Borrowed Night #2
“Inconvenient,” he repeats. His thumb traces my cheekbone. Gentle. Careful. Like I’m something that matters. Something worth being careful with.
I hate that. I love that. I don’t know what to do with either.
“Very inconvenient,” I say, and then I stop talking, because his mouth is on mine.
It’s not a careful kiss. Not tentative. His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, and he pulls me closer like he’s been thinking about this. Like he’s been waiting.
I should say something. Make a joke. Deflect.
I don’t.
My hands find his chest—still damp, skin cool against my palms—and I feel his breath catch. That does something to me. The emperor, the man who commands armies and dragon fire and doesn’t flinch at assassination attempts, and I made his breath catch.
He deepens the kiss, and my thoughts scatter like startled birds.
His other hand finds my hip. Steadies me. Pulls me closer, or tries to—the bump complicates things, gets in the way, and we have to adjust, shift, figure out the geometry of two bodies and a third very opinionated presence between them.
We sink down onto the bedroll. His weight settles over me, careful, braced on his forearms so he’s not pressing—
This is where everything falls apart.
I realise I can’t lie on my back. The baby’s weight presses on my spine, makes me feel like I’m suffocating. My lungs shrink, the world narrows, and I have to push up almost immediately, gasping.
“Sorry—”
“No, I’m—”
“My back can’t—”
“I know. Here—”
I can’t lie on my stomach. Obviously. There’s a small human taking up residence in my midsection, and she has opinions about compression. Very loud opinions, judging by the immediate flurry of kicks when I even consider it.
My usual flexibility—the flexibility that has gotten me through windows and over walls and out of situations that required bending in ways the human body was not designed for—has been thoroughly compromised.
Joints that used to move without complaint now send sharp warnings.
My center of gravity is entirely theoretical at this point.
I’m not even sure I have a center of gravity anymore.
There are pillows involved. Adjustments. A negotiation about angles that sounds more like a military campaign than seduction.
“If you move your—”
“I can’t move my—there’s a—”
“What about—”
“My hip doesn’t do that anymore.”
“Since when?”
“Since your daughter decided to rearrange my internal organs.”
He pauses. “My daughter?”
“She’s your daughter when she’s causing problems.”
“And when she’s not causing problems?”
“Then she’s a collaborative effort.”
He laughs. Actually laughs—this short, startled sound that cracks through the careful composure he wears like armor. I’ve heard him laugh maybe three times in all the months I’ve known him. Every time, it does something dangerous to my chest. Something warm and wanting.
“That seems unfair,” he says.
“Life is unfair. Ask the woman currently trying to figure out how to—” I shift, wince. “No, that doesn’t work either.”
“What if we—”
“Tried that. Also no.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“I already know what you were going to suggest. It won’t work.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve been living in this body for eight months, and I know its current limitations very, very well.” I shift again, trying to find an angle that doesn’t make something hurt. “Trust me. The geometry does not work.”
“There must be—”
The baby kicks.
Strong enough that we both feel it. His hand is on my belly—has been for the last several minutes of negotiation—and his whole body goes still.
“Did she just—”
“Ignore it.”
“She’s awake.”
“She’s always awake. She’s been awake since the second trimester. I’m convinced she never sleeps. I think she’s plotting something in there.”
“But—”
“Ren.” I grab his face with both hands. Force him to look at me. “The baby is fine. The baby is protected by a wall of muscle and fluid and a magical prophecy that has survived six hundred and forty-five deaths. The baby does not have opinions about this.”
I pause. Consider.
“Actually, she probably does have opinions. She has opinions about everything. But her opinions are not relevant to the current situation.”
He doesn’t look entirely convinced.
“Focus,” I tell him. “On me. Not on the small creature currently treating my bladder like a training dummy.”
His jaw works. His eyes search mine. Whatever he finds there must be enough, because his shoulders drop a fraction, and his hands find my hips, and we try again.
A voice. From somewhere near the fire.
Ancient, amused, and deeply unwelcome.
“I am leaving now.”
Ren goes rigid. Not in a useful way.
“Was that—”
“Ignore him,” he says.
“The bond,” Tianlong continues from his perch on a rock by the flames, “does not discriminate. I feel what he feels. This was not information I required.”
I close my eyes. Open them. The dragon—small, golden, insufferably composed—has appeared near the fire like a judgmental ornament. His crystalline scales catch the light. His ancient eyes hold three thousand years of accumulated dignity, currently being severely tested.
“I did not ask to experience this,” he adds. “I wish to be very clear on that point.”
“Tianlong—” Ren starts.
“I have lived for three millennia. I have witnessed the rise and fall of dynasties. I have advised emperors and watched civilizations crumble to dust.” A pause weighted with profound offense. “I should not have to experience this through a bond I did not ask for and cannot sever.”
“Then leave,” I suggest.
“I am leaving. I am making an announcement about my leaving so that you are both aware of my restraint. Lesser dragons would have incinerated something by now.” He flows off the rock with wounded grace.
“I will be at the river. Judging you from a distance. A significant distance. Carry on with your... activities.”
“Tianlong,” Ren says, in the voice of a man who has been embarrassed by a three-thousand-year-old dragon more times than he can count.
“I said carry on.” Tianlong’s tail flicks. “You may thank me for my restraint at a later date. Preferably with offerings. Significant offerings. Something that acknowledges the trauma I have endured tonight.”
He disappears into the darkness with more wounded dignity than should be physically possible for a creature that size.
Silence.
“...Is he gone?”
“He’s gone.”
“I can’t believe your dragon is a voyeur.”
“He’s not a—he doesn’t want to—” Ren exhales, long and slow, and drops his forehead to my shoulder. “Can we stop talking about the dragon?”
“Happily.”
His breath is warm against my neck. I can feel the laugh he’s trying to suppress, shaking through his shoulders.
“This is not how I imagined this going,” he says against my skin.
“You imagined this?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“You imagined this. The emperor. Imagining. How very—”
“Lián.”
“Yes?”
“Stop talking.”
I grin into the darkness above his head. “Make me.”
We figure it out.
Because we’re both stubborn, both resourceful, and both too committed to give up now. Because eight centuries of surviving has made me very good at adaptation, and twenty-two years of ruling has made him very good at solving impossible problems, and between the two of us, we can manage anything.
Even this.