When I'd finally given up on him returning, I'd resorted to wrapping myself in a blanket and emerged to see the big communal tent in flames and half the camp licking their wounds.Dargo hadn't been chatty about what happened and I'd been stuck in the blanket until Penny found me this morning and offered to share her horde of clothes.
"Where'd you get all this?"I asked, holding up a pair of sweatpants big enough to double as a tent.
"Hope and Aeko brought a bunch of human supplies with them."Penny started folding the pile of clothes I'd discarded.Couldn't have wrinkled clothes, what would the neighbors think?
Her hair had been twisted into two complicated looking braids, and a few errant curls had sprang out around her temples.It was a good look for her, but I'd never seen her do anything so fancy to her hair.
"You look nice," I said.
She stroked one braid absently.
"Adak did it."
"Really?"I couldn't imagine the hulking, one eyed warrior carefully arranging Penny's curls.Then again, I hadn't spoken to him since I'd come to camp, maybe he dreamed of being a stylist.
She shrugged."He likes my hair."
I combed my fingers through my own short strands and wondered what Dargo thought of my pixie cut.I'd never been one to fuss over my appearance, I liked things simple and not having to brush my hair in the morning suited me just fine.
Did he wish I had long hair?
I dropped my hand and frowned.It shouldn't matter, he'd wanted me the way I was, and I wasn't going to change my whole style just to look more like Penny and Hope.
"How are things between you two?"I asked.
She shrugged, her eyes on the growing pile of folded clothes.
"Good, I guess."
"You guess?"It bothered me that Penny was so set on staying when she didn't seem happy.Hope, I understood.She was all over Aeko, all the time, she couldn't shut up about how great he was.But Penny seemed to be going along with this 'mating' thing out of some weird sense of duty, and I didn't like it.
"Taz," she huffed and looked up at me."Can you please just leave it alone?"
"I just don't want you doing anything you don't want to."I picked up an oversized T-shirt and fumbled it over my head, doing my best to keep the blanket in place with one hand.
"I don't want to have this conversation."
"Okay, fine."I shimmied out of my toga and into a pair of off-teal drawstring shorts.Hope had not been shopping in the cute section when she picked out these clothes.
"Just," Penny sighed."Things are fine.He's really good to me, and I wish you'd stop picking at everything I say."
"I'll stop.I promise.But I want you to know that no matter what, I've got your back."It was killing me to see the lost look in her eyes, but I couldn't force her to talk to me.
"I know."She stacked up the last of the clothes and gave me a considering look."Adak said you accepted Dargo’s gentling.How was that?"
"Oh, so now we're poking into my sex life?"I laughed."It was good, I saw fireworks, so no complaints."
She pursed her lips and pinned me with one of her patented 'you worry me' looks.
"That's it?The sex was good and that's that?"
I shrugged."Is there supposed to be more?"Turnabout was fair play, but now I was regretting poking my nose in Penny's business.I still didn't know how I felt about yesterday.In the moment I hadn't been thinking about the big picture when I told Dargo to fuck me.
That was my fault.He'd asked if I was sure and I'd steamrolled right past the lifelong commitment part of the deal.But now, a day later and with no haze of lust to distract me, I was feeling conflicted.
"Gentling is supposed to be hugely intimate.You're binding yourself to your lifelong mate."
"It was intimate," I defended.
