Ready Or Not

We'll Call It A Prologue

**Daniel**

"I'm not fucking doing it!" he screamed at me. I raised my eyebrow and regarded him patiently, knowing how much he hated not getting a rise out of me. My love is nothing if not a drama queen.

"Don't look at me like that!" Theo stamped his foot and eyed the small box on the nightstand.

"I'm not looking at you like anything," I said, calmly. "I'm just waiting for you to be finished with your tantrum so I can ask you why you don't want to."

"Because it's not like I have to," he said, more quietly but just as petulantly.

"Of course you don't," I replied. "But then you could have said no."

Theo growled at me. "I wasn't going to say no. I couldn't say no."

"So wear the ring. Are you ashamed of me or something?"

He rushed up at me and for a moment, I had the wild idea that he was going to shove me or something. Instead, of course, he wrapped his arms around me and then bit my shoulder. "Don't say stupid things. You fucking know better." His voice was low, rough.

"Okay. So I fail to see the problem." I wrapped my arms right back around him. "It's not like no one knows."

"It's just," he sighed and pulled back, hanging his head. He fell back onto the bed and cradled his face with his hand. "It's just weird, okay? And fast. And forever."

That took me by surprise. I knew that my man hadn't been one for monogamy, but I thought we were pretty much over that. I went over and sat next to him. I wanted him to look at me, but I knew better than to force it, so I just laid my hand on his knee. "You wanna wait then? Telling me 'not yet' isn't the same as telling me no altogether."

I could hear the skin of his lip being pulled between his teeth. "No. I don't want to wait..."

"Okay," I hedged. "I'm here, okay? I'm not going anywhere. We can do this however you want to. Whatever you want. I can throw those away and we can pretend I never asked you." I took the hand that was curled in his hair and eased it away, pulling it to my mouth and kissing it. "I love you. I just want you; however you'll let me have you."

"Stop it," he whined, but I could hear the smile in his voice. "You are not allowed to be this sweet. Or cheesy."

"Sorry. You're the one who made me immortal, so you're kind of stuck with this forever. A slew of lifetimes of sweet cheese."

"Hand me that box," Theo said, finally looking up and letting me see his smile. I handed the band to him and he stroked over the pale metal. His touch was so soft that you'd never know those same fingers could bend and twist that metal with absolutely no effort.

"You know, if you wear that to work," I started, hoping to appeal to his mischievous side, "it'll cause quite a stir. The vampire owner/vice president is entering into a same-sex marriage?! Scandalous."

Theo's "grandfather" had founded not a small publishing house back in the day. Theo had left and let it run itself for a while, but he was back in the game, out of the coffin, out of the closet, and did whatever he wanted around that place.

"Honey, that's not even the in the top five hundred scandalous things I could think of doing. Besides. I like being the topic of conversation." He was smirking at me.

"So what then?"

"Lydia."

"Huh?" Because seriously, huh? Why would Lydia be anything but ecstatic? They'd been best friends since, if my math is right, and it always is, nineteen oh fucking one. She wanted him happy.

Theo took a large, unnecessary breath and backed away from me a little. Oh, shit.

"I can't be your fiance, as much as I want to. I won't be able to marry you until... well."

"Spit it out!" I hadn't meant to sound so harsh, but I could feel my imaginary heart rate increase with every drawn out syllable.

"I can't marry you until I divorce Lydia."

"That..." That had not been what I was expecting. At all.

He didn't even give me a chance to ask. "It was in the thirties, okay? And we needed to book passage on a ship and they wouldn't sell us first class tickets because they only had one cabin available and they wouldn't let us live in sin, okay? I had to marry her to get us on. We got married on deck that night and told them it was our honeymoon suite."

I just looked at him for a fucking minute. Why had this never come up before? Especially when I'd been half-convinced they were a couple. Jesus. Could they even make people get married to buy tickets? My mind was racing.

All I could say was, "You're fucking kidding."

"Of course I'm fucking kidding!" Theo spit laughter and fell backward onto the bed for a moment before surging up again and grabbing me from behind, dragging me back down. I elbowed him in the ribs, hard.

"Theo! What the fuck. We were having a serious conversation!"

"I know, I know. I'm sorry, iubit," he said, placing kisses on my cheek.

"So," I grumped. "Is there a real reason you won't wear my ring or were you just trying to fuck with me?"

"I was just trying to fuck with you, to be honest. It is a little weird for me, and very fast. Doesn't mean it isn't right. And we do need to talk about Lydia and Anna before we show up to meet them tonight while wearing our rings."

"So you'll wear it?" I asked, excitedly.

"Of course, my heart," he replied. "But, I have been running with Lydia for most of my life. And Anna has become mine, too. You know? I don't want them to feel like they're losing us. I don't want them to feel like I'm choosing to be yours instead of theirs."

"Oh, baby," I started, but he stopped me.

"So, I want to include them in this. Not in a Penthouse Letters kind of way, but... I want them to know it's not us or them, you know?" He flopped onto his stomach and reached under his side of the bed, pulling out a small bag from Tiffany's.

He sat up then, crossing his legs and motioning for me to sit across from him. One by one, he pulled four boxes out and opened them. The first two held necklaces with tiny Claddagh symbols on them. The second two had leather-roped bracelets with the same symbol gleaming from the middle of the braids.

"You know Lydia's Gaelic, right? This symbol... it means love and loyalty. It's the ultimate representation of it, actually. I want us all to have a bit of jewelry tying us up together."

I reached out and touched the biggest bracelet. "You're such a liar," I whispered.

"What?" he asked in amusement.

"You're not just capable of love. You're actually really good at it."

"Shut the fuck up. Stop trying to ruin this. Jesus," he laughed at me. But he leaned over and put a kiss on my lips. "So. I'll wear your ring. I'll marry you as soon as we legally can, but in the meantime, just know that I mean forever, okay? I'm yours. I'm only yours. As long as we can be theirs."

He pulled the bracelet I was examining out of the box and looped it around my right wrist. I looked down at it and smiled. "Theo, I know. There's no us without them. You're all my family, and I don't want it any other way."

"Good," He put his own bracelet on. "It's important."

"It is," I agreed getting his ring out of the box. The space beside it was unoccupied, as I hadn't taken mine off since he'd said yes earlier that morning. I looked up into his eyes and grabbed his left hand. "Can I?"

"Please." He smiled at me, brighter than moonlight as I slid the ring home.

"Marry me," I demanded.

"Not the marrying kind," he said, coyly.

"Do it anyway," I said and pulled him into my lap.

"Yes, sir."