Free Icy Pretty Love by L.A Rose Page B

truth is, there’s an old couple arguing passionately behind us about who ate the last prune this morning, and I don’t want to be responsible for what Cohen would do if he was enclosed in a tiny lift with them for any amount of time. I signed up to make this man nice, not to be responsible for a decrease in the population of elderly tourists.
    I’ve handled a lot and I can handle a few damn stairs.
    Half an hour later, I realize my mistake. I cannot handle stairs. Stairs are the worst of all the bad things. Stairs are the devil.
    A few steps ahead of me, Cohen stops. He hasn’t even broken a sweat. I hate him with the fiery intensity of hell (which is full of stairs).
    “You okay?” he asks warily.
    “Of course I’m okay. Do I not look okay? I’m great,” I say. What actually escapes my mouth is a sound that can only be translated to: “Hnnnnggggaaaaaahhhaaaargh.”
    “What is that, German?” A tiny smirk has sprouted on the bastard’s face. “German, perhaps, for ‘I regret taking the stairs’?”
    “You’re enjoying this,” I hiss between wheezes like a hot air balloon going down.
    He shrugs. “You’ve been torturing me all day.”
    “Don’t you dare compare me making you be nice to the intricate cruelties of the stairs. They can hear you.” I bend down and pat one of the metal steps. “It’s okay, stairs. I know that you’re the grand master of torture. No need to visit your wrath upon us.”
    “Those are probably covered with spit,” Cohen observes.
    I whip my hand back. “Just another evil of the Stair God.”
    He sighs. I have no idea how he manages to maintain the kind of physical fitness that gives him the ability to climb these stairs without dying, especially considering the fact that he doesn’t sleep.
    I’m still wondering about this when he turns around and kneels.
    “Those are probably covered with spit,” I say wittily.
    “Shut up and get on my back.”
    “What?” He couldn’t have surprised me more if he’d revealed that I was already dead and that climbing stairs forever really was my own personal hell.
    “I said, get on my back. You’re taking too long and I want to get this over with.”
    I start laughing. “You’re kidding, right? You’re not going to carry me to the top of the Eiffel tower. You’ll keel over.”
    “Do it or I’m slinging you over my shoulder,” he snaps. I’m realizing that Cohen does not like to be told that he can’t do something.
    I weigh my options. Die of exhaustion from stair-climbing, or kill Cohen from the effort it would take to drag me vertically for half an hour and then climb over his cooling corpse. Well, survival of the fittest. Or, in this case, survival of the least fit.
    I climb one last stair and hop tentatively onto his back. It’s a good back, warm and strong. I wrap my arms around his neck. He guides my thighs into the crooks of his elbows and I stiffen.
    “Not a fan of being picked up?” he asks.
    “No, not really,” I lie to cover the fact that certain parts of me are very much a fan of being picked up.
    “I guarantee I’m even less of a fan of spending a minute more than I have to in this tourist-infested hellhole. Hold on.”
    He starts climbing. I inhale and his scent arrests me: crisp autumn, wood, sunlight sliding through trees. I don’t know what I expected him to smell like. Money, maybe. Goat sacrifices.
    “Are you sniffing me?” he asks.
    “No! Of course not! I’m insulted that you would presume such a thing.”
    “You just sniffed me again.”
    “You’re the one who spent the money on cologne, buddy.”
    After ten minutes of stairs, his breathing graduates from calm to slightly labored.
    “Do you want me to get off?”
    He grunts his refusal.
    I can feel his body working beneath me, the muscles in his back and sides shifting and tensing with each step. I slip a bit and he moves his hands to my thighs to keep me still, cupping them. His fingers make slight imprints in my skin. His neck is