10. Chapter 10
Choosing, Sort Of
Dasher
Once the wreckage cleared, Santa’s elves gave me a room of my own.
It was small and plain, with wooden walls and a single window that never seemed to stop falling in this place.
I spent most of the night pacing it the way I’d paced Meredith’s living room, restless in a body that didn’t feel like mine no matter how many days I wore it.
I didn’t expect the knock.
I rushed to the door, my baser instincts certain of who stood on the other side before I opened it.
There she was, her hair loose past her shoulders, arms wrapped around herself against the chill of the hallway.
Her eyes were glassy and red-rimmed from tears.
She’d clearly spent the last several hours in a difficult place and hadn’t fully come back from it yet.
“Hi,” she said, her voice low. She had no way of knowing her one simple word had me melting like putty in her hands.
“Hi.” I didn’t trust myself to say more than that.
I didn’t trust my hands not to touch her and pull her against me, so I kept them at my sides instead of reaching for her like I yearned to do.
After she left, Dasher and I talked more, and his warning sat fresh in my skull.
“Let her come to you, don’t chase, not now.
Don’t push, you’ve done enough of that already. ”
“Can I come in?”
I stepped back from the door before she finished asking.
She moved past me into the small room, and I watched her take it in.
Her first glance was to the narrow bed, then the lone window, before landing on the bare walls.
“For now, this is my place, and they said I could decorate it if I wanted to, because apparently I’m never going back to my planet.
” I sighed, and though Dasher’s words lingered, I decided to take a chance.
“Besides, nothing about this place felt worth settling into.”
Her shoulders eased a fraction. “Oh.”
My hand rested on the door. “Want it open or closed?”
She shrugged. “Closed,” she said, walking to the window. “I talked to Noelle,” she said, not looking at me, her gaze transfixed on the snow falling. “She told me things. About what’s happening to us, and where we go from here. She told me what it means, long-term.”
“I know some of it. Not all.” I stayed by the door, giving her the room she seemed to need. “Dasher told me the parts he thought I could stomach hearing.”
“Did he tell you I will stop aging?” She turned then, and I watched her watch my face for the answer, her eyes sharp, like she needed to see whether I already knew and had kept it from her.
“No.” I lowered my voice. “He didn’t tell me that.”
Something in her posture loosened at my words, as if she needed to confirm I wasn’t lying or hiding the truth from her.
“It’s forever, Dash, and not as a figure of speech.
Whatever I look like the day this… whatever this is…
this bond fully happens, that’s what I look like for as long as you’re alive.
Which, from what Noelle says, is a very long time. ”
“What?”
“We’re tied together the moment the bond snaps into place.”
“Well, shit.” Every part of me screamed out to touch her, yet I didn’t reach for her.
I wanted to close the distance between us and hold on until the fear disappeared from her eyes.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” I admitted.
“What am I supposed to say? I mean, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
Anything I say is going to sound like I’m asking you to give up your whole life for the sake of mine. ”
“That’s exactly what it is,” she sighed. “And I keep trying to be angry about it, but I keep not quite getting there.”
“What?” I ran my hands through my hair. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“The anger doesn’t stick the way I think it should.
” She crossed the room, her steps slow and deliberate, stopping close enough that I could smell her.
I shut my eyes and inhaled, allowing her scent to permeate my body.
As I did, I felt rejuvenated. Her. Meredith.
Only she could complete me. She had the same underlying scent that had pulled me through two walls and a chase through snow, but this time it didn’t send my blood into a wild animal panic or frenzy.
This time it just settled deep in a space in my chest that had been off-balance since the moment I woke up wrong-shaped in these woods.
“I’m not saying yes, Dash. Not the full yes, not the forever kind.
I don’t think I can promise you that yet. ”
“Okay.” I meant it. Whatever it cost me to mean it, I meant it. If I had to die, then I had to die. I was nothing without her.
“But... I’m not saying no either.” Her hand came up, rested flat against my chest, right over the spot where my heart had been slamming since she walked through that door.
“I came back to you tonight because I wanted to. Not because some bond pulled me here, and not because I was scared of what happens if I don’t.
I wanted to see you. That's the only thing I’m sure of right now. ”
I covered her hand with mine, my movement gentle. She might still change her mind and pull hers back. “That’s enough for me.”
“Is it?”
“For tonight, it’s enough.” I turned my head and pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist, the same way I covered her hand.
My motions were slow and deliberate, nothing like the wild hunger that had driven me through a wall days before.
This time, touching her felt different, and I wanted her to feel that difference too.
I wanted my hands to say what my mouth didn’t have words steady enough to manage.
“I don’t need a promise of forever tonight, Meredith. I just need you to stay.”
“I’ll stay.” She took my hand in hers and squeezed. “I’ll stay,” she whispered.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
Her free hand snaked up my jaw, drawing me into a kiss that started soft and stayed soft.
For the first time, I felt no animal desperation clawing at the edges of my senses.
I gave in to her touch. The kiss was unhurried in a way that let me feel every small thing about her I didn’t have the presence of mind to notice before.
I loved the way her breath hitched when my mouth found the curve of her ear, and I smiled when her fingers threaded into my hair, tugging at it.
I peeled her sweater off in ?slow motion, watching her face the whole time, giving her every chance to stop me. She didn’t stop me, just reached for the buttons of my borrowed flannel shirt with hands that trembled only a little, and undressed me with the same careful attention I was giving her.
We ended up on the narrow bed with the window full of falling snow behind us, and I took my time with her in a way I hadn’t let myself the first night.
This time, I had all my faculties, and I wanted to memorize her.
I spent time mapping her with my mouth like I meant to remember every inch of her delicious body, and I grew impossibly hard at the soft gasp wrenched from her mouth when I found the spot just under her ribs.
I refused to take her then, but noted the way her back arched when my hand slid up her thigh, nothing about it rushed or desperate.
“Dash.” My name came out of her low, half a question, half something closer to a plea, and I lifted my head to find her eyes on mine, dark and wide and stripped of every ounce of the guarded distance she’d carried in the door with her.
“I’ve got you,” I told her, the same thing she’d said to me in that first ruined room, and settled myself over her, giving her every chance to change her mind.
She didn’t say a word.
Her hands found my back, pulled me down, and when I sank into her, buried to the hilt in her warmth, she made a sound that undid something in my chest. Our breathing was quiet, nothing like the wild noise of that first night, something closer to relief.
“Claim me,” she whispered against my ear, barely a breath, like she’d surprised herself with the words as much as she’d surprised me.
I understood, even without her spelling it out, that she wasn’t handing me forever.
She was handing me tonight, whole and unguarded, and asking me to be worthy of it.
I would be worthy of her. Whatever cosmic forces brought us together, I would spend the rest of my life proving myself worthy of her.
I moved my hips back so just the tip of my engorged cock remained inside her wet heat before plunging back into her depths.
I watched her face the entire time, memorizing the exact moment her eyes fell shut and her lips parted around my name.
When she came apart under me, it wasn’t loud or frantic; it was quiet and a total submission.
Her whole body curled toward mine because she trusted me enough to catch her.
I followed soon after, burying my face against her throat, right where I’d first tasted her, and held her through the last of it with a tenderness I hadn’t known I possessed in any form.
Afterward, she curled against my side with the snow still falling outside the window. Peaceful silence fell between us, easy in a way nothing had been easy since the moment I first caught her scent on the wind.
“This doesn’t mean I’ve decided,” she said into the dark, her voice heavy with sleep.
“I know.” I pressed a kiss into her hair, unhurried. “You don’t have to decide tonight. Just stay until morning. Let me prove to you as many times as you want me to, that I can be the one for you.”
She stayed until morning. I lay awake most of the night, watching the snow, feeling her steady breathing rise and fall against my chest. I thought that whatever came after this—whichever option she chose, whatever it cost either of us—I would remember this night as the first time anything had been given to me, rather than taken.