Sigil #4
Tanyn had been practically silent during dinner, pensive and aloof.
So much so, I gave up attempting conversation and decided to concentrate on the thick, juicy steak, buttered haricots verts, spiced small potatoes and light, fluffy roll (clearly, his Cook-Companion supplier was high end).
This was followed by the most delicious apple bread pudding covered in custard, I needed to ask who his purveyor was.
Sure, I didn’t usually eat this heavily.
Then again, I wasn’t usually in sub-zero weather in an abode whose temperature control wasn’t up to snuff, and therefore I would require anything available to retain body heat, including making it digest a huge-ass meal.
After dinner, Tanyn and I shared an awkward drink before he said it was late, and we should go to bed.
The nerves came back because we were going to sleep together in his room, it was part of the compatibility trial.
Everything went wonky when we got up there, though, when he said, “Since you’ll probably need longer, I’ll take the bathroom first.”
He didn’t kiss me. He didn’t attempt to seduce me.
He went into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
This left me in a room that was much like the rest of the citadel.
Small. Heat from the fire assisting whatever clearly rickety temperature control apparatus they had installed.
Dark, heavy, careworn furnishings, including a four-poster curtained bed that was very tall but not very large.
It’d fit us both with a little room to move, but not much.
That thought gave me a different kind of shiver.
Everywhere in the citadel, the color scheme included dark reds, blues, greens, browns and oranges.
In here, it was mostly blues, browns and oranges.
It was attractive. It made me want to cuddle up in that bed with all those pillows under that heavy duvet and thick-knitted throw with the fire burning and read a book, laze…
Or make love.
Color me stunned that even if everything had once been obviously expensive and now was used and worn and lived-in, probably because it was culled from somewhere else and not brought here new, if Tanyn wasn’t acting so strange, I knew I would like it here.
Sure, being alone on a remote isle that, in the unlikely event every other being dropped dead and the tech went out, unless Dad sent a rescue, I’d have to fashion a spear and learn how to gut a fish, felt a little wild.
Mostly, it felt nice to be in this comfy castle with the kindly beings who looked after it, alone with a hot male and nothing to do but just…be.
I was a girl on the go.
It was nice to just…be.
I experienced a major blip when Tanyn emerged from the bathroom in nothing but a pair of navy pajama pants, his wide, ripped, tanned, hairless chest on display, and maybe (definitely) my mouth watered a bit (okay, way more than a bit).
But I’d scurried into the bathroom.
And now was now.
I was about to meet him in bed.
We were about to have sex.
And I had to suck at it.
I couldn’t say every demon was great in the sack.
What I could say was, we were hot-blooded and lusty, so it was rare, and from all reports, I was not part of that exception.
How was I going to suck in bed when, okay, I had to face it, I wanted to have sex with the male in it?
I was just going to have to figure a way to do it.
I had no choice.
This was a crucial part of my plan and becoming more crucial with every moment I spent with him, seeing as it seemed nothing put him off.
I took a fortifying breath, headed out, turning the light off as I did so.
Hurley, who was lying on the floor beside Tanyn, lifted his head and sent a smiley pant my way.
Tanyn was in bed, covers up to his waist, tapping on a tablet hovering in front of him.
He didn’t even look at me in my slinky nightgown.
I wandered to the other side of the bed, pulled the covers back and climbed in, settling for the first time beside my fiancé.
He again didn’t so much as glance at me.
He said, still tapping the tablet, “I need to review these and send them off so my team can deal with them tomorrow. Can you sleep with the light on?”
I could not.
“No.”
Only then did he turn to me. “Do you have a night mask?”
I shook my head.
“Right,” he murmured, threw the covers back, went to the closet, came out wearing another sweater and some socks on his feet, and he whistled to Hurley as he started to the door.
Uh.
Wait.
What was happening?
“I’ll be careful not to wake you when I return,” he said.
And then he was gone.
I stared at the closed door.
He would be sure not to wake me when he returned?
We weren’t going to have sex?
I should be happy for this reprieve.
I was not, because I’d psyched myself up for this, and now he just…
Left.
Maybe something big was happening with his realm. Something confidential he couldn’t share with me. Something that would weigh on his mind and make him act like he was acting.
Or maybe he’d gone off me.
Maybe those two big suitcases for two days away were that shade too far.
But if so, why did I have a sick feeling in my stomach?
I shoved that aside, moved into his space on the bed to manually turn out the light (nearly everything here was manual, and another shocker, that didn’t bug me), I turned off mine, and I settled in with the light from the fire gracing the room.
I stared at the paisley canopy of the bed.
It took some time (and in that time, Tanyn didn’t return), but I finally fell asleep.