22 #3
Well… I wasn’t most people, and what I’d said to Thorn was the truth. Most wouldn’t take the risk, but this was about more than it was the right thing to do given my situation. His uncle wasn’t what was right for Starhaven.
I was exhausted when the meetings wrapped up but still did the side chats and everything. Onyx jumped in on the one with some western areas that were on the ocean or close to because there were some fishing issues… With a neighbor that the elders had ruined our relationship with.
I made a point that I hoped they really heard me that instances like this were why Thovudin couldn’t pretend to be an island or the only ones in our world. I knew they agreed, but speaking out on that probably would have been too difficult before.
Bullshit. They were weak. Dray had spoken up on it and more.
Onyx glanced at his phone and frowned. “Excuse me, I need to make a call. Apparently, there’s a problem with my replacement at the university.” He glanced at me. “Can I join your training in the morning with Belinda? I really do want to see if I can help given my education.”
“If she’s open to it,” I agreed. “Otherwise, it’s always nice to have more help to get me in and out of her torture devices.”
“I heard that,” Belinda drawled from a few conversations over.
I wasn’t the only one who snorted.
Onyx leaned in a bit like he wasn’t sure if he was welcome, but I leaned in too and gave him my cheek.
He seemed happy with that. “Please get some rest, okay? You’ve worked enough for ten people today and forty this week.
You can’t handle all of our problems if you don’t take care of yourself and rest.”
“I will. Myriam and Velle are going to work on the budgets after the updates and—I can rest tonight.”
“Good. See you in the morning.”
He was a smart man who was smirking on my couch when I arrived up in my suite a bit later. Yeah, he was a good actor… For a dragon. I made a point to say that all of the tigers and wolves had immediately busted him and luckily they were well trained to handle those kinds of fibs.
“I keep forgetting how they scent it all,” he grumbled, almost pouting. He stood and came over to me. “There are a few roses that I don’t think fit the arrangements. What do you say we use them in a nice relaxing bath?”
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the roses were fine and it was just an excuse to take a bath with me. I told him that I should kick him out for getting me subpar roses and he burst out laughing and swooped me up in his arms, growling that I was too much sometimes.
The bath was fantastic, and apparently I was very into someone washing me, especially my hair… Except he did it wrong.
“I’m doing something wrong, aren’t I?” he hedged after a few more minutes. He turned me and kissed me when I didn’t say anything. “Sagan, I don’t ever want you to feel like you can’t tell me things, even something like this. I want us to be stronger than that—better for each other than that.”
I melted and kissed him. “I need a trim and to figure out who my stylist will be. How about when I do, they give you a lesson on how to deal with lots of heavy hair?”
“Whatever you want, baby girl,” he chuckled.
“Whatever I want?” I purred, licking my lips. “There’s a lot I currently want.”
“If it involves my tongue in your sweet pussy then we want the same thing.”
Apparently, we did.
Repeatedly.
I touched him too and he really, really liked finishing on me, the joke of getting me dirty after a bath awkwardly cute. But then we stared at each other for a long time and there was so much we clearly wanted to say but weren’t ready to.
Or that was what I was feeling?
“I can’t even tell you how much I want you and it feels so right to move forward, but all I keep thinking about is one of those fuckers could figure it out and ruin our first time together and I…
” He swallowed loudly. “But then it seems like the wrong reason to wait or let them influence what we have and I sort of spin out from there.”
I sighed. Heavily. “Yeah, I’m feeling the same.” I curled up into him. “I’m sorry I got us busted. Myriam is right and I need to work on that.”
He sighed this time. “I know you should as queen, but watching you blush when you’re—fuck, it’s so sexy.
Knowing you blush because you’re into me too and—I don’t want you to change that.
I want you to be you. I just want you to be who you are and I hate that you have to curb any of it. I really do.”
I think that was the moment I realized I had feelings for Onyx too. Not just the crush on the nameless professor from my early college days. Not an attraction to him or thinking he was sexy. Not chemistry and our naked time was amazing.
Him. I had feelings for him—the whole package and who he was.
Okay, fine, I’d probably realized it before, but… That my feelings were strong enough to look past him being Kole’s uncle?
I wasn’t sure, but something changed and it was good.
It was good unless he broke my heart and then it would be much harder to recover from.