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“It just makes me less than perfect?” His tone was somber, but his gaze mischievous.
I cracked a smile. “You are such a dick. Besides. Akoni is the perfect one, didn’t you know?”
“Don’t tell him that, he’ll start to believe it.”
Too late. “So what do I do, Auryn? Becauseyoucan’t feel the hours, but I can, and Dekka told me to stay in my room.”
He sighed. “Helena.”
“What? What did I miss?”
“You have decades of magical training to catch up on. There’splentyfor you to do. We definitely need to work on addition and subtraction, and maybe we’ll get to multiplication and long division before the end of the year.”
“Dick.”
“Is that a request or a demand?”
I playfully shoved him, and he laughed, then snaked forward and tackled me. I shifted, but he countered with his own hip and pressed all his weight onto me.
Interesting…Auryndidhave a ground game.
He quickly, lightly, kissed my lips before shifting off me and snuggling close. He snaked one arm across my midsection and drew me down into the blankets and pillows. The tethers wriggled and shifted, and it stung. Raw. Like mat burn. But overall nice.
He drew his tongue over my skin with a delicate flick, just once. “I might not have always been there, but I always loved to hold you. I dreamed of holding you again. Every time I slept.”
“Maybe,” I said softly, thinking back to all those mornings I had woken up, and it was like he hadbeenthere, “you were.”
Three
“Ihave not seen much of the stone drake,” Akoni said over breakfast (or whatever meal we were calling it). There was nothing ugly in his tone, he asked it matter-of-factly between Auryn and myself to see if either of us had heard from Keon since the meeting at Hekon’s two days earlier.
“…and by much, I have not seen himat all,” Akoni added. This he directed at Auryn.
Auryn offered no comment as he chewed on a steamed bun.
“I was expecting to see him.” Akoni was just not going to let this drop.
“Things have been… unsettled.” I couldn’t deal with them squabbling. Or Keon noping out at the last moment. I’d thought we’d reconciled on the tarmac when he’d chosen to come back to Lemuria, but maybe he’d changed his mind.
Akoni and Auryn had not attempted to move in together right at the start. We’d had Hekon’s bachelor pad as neutral territory. Things might have been very different if we’d started off in Dekka’s roost. We werestillfiguring that out, especially Akoni, who had been raised to be a Wyrm and kept a very long strand of pearls to clutch.
“True,” Akoni said. “True. But is he waiting for an invitation?”
“I can’t imagine he is,” Auryn commented. “But if he is, he’s going to keep waiting. I already begged once. I will not beg again. But if you would like a turn.” Auryn gestured with his half of a bun.
Akoni snorted. “I will take a turn beating him with a pipe if he breaks her heart again.”
“I will hold him while you do so, if it comes to that.”
I bit down a sigh. I’d told all of them I wasn’t getting involved in how they sorted things between them. Like I’d told Dekka, it wasn’tmeKeon had to dance for at this point.
Auryn put a hand on my thigh. He didn’t say anything, but his look was both sad and reassuring. The look that saiddon’t give up hope just yet.
Akoni cleared his throat and nodded towards Auryn’s hand. The other dragons at the eatery had noticed the touchy-touchy. Akoni sipped his tea. “PerhapsIshould sit next to her.”
Auryn lifted his hand back onto the table.
“Then we’d just play footsie,” I teased back. I nudged Akoni’s ankle with my toes.
