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My toes brushed his calf as we ate together, quietly enjoying the food we’d made. Ervo wasn’t a man of many words, rarely starting a conversation himself. If I spoke, though, he never ignored me. And I liked that a lot.
I noticed his eyelids looked like they’d started getting heavy while we ate, and a small sliver of worry tugged at me.
He wasn’t taking care of himself.
“We can do the dishes after we sleep,” I told him, grabbing the empty plate from his lap.
“I’ll do them now,” he murmured to me, trying to take the plate back.
I moved it further away. “I want you to hold me.”
He swallowed roughly, and jerked his head in a nod.
After I set the plates down next to the bed, I slid closer to him. He’d already settled on his back, so I carefully draped half of my body over his.
His chest rumbled, and those big hands of his landed on my lower back and my shoulder blades, not minding my slightly-damp hair.
“Where did you learn my name?” I asked him softly, enjoying the warm strength of his body against mine.
“There was a letter in your room when I visited a few months ago, the one time you allowed me in. It was from Ana.” He stroked my lower back lightly.
Ah.
“She wrote to me before she left. Apologized for being so quick to decide my nickname for me. I think she felt bad for strong-arming all of us for so long, but we weren’t angry at her. She cared about us, and most of us didn’t have people like that on Earth.”
His fingers pressed a bit harder into my shoulders and back.
“How did you know how to pronounce it?” I wondered.
“Sunny and Dots were talking about Christmas music a few weeks ago. There was a singer who’s known for it, with the same name. I connected the dots when I heard them say it.”
Ohh.
That was actually pretty clever. And I was impressed that he’d gone to such lengths to learn my name. It must’ve meant a lot to him.
“As you know,” I said quietly, “My name is Mariah. Mariah Lenore Kingston. My family is very well-known, on Earth. Famous, honestly. My father is an actor, my mother a high-profile lawyer. That probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but basically, they were powerful. And they made it very clear to me that I was not.”
Ervo went still beneath me.
Statue-still.
I waited for him to ask me what had happened. What my life had been like.
But he didn’t.
I had a plan to make him more comfortable with me, but spilling sensitive information about my life without a request wasn’t a part of that plan. If he wanted to know something, he was going to have to ask me.
So I didn’t say anything else.
My eyes closed, though. I was extremely relaxed with his body against mine.
I’d started to fall asleep when the phoenix finally murmured to me, “Thank you, Mariah.”
His arms tightened around me, pulling my bare skin closer to his.
I dragged my thigh up to rest against the underside of his erection, and earned a rumble for it.
“Will you tell me more about your family?” he murmured to me, just before I fell asleep. “I’d like to know how you ended up here.”
