Chapter 15 #3
Once he was done thrusting, once he was spent, he opened his mouth and licked over the place he’d bitten before carefully laying us on the bed to spoon while his barb took hold.
I felt the spark of pleasure pain the moment he crossed both his arms around me and held me tight.
I shivered, savoring the feeling of fullness.
His breath washed over my ear. “Does it…does it hurt? I’m sorry, sadir, I didn’t mean to.” He kissed the base of my skull.
“What, your barb? I like it; you know I do.”
“No, sweet thing. The bite. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. It’s… Bagua don’t normally do that unless it’s asked for.”
I reached up to the spot, which was tender in the best of ways, much like the rest of me would be once his barb went down.
“I liked it. Are you telling me bagua get all bitey in the sack?”
He clicked. “Not much anymore. Some do. It typically requires a splendid gift to be given when an unmated hangu-na is allowed it, smaller tokens for the mated ones if it’s their mate they bite.”
I craned my head back. “You’re telling me a mated bagu can just walk around and jump into bed with anyone, then bite them? That is so weird.”
He scoffed. “It isn’t like that at all. The biting is rarely done, but there are some who like it.”
“I liked it.” I thought about it. “You’re telling me I get a present every time you get to bite me?”
He chuckled. “Would you like that? Would you like it if I gave you a splendid gift like I would if I were courting you and you were just testing my skills?”
Clearly, he had no idea what he was doing. He was turning me into a monster, and I was going to let him.
“Yes! Oh yeah. I would like that a lot. A lot a lot. Can I get—no. You have to surprise me with something very splendid. Please? But not silly splendid. I meant what I said, you know. I’ll do my part.
I’ll work as a barista here on campus and introduce all your Raikengana buddies to coffee. I’ll contribute.”
Inkiri let out a loud, huffing laugh. “They would like that very much, I think, to have the pretty human koa with the red hair and green eyes tell them about coffee. But you don’t need to work, sadir.
I told you that, and I meant it.” He kissed the spot he’d bitten.
“We should talk about where you want to be soon, about what you wish me to do, whether I may remain in the Raiken or whether I should do something else. But we need not talk about it now.”
A jolt went through me, and of course that meant Inkiri held me tighter. “Wait, are you saying you would give up the Raiken for me?”
“Of course. In a heartbeat, as the human saying goes.”
“Oh my gosh. You’d stop working for me?”
“Yes.”
It was tempting. Would he stay home then? At the house in Canada with the ominous bunker in the yard?
But that wouldn’t be fair, and I knew that. “It matters what you want. I can’t decide for you. Everyone else matters too. Lissir helped translate back on Aer, from Kanker…”
“Kankarraz. We all speak the language, though Lissir speaks it like his first language.”
“Right. What if he wants to go be a translator?”
Inkiri sighed. “Isn’t it obvious already?
The sentenmen will not split up. Some do, when the time is right and circumstances call for it—you’re right about that.
But ours? Vergis has only just acknowledged he’s part of it, and we know how special you are, to this world and to Aer.
We’re sentenmen, we protect one another and those we all care about. We’ll stay together.”
The tears came. The clicking and cooing followed.
“Happy tears?” my mate, my perfect mate, asked.
I couldn’t speak. My throat closed up, and I didn’t know how to label all those emotions.
The land, carefully, suggested a kind of warmth, summer warmth, the thing that made the flowers open their petals as if it were the last summer day they would ever see.
It wasn’t anything I had a name for, but it worked.
I got the feeling the land wanted to hug me.
Humans had hurt it, and it had been hurting.
I had missed that hurt so totally, the land’s longing for someone like me.
But slowly, the land was recognizing that with me and my chosen mate, there came more people, people who readily honored me as its connection to those who lived on it.
Today is a future I thought would never be, the land said quietly in my mind. I never thought this would be possible.
I nodded even as I was comforted. It was the same for me, in a way. Faces flashed in my mind’s eye: my parents, my friends. My parents and aunt were fine, and maybe I would go see them again. They were my past though.
I didn’t miss my family, not really. Knowing that they were safe was enough for me.
It wasn’t that I hated them, my parents who’d made sure I’d always had an au pair to care for me and tuck me in at night, but they had never been my real family.
My guys and creepy Vergis, Kinnek in his skimpy shorts and Charles with his uninhibited way of getting naked in the bath, those people were my real family.
It had just taken me a little while to find them all.
I’m not ever letting them go, and you are helping me, I told the land with all the authority of a magical twink who knew dispensomancy.
The land sort of smiled at me, serenely, which was a weird thing to have happen in your mind.