And when he came on her tongue, her name a deep, resonant prayer on his lips, she didn’t feel like she was missing something. Everything they did together as an exploration. Every kiss and whisper and giggle and orgasm was another brick added to the foundation they’d laid ten years ago.
Sex would happen when it was meant to happen, but neither of them were in a rush. Because rushing anything, even pleasure, edged too close to confronting what they both knew was coming.
Alashiya perked up at a dismayed sound from Taevas.
“What is it?” she asked from her place by the stove, where she’d been frying some eggs.
He turned to show her the old tin where she kept her coffee. There were only a few specks of dark coffee grounds caught in the seam at the bottom of the tin. “There’s nothing for tomorrow,” he told her.
“Oh. I don’t normally run out this fast.” She wrinkled her nose, teasing, “You use too much!”
Taevas gave her backside a swift tap with his swishing tail. “I useexactlythe right amount of those terrible quality beans,metsalill.You just prefer your coffee as weak as tap water.”
“I do not!”
“You do,” he insisted, rattling the tin at her. “This is barely even real coffee. I can’t wait to show you what it should taste like.”
Alashiya rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s all I can get at the store that isn’t instant. Would you prefer that?”
That earned her another swat. “I’ll accept instant coffee over my cold, dead body.”
“Then I don’t want to hear any more complaints.” She batted at his tail, which had decided to curl around her hip, all affection now. “I’ll pick uptotally finecoffee from Debbie’s today.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Taevas’s sudden stiffness. His tail tightened around her hip, drawing her attention to the way he’d stopped stirring sugar into her mug in favor of watching her closely. All the levity had left his voice when he asked, “You want to go into town?”
He can’t come with me.
And just like that, the invisible clock stopped ticking.
Alashiya quickly looked away from him. “Yes. I have to, don’t I? We’re out of more than just coffee,” she answered, her tone carefully neutral.
A tense silence descended on them. The atmosphere, which just a moment prior was soft and warm and cheerful, darkened. Even the air felt a little heavier in her lungs, making it harder to draw a breath in.
“Shiya, you can’t.”
She flipped the stove’s dial, extinguishing the flame before the yolks were overcooked. “I did it before.”
Taevas, the softer version of him she’d come to adore so deeply and so quickly, disappeared. The dragon, theIsand,took his place when he bit out, “That was before we knew there was a dragon and an unknown group of men searching the woods. It’s too dangerous for you to leave here by yourself. I won’t allow it.”
“What am I supposed to do? Just never go to the store again?”
Taevas turned to her with a hard look. “You and I both know that’s not the answer. You’ll never have to think about going to the store again when weleave.”
She stepped back from the stove. A clammy sort of panic shuddered over her skin in awful little lurches. He wanted her to jump off a cliff with him, but her feet were stuck to the ground. All she could do was stare over the edge.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I can’t,”she heard herself say.
Taevas’s strong, hawkish features went tight. “I know you’re scared. I know that I’m asking too much of you. But there’s no other option.”
She shook her head mutely. There was another option, but neither of them seemed willing to say it.
The tension in his body doubled. Gripping the edge of the counter with one huge hand, like he needed to anchor himself to something, Taevas tried a different tactic. “You think Iwantto rip you away from all that you know? This brings me no joy, Shiya. I know how important this place is to you. I know how much it would mean tomein your place. But you can’t stay here. Not anymore. Not while a threat circles us every day. It’s days and days, Shiya. Do you think they’ll never come looking here? When the rest of the woods turn up empty, when there’s only one place left to check, do you believe you can stop them?”
Her pulse throbbed in her throat. Words escaped her. What could she say? He was right, but denial could survive on even the smallest scrap of hope.Maybe that dragon has nothing to do with anything. Maybe he really was just a tourist.
But even if that were true, which she could admit wasunlikely, that didn’t mean he could stay. That he wanted to. He had responsibilities to his people, his clan. To even ask him to was so blindingly hypocritical that she couldn’t think the words. Nymphs were all about the collective. They were about sacrificing for the whole. That’s what queens werefor.
