But Hele needed to know who and what he was. She had Chosen him, and that meant she belonged to his clan, too. It was her right to understand what had happened to the rest of them.
Still, he wasn’t above using the story he didn’t wish to tell as leverage. Knowing her voracious mind would jump at any chance to learn something new, he pushed himself back toward her side of the pool and held out his hands. “Come in and I’ll tell you.”
He watched her lips tighten. The look in her eyes dimmed from cautiously curious to simply sad. Quietly, she said, “I can’t. Not with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because water moves electricity,” she answered, making a wavy motion with her hand. “I tried a bath once, but it went… badly. Myisatold me that it is dangerous for others to be in water with me. It could stop a heart.”
Stop a heart?Vael shook his head. “Constantin isn’t wrong. You should probably never get in a body of water with anyone —exceptdragons.”
Hele tilted her head to one side, clearly skeptical. “You have a heart, don’t you?”
Trying to lighten her mood, Vael pressed his palm against his chest and sighed dramatically. “Ah, my Hele, I don’t. I gave that to you a long time ago.”
The telltale sign that his mate was fighting a smile? Her full lower lip thrust out in a little pout that drove him absolutely insane. He wanted to take that lip and nibble on it with his fangs, then slowly slip his tongue into the silky well of her mouth and—
“Tell me the story.”
He nonchalantly flicked at the warm, salty water with the tips of his claws. “I’m waiting for you to get in.”
Watching her stomp one bare foot while she was crouched over the edge of the pool was the single most adorable thing he’d ever witnessed. “Ican’t.”
“You can,”he insisted. “Hele, do you really think my skin can’t stand some electricity? Dragons fly through lightning and m-storms regularly.Youhave shocked me dozens of times.”
She huffed. “Those weren’t shocks.”
“Yeah? Then what were they? Kisses?”
He said it as a joke, but when Hele didn’t respond, and instead looked away, Vael’s mind stalled.All those times she— no.
Bracing his palms on either side of her, Vael surged upward until his upper body was completely out of the pool. Water droplets rained down on the glittery concrete and her bare toes. Eye to eye, he asked,“T?ht…have you kissed me?”
“No,” she muttered, sparks snapping wildly around her face and hair. “Istruckyou. It is the only— I do not know how to kiss like you mean. Striking is what I know.”
He felt like he couldn’t breathe. Vael wracked his mind, trying to remember all the times they’d flown together. Of course he noticed that she struck him — hard to miss a lightning bolt or ten — but he never considered it might be her way of expressing romantic affection. Playfulness, yes. But the elemental equivalent of akiss?
The cogs in Vael’s mind stalled again when he estimated the number of times she had struck him mid-flight.
Dozens. Dozens and dozens.
After a moment of intense thought, he slowly asked, “Don’t you strike others?”
Hele’s eyes narrowed. That dainty finger came out again, this time to poke him in the shoulder. Her sparks bit at his skin, sizzling in the tiny water droplets there. “I donotstrike others. Only you. Gently.”
His grin spread in tandem with his wings, which stretched out behind him in a quivering display of pride and affection. His voice was breathless when he confirmed, “You’vekissedme. Alot.”
Glory save me, my mate has been telling me how she feels for ayear.Longer, even.
A look of irritation quickly covered up a flash of hurt in her eyes. “Well, you didn’t notice, so it doesn’t matter—”
He didn’t give her time to finish the thought.
One of Vael’s hands snapped up to curl around the back of her neck. His tail sliced through the water behind him, and when he sucked in a deep breath of her through his nose, his whole body shook.
My mate. My beautiful, temperamental, incredible mate.
He crushed their lips together.
