But no, I must not. I must hold back those feelings until after the date. I turn to the mirror and adjust my hair. Dante seems to have no preference for how I wear it, so I twist strands down my back and secure them with the pink tie he purchased for me that matches my coat.
The plait sits down my back as I shrug my coat over my shoulders, then sit down on the bed and pull on the socks Dante’s birth giver made me.
They sit tightly over my claws, the sensation strange as they create a barrier between my feet and the ground, but I do not dislike it. I flex my claws, then stand and walk over to the large mirror, and turn from side to side.
“Pretty,” I murmur to myself. “Fannnncy.”
“Oh,” comes a voice behind me. Dante’s reflection appears a second later, and I turn, searching for his approval.
“Date? Dress fannnncy?”
His cheeks are mottled pink, and he approaches me with hands out, grazing a touch from the panties to my chest, where he must feel my hearts racing against his palms.
“You look,” he says, then stops. I search for his feelings, and while I sense lust and appreciation, I also feel apprehension. I have done something wrong.
I take a step back and lift my hands to sign because the words are easier that way. ‘You don’t like?’
“No, no. God, baby, you look amazing. I love it. A lot. But uh…but, I think if you go out like that, we’re both going to be arrested.”
My reaction to that is visceral and powerful. I can’t control it. The very idea of my Dante being taken into the hands of cruel authority figures and put through what I was scares several years off my life.
I grab him without thinking, twisting my body around his, wrapping him in my arms and my tail. I begin to thrymmunthinkingly, probably loud enough to hurt his ears, but I cannot let that happen.
I cannot let them touch him.
I cannot…
“Baby. Hey. Cielo!” Dante speaks over the distressed noises I’m making, and it’s only at the feeling of his palms passing up and down my arms that I realize how profound my panic was. My breathing settles, and I’m able to find the strength to look down into his face. “Hey, hi. There you are,” he whispers.
I cannot seem to speak, so I unwrap an arm from his body and circle my fist over my chest. ‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.’
He closes his hand over mine and holds me still. “No. It’s okay. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I start to shake my head, shame rushing through me, but there’s no point in lying or trying to hide how I feel. Tipping my forehead down, I project a few images of what happened to me when I was taken for arrest.
The darkness, the chains, the gnawing hunger, the constant pain. I show him a moment where I was whipped and hit with thin reeds to draw blood, leaving scars behind, a permanent mark on my skin to carry my shame around for betraying my people.
He gasps, and his eyes go watery for a moment before he swallows thickly and offers me a stern nod of understanding. He’s seen it. He knows now what I’ve been hiding.
My stomach aches, and I hate that he’s seen me at my weakest, but I need him to understand why my fear is so powerful.
He swallows once more and holds me tighter. In his head, I feel his anger at my captors—his distress, his grief that he could not help me. But he doesn’t speak any of that aloud. Instead, he bombards me with comfort. “Cielo, my love. It’s not like thathere, okay? At all. Trust me. That won’t happen to you while you’re with me.”
I let out a breath that’s finally steady and force myself to pull back, staring into his eyes. He is being honest.
“I promise,” he says. His voice is still trembling a little. “I just mean that you look very sexy, and the panties kind of…well…you’re not meant to wear just them. They’re meant to go under clothes.”
I almost laugh at the absurdity. Why would humans cover such pretty things? I’m still shaking a bit as I pull back from him and turn toward the closet. I pull one of the sheer wraps Rathyn recently gave me, and I tie it around my waist.
The panties are slightly visible, but not as much as before.
Dante swallows thickly, then nods as he touches the new fabric. “I think that’s perfect.”
“Fannncy? Pretty?” I ask.
He goes up on his toes and drags me down into a wet kiss, his tongue tangling with mine. It soothes me in ways nothing else can. The taste of him, the scent of him, the beating of his small, fragile human heart.
My claws rake through his hair, freed from his hair tie as it falls down his back. He moans softly, but he doesn’t take it further. He breaks the kiss with soft kisses over my mouth and jaw, and he laughs when I turn my head to lick and nose at the crook of his neck, leaving my scent behind.
