Chapter 20 #2
“It doesn’t matter if there could be another potential mate bond out there for me, or in my future,” Zan says.
“What we already have is so strong I’d never settle for anything else.
And I’m not willing to try to feel it. You’re right that it’s only been a few days.
I want to have all the days to spend learning what vegetables you’ll actually eat willingly, and running my hand through your hair, and finding out all the different ways I can make your eyes flash with power.
“But I already know that for me, this isn’t a passing fancy. I don’t know everything about you yet, and I want to spend my life finding out. But I know who you are. And I know that I will always choose you.”
How can the same words make me want to melt and rage at the same time?
The latter is the one that I know what to do with, so I burst out, “Then why do think I might change and not want you anymore?”
“Because I want you to be sure.”
“I am sure, you thickheaded—”
“I have had five hundred years to decide who I want to be, Yora. You have so many decisions to make—”
“Yes, and this one is easy—”
“You shouldn’t have to rush into this,” Zan tells me. “You should have time. For you to find your footing on your own, for me to court you, and then for you to decide that I am a worthy addition to your life.”
I have had time.
I have the benefit of five hundred years of meditation to enable me to synthesize quickly now that I’m awake, and now that I’m awake, I want to move.
He has it backwards, I think. He’s the one who hasn’t had years of magical meditation—and a sage power—to enable him to trust what he feels.
Because he’s had those same five hundred years of no hope.
It will take him more time to believe in us as a reality, and not a dream.
What I really think he’s missing, though, is that I don’t want to establish a life by myself.
I’ve been alone with my thoughts for centuries.
Before that, I was surrounded by people but still functionally alone.
And there’s another realization, about who I want to be.
My wrath can stand on its own.
But what if I don’t want to?
“What if I want to rush headfirst into you?” I whisper.
Then pause, my brain catching up with what I actually said.
“Not, like, a headbutt—”
Zan shakes with silent laughter beneath me.
My cheeks heat. Gods damn it, I was trying to have, like, A Moment, and instead just killed it—
But then Zan’s arms come around me, and he stands up.
Startled, I wrap my legs around him.
Zan begins to walk while holding me as if I weigh nothing—does he keep his dragon strength in human form?
I tighten my legs around him involuntarily. Oh, wow, there’s a thought—
“Then maybe,” Zan says idly, “We should make sure that we’re compatible. So that you can be sure of me.”
So that he knows I can be sure of him. But—
“If you’re not ready to mate, then how—”
Zan kicks open a door.
“There are many ways we can test compatibility that aren’t intercourse,” he whispers into my ear, and I shudder.
I don’t even know what those things are, but I want them.
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about physicality here? Like, I know the basic mechanics of how sex works, but more than that... it wasn’t really considered a necessary part of my education.
But as Zan makes as if to put me down, I finally realize where he’s led us to.
“My” room.
This space, that I feel so alienated in? Absolutely not.
“No,” I say abruptly.
Zan freezes.
Gods damn it, of course now he thinks I’m rejecting him, but I don’t know how to explain—
I withdraw one of my hands from around his neck, gesture at the horrid bed that isn’t his, and release a burst of wrath.
Magenta power whips out of my hand, a targeted strike.
The bed explodes.
Zan stares at me as magenta-limned shards of wood and fluff rain down around us.
I... maybe should have thought that through for longer than a second—
“This is not my room,” I blurt.
Argh, where is all my “education” about “clarity” and my supposed “grace” and “adaptability"—
“I see,” Zan says, his voice odd. A little lower. “Then it seems we have only one bed available.”
Gods damn it, and now I’ve pressured him too—
Without another word, wood chips settling over both of us, Zan simply turns and carries me out the other way.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Oh yes you did.”
Okay fine I did, but—
“That’s what I thought.” Zan’s voice drips with amusement, but also, I think, a hint of smugness.
My face burns, and I bury it in his shoulder as he kicks a different door open and then sets me down on the edge of what I know is his bed.
Mortified—grateful, relieved, but still mortified by that burst of unconsidered rage—I don’t let go.
Sage of Awkwardness. I have like, anti-skill at not destroying the mood—
Zan leans over and licks my ear.
I jerk in surprise.
What in the— How did I just feel that right in my core?
If anything, I turn redder, because that’s not normal, right? That is my ear.
Then, now that he has my attention, Zan’s mouth moves to my neck.
At first he just breathes against my pulse, and I go preternaturally still, focused on him, and what he’s going to do next.
Softly, he presses a kiss against my neck.
My whole body shudders.
“It’s okay to let go, Yora,” Zan whispers.
My arms tighten. He means so many things, but— “No.”
Never.
He laughs softly, and that sound does it for me as much as his touch, warmth pooling in my heart and spreading.
Zan leans back and pries my head up to look at him.
At the brightness of his eyes.
At the sheer joy in them—in me; in being with me; in my wanting him.
And it’s hard to be mortified in the face of that.
A slow smile spreads on his face. “Are you ready, Yora?”