Chapter 10
?
My hubris must hold in these trying times.
Kyran
Morana has a shrine of me in her bedroom.
Morana tastes like peaches. Morana is still wearing a shirt I haven’t sold for three years—and she is wearing little else.
Morana has bruises in the shape of my fingers on her body.
Morana is seated next to me, at the kitchen table, in a hard chair. Morana kissed me.
Dazed, probably for the rest of my life, I watch Morana fill out an Ever or Never sheet, which asks about things that you’re supposed to guess whether or not your partner has done.
So far, she’s decided that I’m a hardened criminal who steals and gets kicked out of establishments.
Even though.
You know.
I almost broke the bare-minimum promise I made to her about how I’d not be using this playful disregard for boundaries scheme as a means to get in her pants, yet she’s not even kicked me out of her house.
Conclusion?
Obsessed.
Like, really obsessed.
Probably met my match obsessed.
Settling my chin in my hand, I stare at her neck and swallow hard. I broke a blood vessel. I must’ve bit her harder than I thought. I’m such a…moron.
A horrible, no good, rotten idiot, that’s me.
But—a cuss erupts between my brows—she looks so good with my handiwork on her.
Fighting through the endless haze, I catch my thoughts with weathered lassos, reeling them in beneath a torrential downpour of insanity.
She likes me.
A lot.
She kissed me.
She wants me.
She wants me with a desperation that I can relate to.
And now?
Now we’re playing couple’s games together, in the middle of the night.
Before the end of this, we’re going to know things about each other that could make or break the emotional and practical side of a relationship. Very obviously, we’ve got chemistry. For days. Weeks. Months and years and lifetimes, even.
I wish I trusted myself enough to touch her right now. I wish I knew whether or not she would hate me for daring to. I so badly want to run my thumb across the mark on her neck and revel in how it got there.
Every time I blink, I relive her body on mine, her perfect weight cushioning me beneath her as her mouth does horrible wonderful things.
She finishes the worksheet, and I ready myself for the fun distraction, but something else lights in her expression, and she says, “Oh.”
“Oh?” I echo as she stands, heads to the other side of the kitchen, and opens a cabinet.
This woman who thinks it’s possible for me to grow bored of her returns with a bottle of vitamin C tablets. Cheeks alluringly pink, she shakes two tablets out and offers them to me. “In case either of us is coming down with something.”
Blinking, I take the orange tablets, hold them, and stare as she downs two of her own.
Is she…
Positively charmed, I say, “Are we going to need to take medicine every time we kiss?”
She flinches, sitting heavily back down in her chair. “No.”
I nod, sagely. “Just the first time, then. All consecutive times we’ll have already been way too up in one another’s germs for it to matter.”
She rolls her eyes. “No.” Breath enters her as she straightens the Ever or Never sheet before her. “No more kissing.”
My heart genuinely sinks, but I keep my tone casual. “Mistress, there are kinder ways to kill a man.”
“I’m sure there are.”
I spin the pretty pink pen I used to fill out my answers in a circle on the table. “You’d not use them, though, would you? You want to watch me suffer. You’d like to hear me beg.” I pause, then add, “More than I already have tonight.”
The pink in her cheeks tips toward crimson, and she frowns at me before reading off, “Has your partner ever stolen something. Yes. You have. You’re a thief of scones.”
First of all, I asked. Second of all, I did say out loud I thieved, so I guess I can’t exactly argue. “I also put yes.”
“Ha.” She smiles. “I haven’t. I’m a perfect, law-abiding—”
“My lips beg to disagree.”
She chokes on her words.
I grow warm and find myself in a strange state of thorough happiness as I murmur, “Good thing you’re a fan of me begging, huh?”
Voice wavering, she proceeds valiantly, “Has your partner ever gone skinny dipping. I put yes. Probably in public, too. At a beach, I bet.”
“As if I’d ever put on such a show like that. Or go outside. To a beach. The sun is much too sun there. Since I am answering honestly in a desperate attempt to prove I know something about you…I put no. You strike me as…almost a perfect, law-abiding citizen.”
She cuts her gaze off me.
I wait.
She coughs.
“You’re joking,” I say.
“I don’t know if it counts.”
“You’re joking.”
“I was, like, seven or something. And! For the record! I almost drowned.”
“You have gone swimming naked?” Shut the front door. I am so glad she didn’t kick me out. So glad.
“Again,” she grits, “I was like seven! Mom, Dad, Mae, and I were on vacation. The hotel had a pool. I’m pretty sure I was on the verge of both heatstroke and stupidity.
My wet swimsuit was driving me crazy, so.
” She fidgets. “I…took it off. Along with the somewhat important floatation devices known, scientifically, as…” Her voice grows quiet.
“…water wings.” Eyes lowered, she painfully and adorably says, “I then tried to get back to swimming, because I have never in my life found myself in possession of a brain cell.”
“Wow.”
Her dear face scrunches. “I know. I was an idiot.”
“You went skinny dipping in a public pool.” I frame my cheeks with my hands and lean against the table, enraptured. “That’s such bad girl behavior. I… Why, I’m smitten.”
She cringes. “Stop looking at me like that. Put your hands down. You are not a school girl.”
“For you, I could be.”
“Wha—” She rustles her dark hair. “What does that even mean?”
“It’s not obvious?” Notice me, senpai.
She bites out, “I thought that statement was ableist.”
“You’re right. It is. I apologize. Please don’t cancel me.”
“Ugh.” Her lip juts in her scowl, bringing back my queen, my love, my angel—the tiny divot I adore. “Just explain your stupid thoughts.”
“Gladly. I would wear a uniform for you.”
Her eye twitches.
“Are you fighting to tell me not to encroach on Sigma’s maid gag?”
She sucks in a slight breath.
“Do you also watch Enigma, then? Or am I special? I didn’t get a chance to look for other gamers’ merch in your room before…mm. Yeah.”
She bites her bottom lip, and this is giving me life. Until, of course, she deigns to break my heart. “You’re not special. I watch most of the WonderCraft server.”
Oh? Is that so? A complete and utter nerd, are we? Heaven help me, that’s cute.
I glance at her shirt, my shirt. The merch drop from three years ago… “I got you into WonderCraft, didn’t I? I only joined this past year.” I point. “That shirt is—”
“Yes,” she hisses, huffing. “I followed you to WonderCraft, season nine, and your collabs with the other members before that were what first got me interested in some of their other videos, but I couldn’t get into the Minecraft server until you joined because there was just so much history, and I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of it until you started making it with them.
” She pauses for a quivering breath. “Is that what you want to hear? That you are my favorite?”
I smile; the action works its usual magic on her. I say, “Yes, well, obviously.”
Her eyes close. “Well…there you have it, then. You, FrostPlays, are my…favorite.”
My smile broadens. I bring my attention back to Ever or Never. “Never have I ever stalked an ex online. But I bet you have.”
“I got yours right,” she murmurs. “You got mine only if it not being my ex counts.”
“Maelin’s?”
“Maelin’s,” she confirms, disgust rising.
“Do you have any exes?” I ask. A low simmer of jealousy bubbles up inside me at the very idea of her doing what we just did with someone else. Logically, I know she was great and that implies a practice that came from somewhere, but I hate it.
Her disposition turns somber.
“That many?” I murmur, low.
Her head shakes. “No. No one… No one’s ever really been interested in me, like that.”
My eyes widen as my smile disintegrates. “What?”
She snatches another worksheet, the compatibility test, and begins scratching in her first answer. “You heard me.”
I did. I did hear her. No exes. No one interested in her romantically. What…
I turn, looking out the kitchen archway, toward her bedroom, where marvelous, dangerous, wonderful, magical things took place.
How?
“Morana, was this…was that your first real kiss?”
Her face crumples. “Oh, ew. No. Don’t be stupid.”
Right, yes. Of course.
I get my own compatibility test sheet.
And do not at all mention how, if we’re talking first real proper kisses…it was mine.
The only reason I was any good at it, I’m convinced, is because I have spent many, many, many nights practicing in my mind exactly what I would do to her if given the chance.
At some point amid my attempts to regain intellect, I come to a sickening conclusion and say, “If that wasn’t your first kiss, how can you have no exes?”
“Because,” she mutters, “you have to be dating to be considered exes… He was just some…horrible guy in high school. He lead me on. Only wanted me for the physical stuff. Then, when I was all used up…you know.” She lifts a shoulder.
“He left.” Her lips press together and her pen stills for a moment.
“There was never any of this sort of thing. Any of this…getting to know each other stuff. There were just whirlwind moments of attraction. Back behind school building mistakes. And too many stupid choices to excuse the fact he never seemed to have a single free moment outside of…whatever.” She goes back to writing.
“Before you ask, no. That moron wasn’t the person I trusted who left.
He taught me other bad lessons and probably laid a foundation to drive home the pretty depressing worldview I’ve put together, but that guy wasn’t doing a single thing for me emotionally. ”
My stomach tightens. “I’m sorry.”
“I just have bad luck with friends and optional relationships, Kyran. I pick poorly. It’s not that big of a deal.”
I think it is. I think it’s a huge deal.
I think that some idiot hurt my wife, and now I have pieces to pick up and kiss back together.
Anything that shatters someone is a big deal.
Worse, I hate knowing that the reason she stopped me earlier wasn’t because she wasn’t ready or because she wants to have a closer emotional connection with me before we go that far.
I’d bet anything it’s because she was scared I’d use her up then leave her, too.
And that?
That really pisses me off.
“Morana.”
She tenses. “What? Why are you suddenly so serious? You’re using a pink glitter pen, for crying out loud. You shouldn’t sound like that.”
“I’m going to say something, and then we’re just going to ignore it and learn how we’re perfectly compatible, okay?”
“Yikes.” Wary, she watches me, braced for whatever nonsense I might come up with this time. “What?”
I take a breath, focus on the compatibility test. “I want you in my bed forever. I want to find new places to love you every day. There are endless ways to touch you. I know, because I’ve spent a hundred trillion waking moments thinking of them.
I will never run out of ideas on how I could make you come apart for me.
But that’s not even what matters, because beyond it all, beyond the millions of fantasies and all the new ones I’ll never stop inventing, there is you.
” I lift my gaze off the page, fix it on her.
“And you are even more limitless than all of that. Had an hour ago gone differently, I would have stayed with you all night, woken up to make you breakfast, and then sat right here with you, dazed and delirious, while we talked over these same worksheets and I asked you when you wanted to get married. In my mind, we already are forever. And for all my faults, Morana? Commitment isn’t one of them. ”