“That’s bullshit,” she scoffed, unable to stop the watery smile that tugged at her lips.
Taevas dragged her hand up to kiss her palm. Murmuring against her skin, he agreed, “You’re right. I should probably take more medicine. But I stand by the rest.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
He hadn’t wokenup beside many women before. None had ever been welcome in his nest, but when he was young and flush with hormones, he’d taken just about every woman he could to bed. He was the youngest Isand, a war hero, and only in his twenties. Eager to drown his sorrows and the poison of war in pleasure, he’d taken offer after offer.
The intricacies of how to navigate those temporary relationships had taken a while for him to understand. He didn’t realize at first that sleeping over implied permanence, nor that women talked. His father never thought to explain to him that it was best to kindly but firmly explain his boundaries, setting expectationsbeforesex so no hearts could be broken. These things he had to learn on his feet and, occasionally, through the well-meaning but often contradictory advice of the older men in what would become his Wing.
He did learn, though, and eventually he came up with a system that worked for everybody involved. It was one built entirely on clear communication, non-disclosure agreements, and a predetermined time limit. No woman slipped into bed with him without knowing the score, and therefore no woman left disappointed — outwardly, at least.
It made things easy, impersonal, and safe. Taevas couldn’t get attached to someone he could lose, and the women weren’t led to believe they’d caught the Isand after a night of passion.
He never meant to build a reputation as a player, but it was inevitable. Especially during the early days.
It bothered him at first and still did on some level. Taevas didn’t love the thought of being known as someone who disregarded lovers like yesterday’s laundry, but he quickly realized that, inexplicably, people seemed to like the idea that he couldn’t be pinned down. There was some strange draw to being the UTA’s most eligible bachelor and an incorrigible ladies’ man. Even as his appetites waned with maturity, the image stuck in the collective mind of the populace and took on a life of its own.
Sometimes he wondered what people would say if they knew he hadn’t slept with a woman in years. Would they even believe him? He imagined sitting down for an interview to explain that he’d been in a committed relationship with a figment of his imagination built on little more than a scent.
The Isand’s Finally Lost It,the headline would read.
His Wing wouldn’t be surprised. They’d been looking askance at him for years, ever since he stopped taking partners for the night.
Vael, perhaps his closest friend and most recent addition to the clan since his mating to Taevas’s cousin Hele, had been watching him even more closely than normal lately. The big, scarred dragon was too damn observant. Despite the fact that he’d been on sabbatical from the Wing for over a year, busy traveling with Hele to find her fellow elementals, he still somehow managed to notice that Taevas couldn’t seem to stop checking when his next package would arrive.
For ten years, Taevas had managed to keep his obsession mostly under wraps, but he’d been slipping more and more.
In fact, he’d slipped so far that he landed in Alashiya’s nest. It should’ve been nothing but a triumph, with copious amounts of carnal delights to celebrate the occasion, but fate wasn’t that kind.
He’d finally gotten to touch her, to watch her as she came onhis hand,and he was too damn injured to do anything else.
Taevas gritted his teeth against the chills that wracked him. At some point in the night, he’d crawled out of the nest to throw up in the bathroom. Alashiya had drowsily fetched him his toothbrush, a glass of water, and several more fever reducers before she helped him back into bed.
Not how I imagined my first night in the nest with her.
It was definitely not whatsheprobably had in mind, with her dreams of Adon the gargoyle.Ridiculous.As if even a football team of gargoyles could satisfy the hungry thing he’d glimpsed in his nymph. Only a dragon could do that.
Only a dragonwoulddo that.
Possessiveness bubbling in his gut like last night’s vomit, Taevas opened his bleary eyes to search for her. He lay on his stomach, his miserable, useless wings folded against his back and his head turned toward her. Alashiya lay on her side facing him. Her body was tucked into a tight ball beneath the blankets and her curls were a scattered explosion across the pillows.
Judging by the thin shafts of sunlight that made it past her curtains and all the moss on the windows, gods help him, Taevas judged that it was well past her normal wake-up call. She was typically up and moving at dawn, but he supposed that hehadkept her up far later than normal.
It was another humiliation that he hadn’t done so for any pleasurable reason. After he’d made the colossal mistake of trying to embrace her with his wings, as instinct demanded, he’d been in too much pain to continue where they’d left off.
He wanted to. By all the gods, heneededto. He’d soared with clouds. Seen where the domains of the gods touched at the very edge of the horizon. Fucked every kind of woman in every kind of way. Fought to the death and experienced the high of somehow making it out alive.
And none of it compared toher.
Kissing her and watching her come had been without a doubt the best experience of his life.
It was like sipping from the river of life itself. He tasted the very essence of vitality when she blessed him with her touch. When she breathed against his lips, he felt a kinship with the gods as he finally understood what it must have been like at the beginning of all things.
The urge to tear something from himself, to hand over an offering of flesh and bone in exchange for a moment of her radiance, had consumed him. His rational mind fled. It left only the devotee, the supplicant desperate to get his fill of the divine, and in that moment, Taevas as he’d known himself was lost forever.
In the light of morning, he didn’t want to think of what that meant. He couldn’t, until everything was back as it should be. Only then could he consider what it meant that he would never be able to sleep in a nest without her by his side again, or that when he thought of home, his internal compass had permanently reset itself to point to her.
Taevas sucked in a deep, shaky breath and reached across the infernal gap between their bodies to trail the tip of his claws over the curve of her exposed shoulder.
