She cocks her head at me. “Maybe I like being told what to do.”
“Youdo not.”
“Maybe—”
I reach up to grasp her chin before she can move in to kiss me again. I want to air this out—get it in the open before she can distract me. She’s awfullygoodat distracting me.
“Lyn,” I say, “do you actually want this?”
She hesitates. My heart stutters.
“God, yes,” she whispers. “I want it. I want this very, very badly.”
“To fuck me?”
Another catch of her breath, cheeks flushed. “Not just that.”
“It’s not just physical.”
“Not at all,” she huffs out a laugh. “I’m like…sointo your brain. And your sweet family. Even your fucking…snake dog thing.”
I smile. “Flicker?”
“Can I call her Fucker? It just rolls off the tongue.”
The drakon lets out a little growl from the corner.
“I don’t think she likes that,” I say.
“Too fucking bad.”
Lyn tilts her head to escape my grasp, then she leans forward…and this time she kisses me slow, savoring it, enjoying it. I slide my tongue across the seam of her lips and she lets me in, moaning and melting, her hands splayed out on my chest now…
When she pulls back, her eyes are glazed.
“This is not a mistake,” I assure her. “We are doing this above the boardbecauseit is not a mistake. And if you decide you don’t want to do it anymore…you aren’t trapped, Lyn. You will never be trapped with me.”
She looks comforted for only a split second before she frowns.
Then she says something that surprises me.
“What happened with you and Shahar?”
I suppose it should make sense—humans don’t mate for reproductive purposes only, not usually. Lyn must assume that me and Shahar were in love once, that we were bonded…and that we broke apart. Human males who have done this must come with risk.
I move her gently off my lap, turning my body so I can face her as she sits beside me on the couch.
“It was never like that,” I explain. “Not like what you’re thinking.”
“You’re divorced though.”
“No,” I say. “My people…we don’t have marriage rites like yours. Most matches amongst the Nyeri’i, especially if they’re undertaken while young, are a result of our desire to maintain our species. You know our history?—”
“The Trinity, the destruction, yeah,” she nods. “So there aren’t a lot of you…”
“Which requires us to procreate with others of our species, otherwise we could cross-breed ourselves out of existence,” I say. “Solvi is the result of such a match. Shahar and I…we’re friends, dear friends, but we never intended on staying together. We knew that we didn’t feel that kind of love for one another.Sheknew that, somewhere out there…somewhere out there, her mate was waiting.”
Lyn’s brows knit, the scientist in her already mapping implications. “So you didn’t…break up.”
