“I guess so?” He looks like he’s seen a ghost so I pull him off the sidewalk and away from a group of tourists paying way too much attention to us. I sit us down on a bench and put my hand on his knee. “Are you okay? Was I not supposed to go that far back?”
“I didn’t think you could.” Jaak lifts his eyes to look up at me. Warm brown, dark and soulful eyes look into mine and I see pain. “I thought that memory was lost. Even now when I try and think of home, I can’t remember it clearly.”
“You had a beautiful home.”
He smiles. “Yes, I did That I remember.”
“And your mother was a really good singer.”
He chuckles and drops his head but not before I see the sheen of tears in his eyes. “She was. If I think hard enough, I can hear her voice but only just. Every time I try to remember, it’s not right.”
I didn’t have any memories of my parents that I wanted to keep, none that would make me sad trying to remember them…but…but I do have Jaak’s now.
“Wait, I can show you. I can give the memory back to you. I remember everything, down to how it smelled.”
Jaak’s eyes widen. “What?”
“If this soul-bonded thing is deeper than what we had when you were in my dreams, and it’s more than when we were married and I was your anchor, why can’t I show it to you? You can see anything I want you to see, can’t you?”
He nods. “Yes, I can see everything.”
I bite my lip and try not to think about what everything means when it comes to the memories I carry. Jaak was there for the worst of it.
No need to get embarrassed that he might have seen you have a mental breakdown about the demon god cult, Meadow. Just play it cool.
“That’s, um, that’s great. Perfect, even. I can show you exactly what your home was like. You don’t have to try and remember, it’ll be like a movie night. I’ll show you what I saw and heard when we’re back home.”
“You would do this for me?”
I reach over and give his hand a light squeeze. “Of course, I would do that for you. You did, you’vedone somuch for me, even before we really met. There’s nothing I’m not going to try and help you with, Jaak.”
Jaak reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “Singular,” he says again and a second later I feel the brush of his lips against my ear. The contact is quick, so light that it feels like the brush of a butterfly’s wing, barely there. His lips are there and gone again from one breath to the next. Still, my body reacts. Heat spreads through me like wildfire. Gods, I need this demon. Badly.
I want him.
I grab his shirt and pull him back to me before he can move away and I kiss him. The second my mouth touches his it’s like I’m finally able to find my breath after surfacing from a pool of water. I open my mouth to Jaak and that’s all the encouragement he needs before he pulls me up and into his lap. My legs end up on either side of his thighs and I’m too drunk on the kiss to care that I’m straddling him in the middle of a strange town.
“Meadow,” Jaak whispers against my lips. His hands are in my hair, fingers carding through and pulling to angle my head back. He breaks from my mouth, lips trailing along my jaw and down to my throat. He presses kisses to the side of my throat before I feel a light bite. I whimper and pull him to me.
I kiss him hard and press my forehead to his. For a second we’re both silent. The only thing that passes between us is our ragged breathing and I swear he can feel the pounding of my heart where we’re pressed up against each other.
“I think we should go home,” I whisper. We’re eye to eye now and I can see flashes of silver in Jaak’s eyes. His minotaur form is close. I wonder how close to the surface it is and it takes everything in me to not try and bait him to find out.
Jaak closes his eyes and nods with a deep breath. He inhales slowly and lets it out before he repeats it and gods why is even that turning me on? I press my hands to his chest and watch the rise and fall of it when he breathes in and out again.
Jaak opens his eyes and they’re brown again. As much as I love the dark, rich color, there’s a part of me that wishes they were silver if just to see him shift. To know that I was the one to do it to him. Not danger or the need to fight, but me.
“That would be best. I-I almost lost control,” he says and helps me get off his lap and onto the bench. “I can’t lose control. Not with you.”
I squeeze the arm of the wrought iron bench and give him a reassuring smile. “I can take it. I’m invulnerable, remember?”
“Meadow, no. You don’t want me like that. I promise that you don’t.”
I try not to feel disappointed at his words. I know why he’s saying them, he doesn’t trust himself around me. Not yet but that will change. I know it. It’s in that split second of knowing that I realize something else.
Jaak learned this from somewhere.
It wasn’t from his mother, not the woman that held him and sang over him. She loved him. Adored him. It was someone else. My grip on the bench tightens until the metal bites into my palm.
