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And Garin had more than enough on his plate without adding Sazahk to it. Not to mention the danger that, were Sazahk to extract a commitment from Garin in his potentially compromised state, Garin, upstanding man that he was, might feel compelled to honor that commitment far beyond his genuine interest in the arrangement. After all, Sazahk doubted he represented Garin’s typical partner.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Garin jumped off a rock at the end of the ridge and onto a less treacherous plateau, then held out a hand to Sazahk.
“My thoughts typically command a much higher price than that.” Sazahk accepted Garin’s hand and climbed down. “But I was wondering about your past romantic relationships.”
Garin’s hand spasmed around Sazahk’s as his eyebrows shot up. “You were?”
“Yes.” Sazahk slid off the rock and released Garin’s hand once his feet hit the ground. “You’ve mentioned an interest in men and sex, but you’ve never mentioned a serious past romantic entanglement.”
Sazahk continued walking, then a thought hit him that curdled his stomach and a terrified red so potent he could feel it climbed up his throat.
“Or a serious current one. Or current one of any sort. I had assumed you would not have engaged in consensual sexual intercourse with me if you’d had a partner, but I now realize that assumes a closed and monogamous relationship, which is hardly the only type.”
“It’s the type I would want.” Garin jogged to catch up to Sazahk and met his gaze seriously, despite the blush turning his ears and throat red.
“Is it?” Sazahk’s stomach un-curdled. “A closed and monogamous relationship is your preferred partnership structure?”
“It is.” Garin nodded firmly. His tongue flicked out to lick his sun-burnt lips and his blush spread. “And I’m not in one right now.”
“I see.” Sazahk forced his eyes forward. And that was all he said, because if he opened his mouth, then the foolish yearning simmering at the base of this throat would bubble out, and Sazahk would ask for—his hands shivered—a relationship.
That was what the stupid yearning was for: a closed, monogamous, romantic, and sexual relationship with Garin.
Sazahk’s vision swam before his eyes as his heart pounded in his chest. What was he thinking? He had never wanted one of those. He had never had one of those. He had no idea how to even participate in one of those. Or if he even could. In fact, the evidence indicated he likely couldn’t, given his poor track record with all other sorts of relationships.
“Hey, Sazahk, you alright there?” Garin stepped in front of Sazahk to peer into his face as they walked.
Sazahk yanked his head up from staring in unseeing panic at the ground. “Yes.” He looked into Garin’s concerned green eyes and his heart squeezed, reminding him of why he wanted at all. “You’ve previously been in such partnerships?”
“A few times, yeah.” Garin fell back into step beside him. “But never anything real serious.”
Sazahk studied Garin’s profile. “Why not?”
Garin shrugged again. “Always too busy. Traveling too much. Working too hard. The men I dated… They always wanted more of me, but I didn’t have any more to give them.”
“Because you’d given it all to your family.” Sazahk nodded. “They come first for you.”
Garin glanced at him in surprise. “Yeah, exactly.”
“Did the failure of those relationships make you sad?”
Garin let out an awkward huff and rubbed the back of his neck. “It sounds like an asshole thing to say, but no?” He glanced at Sazahk as though to check he wasn’t horrified and when he wasn’t, he continued. “It was just always obvious by that point that it wasn’t gonna work out. I love my family and taking care of them is my priority. I couldn’t be sad about losing something that was getting in the way of that.”
Sazahk wouldn’t do that. Why have a man like Garin, whose most attractive feature was his nurturing nature, only to snuff it out? “That’s very reasonable.”
“Yeah, they didn’t all see it that way,” Garin chuckled and kicked a yellow stone off the edge of the plateau they walked on. “And what about you? How long is the string of broken hearts you’ve left behind?”
Sazahk cocked his head and considered the question as they circled around a boulder that shielded them from the burning sun for a few blessed seconds. “I’ve never explicitly committed to a relationship and thus never ended one, so there should be no broken hearts in my past. But I am aware that some of my sexual partners were unsatisfied with the lack of an emotional component to our arrangement.”
“Oh, yeah. That, um, that happens sometimes, I guess.” Garin nodded, not looking at Sazahk, his eyes fixed on the horizon shimmering with heat. “Do you have a general lack of interest in romance in the same way you have a general lack of interest in sex?”
“Yes, largely. Oh, I’d like to sample this.” Sazahk stopped at the base of the large rock before they stepped out into the sun and crouched beside a hardy bit of moss pushing its way out from the cracks in the stone. “Most individuals seem to experience a sexual attraction to another person soon after meeting them, if not immediately. That attraction then drives them to explore intellectual, emotional, and logistical compatibility. That eventually leads to romantic urges, and occasionally, entanglements.” Sazahk clipped off a small piece of the moss and put it in one of his last remaining baggies. “But as I don’t often experience sexual attraction, that particular sequence of events is cut off early for me.”
His brain did it all out of order, if it did it at all. His intellectual and emotional interest had to be aroused before any sexual interest could be. And since that rarely happened, he’d assumed his ability to experience sexual interest was highly limited.
Goddess, had he been wrong about that.
He glanced at Garin’s lean, rangy body, the dark scruff of travel on his cheeks, and his bright green eyes. His intellectual and emotional interest in the man had spiraled out of control and his sexual interest along with it. Sazahk finally understood the obsession people had with romance and sex. His desire for Garin intoxicated him.
