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“It means to just relax and not worry so much. Don’t fight things so damn hard.”
“I would not want to go with the flow,” Dalk grunted. “I do not like water.”
“It’s not literal,” I said with a small laugh.
“Even so,” he said, settling himself into a seated position beside me, because I guessed this was his new spot, “Why would I not fight the flow? I am good at fighting.”
“You’re telling me,” I said with a shake of my head. “But then again, you kind of are just going with the flow, aren’t you? You don’t really want to be here with us. Yet here you are, not fighting it.”
He stilled at my side, his sight stars brightened by the fire he stared at. Without looking at me, he murmured, “I never said I did not wish to be with you.”
I snapped my gaze forward, staring at the fire just like he was, heat creeping under my skin. That you had felt oddly... specific. It didn’t feel like a great big all-you-humans you. It felt like...
It felt like he only meant me.
I was probably just imagining it. But that’s how it fucking sounded and once I’d heard it like that, I couldn’t interpret the sentence any other way. My head was emptied out of possible replies, but Dalk said something else and saved me from having to think of one.
“If there is nothing wrong with your tongue, then what does it mean? To push it out of your mouth like that and aim it at an unmated male?”
Jesus Christ on a cracker. When he said it like that it sounded positively perverted, like I’d been trying to proposition him or something. Which, coupled with the awkwardness I already felt about throwing myself at him at New Year’s, only made everything that much worse.
“It’s stupid,” I said quickly. “Childish. Little kids do it. It’s a way of... I don’t know. Teasing. Or getting someone’s attention. Although it’s also done behind someone’s back a lot, so maybe it’s not about attention...”
“What is it about when you do it?”
I laughed at the fact that Dalk expected me to actually understand my own motivations for something as silly and thoughtless as sticking my tongue out at him.
“I don’t know,” I said with a half-shrug. “You just looked so grumpy over there. I guess I couldn’t resist.”
“Could not resist teasing me.”
“Kind of?”
“Like a child.”
My gaze swung to him sharply, because there was no way that anyone on any fucking planet could think of this hulking, brooding, brutal alien male as a kid.
“No!” I replied shakily, startled.
“I meant you,” he clarified, voice flat. “Not me.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure that was much better. “Do... Do you think of me like a child?”
Now it was his turn to swing his head round and gawk at me. His sight stars spasmed, appearing to go to my mouth, then my chest, then to my eyes, but the movement of the glittering shards was so violent and quick that it was hard to track.
“Certainly not,” he snapped.
“Well, you’re the one who just said it!”
“No. You told me sticking out one’s tongue was something children do. I was merely... gathering context.”
“How about you just go back to your spot?” I said, flapping my hand across the fire. “How’s that for context?”
“Keep your tongue in your mouth and maybe I will.”
Ooh. This bastard. There was a snarky hint of challenge in his voice that, God help me, made me want to stick out my tongue at him even more.
Or maybe give him the finger. Not that he’d understand that, either. He’d probably think my weak human hand wasn’t working properly or something.
