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“Only because you've got your monster sight.”
“I haven't even looked over my shoulders. I can feel you there, watching me.”
“I'm not—”
“Don't lie,” I cut her off.
“I wasn't going to. I didn't come here to watch you. I was going to get something to eat, but then…”
She trails off and I do look over my shoulder now, to find her looking unsure of herself for once. Moving from foot to foot, biting the corner of her bottom lip, swallowing nervously. She wants to join me, but of course, she can't simply just allow herself to walk forward and wade into the hot spring with me.
Over the past few days, her internal war has waged on, but at least she's stopped denying her desire for me. We fuck before we go to sleep. We fuck when we wake up, or I wake her up with my tongue between her thighs. We fuck in the cooking area while the food cooks. We fuck, and she gives me her sounds, her touches, her sighs of my name. It’s only after we’ve both came that she begins to retreat. It saddens me each time. I do what I can, hold her to me, speak sweets words, kiss her soft and slow, but she’s determined not to feel anything for me but desire.
There are moments, however brief, when dread begins to fill me that I won't be able to change her mind. I won't be able to convince her to stay. I shut them down right away, but it's getting harder as the days go on, and with each time her thoughts viciously shove me away from her heart.
“But then, you saw me in here,” I say. “And decided I was better than food?”
She rolls her eyes and I laugh. A shiver rushes through her at the sound.
“I would like you to join me, Keri,” I offer because I know she won't ask herself.
She takes a single step, and then stops. Her eyes squeeze shut, her mind screaming for her to turn back. Sadness fills me at thinking she'll obey, but then her eyes pop open and she's walking forward, making my eyebrows raise. There are fires lit around the spring for her benefit when she would bathe later, but she uses their light now to look at me. She can see everything above the water except my face.
My brother told me before I came here not to be afraid to reveal my face to her, that his own mate had been instantly attracted to him, despite our elders telling us that humans took a while to get used to our looks. But still, I have a fear of her seeing me. What if she recoils at my face, my horns? It would hurt in ways I couldn't even explain to her.
She begins bringing her dress down her body and all worries flee as I watch her step out of it. Then she’s walking into the spring, lowering into its water until it laps at her collarbone. Her eyes look up at me through her lashes from where she sits on the seat within the hot spring to my left.
“Are there more of these down here?” she asks. “Hot springs?”
“If I answer your question, do I get to ask you one in return?”
She narrows her eyes at me, weighing the benefits and drawbacks that could come from this. There's so much I already know about her, but I find I still want to ask her things, and hear the answers in her own words, in her sweet voice.
“That sounds like truth or dare.” She chuckles.
“In a way, yes.”
Her brows furrow. “You know what truth or dare is?”
Damn it. I have to dodge the question in the best way I can. I can't very well explain that the human women who come down teach their children much of their ways. Their games, customs, and hobbies.
“That's two questions before I've even gotten to ask you one,” I point out instead of answering.
“Hm, fine. So, I guess you're picking truth and my question remains about the hot springs.”
“Yes, there are many more. With my hearing, it's easy to find them from their sound beneath us. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
I search for what to ask, to some memory I've seen but what to know more about. Then I settle on something. A memory I've seen flashes of here and there, one that makes her so happy.
“What is your favorite memory?”
Instantly, she smiles. “My sisters and my mother went to this amusement park on the other side of our quadrant where only the rich live. My mother had to save for a year to buy us tickets, but it was such a nice day. We rode these things called rollercoasters, ate cotton candy until our stomachs ached, and sang songs the whole ride home. I have never seen my mother happier, even though she was too afraid to get on a single ride. She just smiled as she watched us. And me and my sisters got a day away from—”
Her words abruptly stop, and her eyes cut to me. I know exactly what she was about to say, even if her mind doesn't think of her heinous father. A man who my brothers and I slowly, and painfully, murdered almost a year ago. We'd gone because he'd hurt Grace, and she was our sister now, ours to protect. But once Kayo and I realized her sisters were our mates and he’d hurt them terribly too…Well, that just made killing him all the better, made me relish it even more. I wish I could tell her all of that, but she continues speaking.
“Anyway, it was one of the best days I've ever had. Stomachache and all.”
