Chapter 15 #2
It was such a deliberate, careful thing to say. I was going to do something embarrassing if I wasn't careful, like cry, which would completely ruin the mood.
"Yes," I said. "That's something I want."
He leaned toward me and I leaned toward him and we both miscalculated the angle simultaneously, our noses bumping in a way that was entirely undignified.
"Sorry," I breathed, laughing despite myself.
"Don't be," he said, and the warmth in his voice reached his eyes. He adjusted his angle, one large hand coming up to cup my jaw with impossible care, and kissed me.
There was nothing tentative about it this time.
He kissed me like someone who'd spent days thinking about exactly how to do this, with attention and intent and a patience that made it more electric rather than less.
His mouth was warm and unhurried, and I leaned into him without deciding to, one hand finding his chest, feeling the slow steady thud of his heart beneath my palm.
When we broke apart, both of us breathing differently than we had been, he pressed his forehead to mine and said nothing for a moment.
"Still with me?" I asked.
"Very much," he said, and the quiet certainty in his voice settled something I hadn't quite let myself rest until then.
He stood, and I stood with him, and he offered me his hand rather than sweeping me off my feet, which told me more about who he was than any grand gesture could have.
I took it, and we walked back to the cave together in a silence that felt like the beginning of something rather than the absence of words.
Inside, the afternoon light came through the cave entrance in long golden bars, the kind that makes everything look like it exists slightly outside of ordinary time.
Enslak had made this place genuinely comfortable over the weeks, the bedding thick and soft with layered grasses and thermal blankets, the space arranged with an attention to my comfort that I'd never quite been able to acknowledge out loud without feeling like I might come apart.
He turned to face me, and I watched him take a breath. Deliberate. Grounding himself.
"We don't have to do anything tonight," he said. "What we just did was enough."
"I know," I said. "But it's not all I want."
His eyes warmed. "What do you want?"
I stepped toward him. "I want to keep going. I want to feel close to you. And I want to know what you want at every step, not just right now. Can you do that?"
"Yes," he said immediately, and then more slowly, like he was testing the weight of it: "I want to be with you, Niki.
Not because I'm lonely or because you've been kind to me.
" His jaw worked briefly. "Because you're the person I want.
Specifically. Because of the bird comparisons and the tuber throwing and the way you looked at me the morning you first brought flowers into the conversation. "
"I brought flowers," I said. "You never mentioned them."
"I noticed everything," he said simply.
That undid me more thoroughly than any practiced line could have.
I reached up and drew him down to me, and he came willingly, lowering himself to the bedding beside me with that careful attention to the size difference between us that he always maintained. One hand settled at my waist, warm and certain.
"Tell me if you want to stop," I said.
"I will," he said. "Tell me what you need."
"I'll tell you," I said.
And I did.
What followed was unhurried and honest and more intimate than I'd known how to want before this.
He was attentive in ways that felt chosen rather than instinctive, pausing at each transition to check in with a look or a word or a simple question, and I answered him each time because I wanted to, because his asking was part of the whole thing rather than an interruption of it.
He touched me like he had time, which was disorienting in the best possible way.
His hands were large and warm, the slight roughness of his palms sending shivers up my skin as he mapped the lines of my body with a patience that made my breath shallow.
Every new point of contact felt deliberate, offered for consideration before he continued.
"Good?" he asked, and his voice was low, private.
"Very good," I said, and pulled him closer.
His body was all warmth and solid muscle, the contrast between his size and his carefulness something I couldn't stop noticing.
He was always so aware of the strength he was holding back, the claws kept carefully angled away, the weight of him distributed so that I never felt trapped.
He gave me room to move, to direct, to tell him what I wanted, and when I did, he listened.
I told him. I asked for what I wanted and he gave it to me, and when his mouth found me and made me lose the thread of coherent thought entirely, I held onto him like he was the only solid thing in the world and he held me in return with exactly the steadiness I needed.
When we finally came together, the stretch of accommodating him was intense and real and entirely welcome, and I watched his face as we found our rhythm. His eyes stayed on mine. Not possessive, not claiming, just present. There. Choosing this exact moment.
"Okay?" he said.
"More than okay," I said. "Keep going."
He laughed, low and warm, and the sound of it vibrated through both of us. That was when I understood that we were genuinely here together, both of us fully in this, and that nothing was happening to either of us that we hadn't decided to want.
After, we lay pressed together in the cave's amber light, my cheek on his chest, his arm a warm weight across my back. His breathing slowed toward contentment, and mine followed, the way breathing always did when I was near someone whose rhythm I had absorbed without noticing.
Then something strange happened.
My heart stuttered. More than stuttered. It felt like it stopped for a fraction of a second and then restarted, not panicked but different, slightly changed, like it had found a new signature and settled into it. I pressed my hand against my sternum.
"Feel that?" I asked.
Enslak's hand was already at his own chest. "Yes." His voice was wondering rather than alarmed. "What is that?"
"I don't know." I propped myself up slightly to look at him. "Are you all right?"
"Yes." He considered it, his brow furrowing slightly. "Unusual. But not bad."
"Not bad," I agreed. I lay back down, pressing my ear to his chest to listen. His heartbeat was steady and deep, and underneath it was a new quality I didn't have a name for. "George will probably have an opinion about it."
"Healers always have an opinion," Enslak said, and I felt the low rumble of his voice against my cheek as much as heard it.
"He usually turns out to be right, which is annoying." I drew slow patterns on his chest with one finger. "It might be a mate bond thing."
Enslak was quiet for a moment. "I know about mate bonds." He said it carefully. "I remember enough. They're permanent, in the stories my father told."
"Yeah." I watched my finger trace a path across his sternum. "That's a big word."
"It is," he agreed. He wasn't pushing, just holding the thought with me.
"I don't know what it means for us yet," I said honestly. "I know what I feel right now, and I know that what happened tonight was something I chose and something I want to keep choosing. But I can't tell you it means everything is decided."
"I know," he said. "I don't need everything decided." His arm tightened slightly, not possessive but warm. "I have a habit of only being able to hold onto what's right in front of me. What's right in front of me is enough."
Something in my chest went quiet and full at the same time.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said, and I meant it as the specific, honest thing it was. Not a forever. A now. A choice I was making clearly, with both eyes open.
He pressed his lips to the top of my head. "I know."
Outside, Avalon was settling into evening, the insect chorus starting up in the trees, the temperature dropping by degrees that would have us pulling the blankets up within the hour. The light at the cave entrance had gone from gold to deep blue.
He reached for the thermal blanket and pulled it over us with one hand, tucking it carefully around my shoulders.
That same attentiveness. That same awareness of my comfort that had been consistent from the very beginning, when he barely had the language to express it.
I burrowed into the warmth of him and let myself have this moment without trying to classify it or contain it or resolve it into something neat.
Whatever this was, it was real, and it was ours, and we'd built it out of something honest. That was more than enough to be going on with.
I closed my eyes and listened to his heartbeat, and eventually I slept.