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She fell silent for a long moment, focused on spreading Vrika’s blood over my chest. My shallow wounds were already closing up, but now the pain was replaced by maddening sensitivity as her gentle touch soothed and smoothed.
“You just what?” I rasped, needing to focus on something, anything, besides her touch on my ragged skin and the rapid hardening of my cock.
She pressed her lips into a thin line, like she was physically trying to hold her next words back. But then, either her strength failed or she just gave up, because the words flew out of her mouth anyway.
“Do you like me?”
She looked suddenly younger, plaintive and uncertain and maybe even embarrassed. Seeing her like that awakened some agonizingly tender instinct inside me. Primal and protective. I wanted to gather her up in my arms, clutch her close, and hiss at anyone who dared come near. I wanted to braid her hair for her, to make sure those little ears were as unhindered as possible so that she could be just a little safer in this world. And I wanted to tell her that she would always be safe in this world, so long as I was in it.
I wanted so much. And I didn’t want any of it as much as I wanted her.
I wanted her in the way a male wanted his mate. Wanted her inked skin and her pink tongue and the welcoming squeeze of her cunt. Her gasping nights and her quiet mornings. Her smiles and her sighs and her arms around me in a gesture that meant haven, that meant home.
Home. So far from the lands of my birth and in the embrace of one not even from this world.
Did I like her?
How in the great span of the Sea Sands was a man meant to answer a question like that?
Like. The word was bloodless. Toothless. Safe.
And nowhere near the truth.
“Why do you ask?” I hedged.
“I’m just being sensitive,” she said again. She was finished with my chest now, and she tapped on my shoulder for me to lean forwards. I took my hands out from behind my head, hinging at the hips as she went on. “It just seems like you disapprove of everything I do, and I just... I think you’re a really cool guy and I... Did somebody bite you?”
I looked down at my shoulder and made a gruff sound in the affirmative.
“Oh wow,” she said softly. “I noticed this wound earlier but I wasn’t sure.”
“I can thank Oxriel for that,” I told her, remembering that moment of our fight when his mouth, usually so prone to inane grins, suddenly latched onto my shoulder with the force of a zeelk’s claws. “Or Ox, as you seem so fond of calling him.”
I could not keep the malice from my voice, and she seized on it.
“See! That’s what I’m talking about! You’re so freaking grumpy. You even get annoyed at me for giving Oxriel a nickname.”
She swiped a Vrika’s-blood-soaked cloth over the bite marks, and the sting there faded. She got to work on my back, and maybe being unable to see my face emboldened her, because she spoke quickly now, without hesitation.
“If you don’t like me just let a girl know, alright? It’s OK. I mean, it’s not, but it’s fine. Sort of. At least knowing would be better than this, because I’m honestly worried that you’re about to call HR on my ass. OK. You’re not going to get that reference. But-”
“Fiona-”
“-but it’s just like at New Year’s Eve when I threw myself at you and kissed you. And I didn’t even get consent first! I just fucking grabbed you and snogged you like a creeper-”
“Fiona-”
“-when you obviously didn’t even want it and now things are so weird and I just need to know if-”
“Fiona!”
It took me seizing upon her shoulders and physically dragging her around to my front, plopping her down between my legs, before she finally stopped talking. I grasped her jaw firmly with one hand and bent until we were eye-to-eye.
“Do not ever,” I bit out with quiet ferocity, “tell a Sea Sand male what it is he does or does not want.”
I held her there for a moment, making sure she was not about to explode into another bout of utter nonsense, before I released her jaw and spoke.
“You were the one,” I reminded her, “that said the kiss would never happen again. You made that choice and did not even ask my opinion on the matter.”
