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I finished chopping as I considered it, then set the knife down and turned toward her, signing honestly, “I would spend every possible minute with you. If you were willing, I’d want us to have a family. I think I would enjoy being a father. Having children to play with, and care for…” I lifted a shoulder.
“That sounds blissful,” she admitted. “I do want to have kids. Just not for a while. Like… five or ten years, at least.” Her expression was slightly hesitant.
“I’m not young, Cier. Five or ten years is nothing to me.” I gave her an amused smile. “It wouldn’t bother me if you wanted to wait a century.”
Her eyes went wide. “Damn. I haven’t thought about living that long.”
I chuckled. “Fae live until we’re killed, and I can assure you, you’ll never be in a situation where your life is at risk.”
Her smile faded. “Will there be a funeral for the other two fae who died in the Aboa? I’d like to pay my respects, if you guys do that. I don’t know anything about etiquette after a fae’s death.”
“Death and mourning are private, here. The lost fae’s closest friends and family will remain on the beach for a few days while they say their goodbyes, and when they’re ready, they’ll return home. As the king and an old acquaintance, I’ll need to visit the family to give my condolences, but it would be inappropriate to do so immediately after the death.”
“How long do you have to wait? If I’m really the queen, I should go too, right?”
“Only if you want to. I had planned to stop at the beach before we head out to look for Crest,” I admitted.
“I’ll go with you. If they don’t want me there, I’ll leave, of course.”
I nodded, turning back to the food.
“The one thing you guys really need here is music,” Ayla said. “There’s so much music on Earth, and it’s so easy to access. I’ve missed that since I was here.”
“I used to enjoy singing, as a kid. Before I got my own magic,” I admitted to her, pausing what I was doing to sign before turning back.
“Well, I’d pay to hear that,” she teased me.
I chuckled. If I’d been confident in my ability to hum, I would’ve hummed for her, but there’d be no way to know if it truly came out the way I thought it was. That prevented it from becoming a real possibility, unfortunately.
“Sing for me,” I signed to her.
She laughed, loudly. “Oh, I can’t. I’m terrible. I couldn’t sing the right notes if my life depended on it.”
I flashed her a grin. “Now I want to hear it even more.”
“Maybe you can seduce me into singing for you with your food, then,” she teased me.
Her gentle playfulness only made me feel even more grateful. I was a lucky bastard to have lost my mind—because it had led to some fool deciding that mates would be the best way to drag us back into sanity.
And damn, they were right.
Chapter14
Ayla
“I knowyou already cleaned us off, but I won’t reallyfeelclean until I’ve had a shower,” I explained to Zoran, as we stepped back into his bedroom.
“Silly human customs,” he joked, and then closed the door behind us and reached for the bow he’d tied earlier at my back. He’d been extremely reluctant about it, but I’d convinced him that swimming would be a lot easier in one of my skimpier dresses, so I needed to wear one—and it had worked.
“You’ll get used to them,” I murmured, as his fingertips brushed my shoulder blades and gave me goosebumps in the process.
Leaning down, he brushed a kiss to my shoulder, sucking lightly on my skin before he stepped back and released me.
He remained where he was as I slipped into the bathroom. The shower was already running for me, and I bit back a smile when I slipped my dress off and stepped beneath the hot, falling water.
A happy sigh escaped me. There was just something so comforting about a good, hot shower. It was one of the only things that was really the same as it had been on Earth, and I figured that familiarity probably had something to do with how good it felt.
Zoran’s soap was the only option in there, so I lathered up with it and scrubbed at my hair too. I was going to smell like the king for a while, but that wouldn’t bug me.
