. "Of course not, because you are a gentleman." The way she said that word sounded more like an epithet than a compliment. "But unfortunately I've just proven to myself that I'm exactly what Thoreau kept telling me I was."

"And what did he tell you you were?" I had the impression that she was going to give me another reason to hate that man.

"He told me that with my looks I would never climb the ladder in the Bureau, the only way I would go up in the ranks would be on my back."

Yep, that's official, I hate the guts of that creep.

"That's not true. You're a great agent and-"

"Stop it, okay?" She begged me with tears in her beautiful eyes, looking finally at me with a sadness that cut my heart. "Stop being nice to me, okay. Just go get your things and get ready so we can leave and please, let's bury this in the deepest corner of our minds. Okay?"

I stared at her as she sniffed, went to a kitchen cloth and wiped her hands and poured the batter of the omelet in the frying pan, all the time doing her best to ignore my presence just a few feet away from herself.

"Just go, Tim. Please."

I hated myself, the world and that idiot who had carefully destroyed her self esteem to the point of making her raise such high walls around herself, went to the door and opened it, closing it lightly behind me instead of slamming it closed as I so wished to.