Page 93 of Flames and Blood

He’s up on one elbow. The last of the stove light touches one side of his face and leaves the rest of him dark. The blanket has come down to his waist. There are four short marks across the top of his chest, already faded to thin pink lines, nearly gone. I must have done that to him.

By tomorrow there’ll be no sign I was ever on him. And I don’t even have a memory of it to keep.

“Have you slept at all?” I ask.

“No.”

“You’ve been lying there listening to me stand here talking to myself.”

“For about a quarter of an hour.” He says it without a flicker. “It seemed like a conversation that didn’t need me in it.”

He heard me speak out loud. Half a conversation, one voice. I wait for him to ask about the other half. He doesn’t.

I get back in, because the floor is freezing and there’s no dignified way to keep standing on it. I pull the blanket up over both of us.

He doesn’t reach for me. I notice that I want him to.

“Ask it,” I say. “Whatever it is. I can tell you have something brewing.”

He takes his time. He always does.

“What happened today?” he asks.

“I… I…” I can’t think of what to say. “You tell me.”

“You went out that door, and when you came back, you were different,” he says. “What changed?” He says it flat and even. That makes it harder to answer, not easier. An accusation I could have argued with.

I open my mouth to tell him, and it doesn’t come out. How the hell do I say this?

I couldn’t decide if I should sleep with you or not. So my dragon decided for me, came back in here, screwed your brains out, and clearly loved every minute of it.

Yeah, that’s not going to work. I’ve known this man a matter of weeks. There’s a lot I’d tell him before I’d tell him that.

“I made up my mind,” I say. “That’s all. I went out there to think, and I got tired of asking myself the same question, so I stopped asking it.”

Every word of that is true. It’s also about a tenth of the truth.

He looks at me for a moment. “All right,” he says, and lies back down. That’s it. He doesn’t push. He doesn’t come back at it from a different angle, which I know he could.

I should feel like I’ve been let off. Instead, it’s just another grievance I add to the list I have against my own beast.

After a minute of silence, he gets up and leaves the bed, retrieving his pants and pulling them on. I watch every lean line of him moving in the silvery light.

God. I had my hands all over that just hours ago, and I don’t even know what it feels like.

I hate you so much right now! I tell my dragon as I get out of bed.

He gets the stove going properly while I go around the room collecting my scattered clothes—my shirt hooked over the end of the bed frame, my jeans inside out on the floor in the middle of the room. His shirt is at the door, completely ruined. Buttons are missing and the sleeve is torn.

What the hell did she do to him?

“I think we can toss this,” I say.

“It’s a good shirt.”

“It has no cuff.”

“It’s a good shirt with no cuff.” He says it so seriously that I laugh, and he looks up at me while I do, then turns away as I start to dress. It’s oddly polite, and it makes my chest tighten.