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Grateful, I take it and shove a big bite into my mouth. It helps. A lot. The bread absorbs the worst of the burn but it feels as if I might have seared my tongue. Tears are in my eyes and I have to wipe them away then take another bite of bread before I can speak.
“Sorry, shouldn’t have drank that so fast,” I mutter.
He reaches across the table and places his hand on mine. I stare at the back of his large, emerald green hand. He has small scars along his fingers. There are tiny black hairs that lie in neat rows forming perfect lines on the sides. His hand on mine feels good. I like how much bigger his hand is than mine. I like the way it covers mine, protectively.
“It is fine,” he says. “Very strong.”
“Yeah,” I nod, buying time to gather my thoughts. “You have nothing… no, it’s… no, uhm… it wasn’t you, it was me.”
“I do not understand.”
I look into his eyes and I smile.
“I liked it,” I say.
He frowns, deeply again, then shakes his head.
“Bodies,” he says, “are not hearts.”
“Can you explain that?”
He rubs the back of his head as he tends to do when he’s thinking. He grunts, shakes his head, then shrugs.
“Bodies, want. This is… okay?” he looks at me quickly judging if the word was right and I nod that I understand. “But you. Me. I… want more. That was not honorable. This situation we are in with lots of…”
He trails off looking for a word.
“Stress?” I ask.
“Yes! Stress,” he says. “Bodies react, want sex. Sex is good. Very good, I am sure but…” I wait for him to finish the thought but he’s clearly struggling with words in Zmaj. “More. I want more.”
“More?” I ask, feeling as if I’m hanging on every word he utters. “What is more?”
“Dragoste,” he says.
My heart leaps into my throat and pounds at an incredible rate. The word he used is not a Zmaj word but I know it. The Zmaj call their mates treasure and for an Urr’ki this is their term. Loosely it means fated mate.
“Dragoste? Me?”
He squeezes my hand on the table and stares into my eyes. He nods slowly as I see him swallowing.
“You,” he says. “Mine. Us. Forever.”
I blink. That’s a heck of a lot more than I was thinking when I started this conversation.
“Uhm,” I mumble but I can’t look away from his eyes. Or deny the tightness in my guts or the pounding of my heart. Or the way I feel, warm, fuzzy, light, and airy all at the same time. It’s nuts, but it also feels right. “Forever? How can you know?”
He shakes his head making his braids rattle.
“You know. Or you don’t know. There is no in between, no state other than know or not know. If there is doubts, if there are questions, you do not know. This is life. I know. When I see you, look at you, touch you, smell you, I know.”
I search for words. Any words. But no words can contain what I feel. What I know. There is only one appropriate response.
I lean over the table and I claim his lips.
It is electric. A jolt that runs not through my body, but right into my heart. My soul. Into the core of everything I am. As if our lips close a circuit and bring power to everything. As if I have never before been alive, not until this moment.
We kiss, our lips moving, I lick his and his tongue comes to meet mine. We lean over the table until we’re practically on top of it.
