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Her gaze flung to his eyes.
“Rule two… Say what you mean.”
She grimaced. “That goes over very poorly. It offends people, or causes me to share way too much information.”
He dipped a kiss to her throat. “I love information. Try it right now.”
“Nope. Absolutely I will not be doing that.”
“Tell me what you want. Who else is here to judge you or say it’s wrong? Come on, dearest.” He flicked his tongue out against her skin. “I’m your soulmate. I can’t lie. I will never seek to humiliate you. I adore you. I find every moment I’ve spent with you enrapturing. Practice with me.”
“Isn’t this humiliating?” she whispered.
“Does it feel that way to you?” Lifting his head, he pressed his forehead to hers, soaked in the heat of her, lost himself in her scent. “For which one of us? You are undoing me.”
“This is going to mess me up in the morning,” she muttered.
“Marvelous. If it does, come see me for breakfast, and we can continue outside this realm.”
She shivered.
He loved that.
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Is being honest correct according to your rules?”
She refused to meet his eyes. “Yes, and no. Being honest comes with complicated rules.”
“Are complications correct?”
“Complications are life.”
“Why?”
“Because. Nothing is ever as simple as…as I think it should be. Feelings are messy, and words hurt, and honesty can result in pain. Forgetting to present something appealing to other people makes them uncomfortable. People don’t like you when you make them uncomfortable. And when people don’t like you, it makes existing around them harder.”
“So…what you’re saying is…interactions with the humans who don’t accept you still matter to you?”
Her teeth bared. “It’s not that easy. I need to maintain certain relationships, Pollux. I can’t just be myself. Real life without faeries and vampire cats and princesses with wings is not that flowery.”
He smoothed the lines between her brows with his thumb. “You’re anticipating what I mean and not listening to what I’m asking. Answer the question only. Those interactions, maintaining those relationships with people who don’t accept you, matter?”
“Yes. They matter.”
He nodded. “So, you must handle them as you would around the fae nobility, dearest. No less yourself even if you must garb the truest pieces in games of mischief in order to gain your desired outcome.”
The tension in her shoulders released. “How?”
“It starts with figuring out what the truest pieces of you look like. It starts—” He squeezed her wrists. “—with giving up a little control…in order to get a better grasp on what real control looks like.”
She shrank.
“Talk to me.”
“I don’t…want to.”
“I will not use your words against you.”
She squirmed, adjusted her position the best she could, looked away from him, puffed a breath out her nose. “I ate breakfast with you Friday. And I was gone all day today. My parents are going to start thinking I have friends if I eat breakfast with you again so soon, especially when we have dinner plans we need to solidify sometime.”
