My mouth fell open, and I pushed his shoulder. It didn’t help that I was, in fact, feeling fairly earnest toward him at the moment. “You’reearnest! You get wide-eyed over donuts and the opera.”
He looked wry. “Yes. But. Maybe it’s how kind you all are? We’re kind,” he said quickly. “But it’s not the same. It’s not as…intentional, perhaps.”
I frowned, not understanding what he meant. I didn’t like being called naive and earnest—the description sounded childlike. And I didn’t want to be seen as a child. I drew one knee up to my chest, trying to sound blasé and intellectually curious, not like I cared. “Do you mean about relationships? Have your previous relationships been so unearnest?”
A grin blossomed slowly on his face. “Why do you want to know?”
Maybe he wasn’t as shy as I was, after all. “I’m just trying to understand.”
No innocence on his face now, much closer to wickedness, though I could hear how carefully he picked his words. “I think shedim are more sexually open than humans. We don’t tie sex to emotions as often as humans do. Maybe that’s part of it.”
“We’re open,” I protested, feeling defensive. I was using the human “we,” given I had minimal experience at being open or closed. Was that why he hadn’t kissed me? He thought I’d get too attached? “At least here, in Ena-Cinnai, we’re not like in Tzorybium.” In the northwestern continent, across the Long Sea, people were more conservative: no sex before marriage, more reserved clothing, restrictive beliefs around gender.
“All right,” he said. “But for shedim, the pleasure in the moment is often enough for an interaction. We don’t dwell on it overmuch.”
I parsed this. “What, so you’re great at one-night stands? So’s half the Lyceum.”
His teeth flashed in the night as his smile grew even more. “And which half are you?”
One-night stands weren’t an experience I had any knowledge of, as Daziel likely knew, given he’d lived with me for five months. “Which half areyou?”
His black eyes hooded, and the smile lines on either side of his mouth deepened. “I’m not having any. I’m betrothed.”
“Only technically,” I said, aware I sounded petty.
“Yes.” He reached out, slowly wrapping his finger around a curl that had sprung loose from my braid crown. My heart thudded in my throat. Our eyes locked on each other’s, and a silkiness entered his voice. “Only technically.”
A shiver went through my whole body, a clenching that seemed reserved for Daziel. It was a response to the depth of Daziel’s voice and the cant of his body and the way he looked at me, along with how much I liked his humor and slyness and sweetness. Liquid heat spread through me, and my cheeks burned.
But he didn’t kiss me.
Kiss him yourself, you fool, the wiser part of me said, the part thatadvised my younger sisters and was good at being practical and brave, especially for other people. But there was another voice, my aunt’s, droll and dry:You have no future. Inevitable heartbreak.
If I was going to make this leap, I needed him to jump with me. I needed to know if he wanted it too, if I had been mistaken or not about the attraction between us. “You know how I know this isn’t a real betrothal?”
“Do tell.” His voice was still soft. Intimate. His gaze never strayed from mine.
“Because you haven’t courted me.” I tried to sound airy and theoretical, still too scared to give too much away. “You haven’t kissed me.”
The words hung in the air. When he didn’t respond, I wanted to snatch them back, pretend I’d never said them. Why had I brought this up? I should have buried these feelings.
No. I needed to know.
His gaze pulled over me. There was something heated in it, something I wouldn’t have thought I’d be able to detect from obsidian eyes, but it turned out this kind of look transcended species. “Do you want me to kiss you?”
Yes, I wanted to say, but it wasn’t right, not yet. I didn’t want to lay bare such a raw, vulnerable desire without knowing how he felt. I didn’t want to be the only one to own up to the yearning coiled inside me. “I’m just saying, if our betrothal was genuine, you would have shown more interest.”
“Ah,” he said, a smile unfurling. “Making you coffee and bringing you croissants and plants isn’t showing interest? Spending all my time with you? With your friends and family?”
My heart started pounding so forcefully I could hear it. Maybehe did like me. Maybe this could work. “You could just be being nice.”
“Trust me.” His hand fell from my hair, and his gaze slid to the moon’s reflection on the water. His jaw tensed. “I’m not being nice.”
“Aren’t you?”
He picked up my hand. He’d done this before, so many times—when he begged me to make him a cup of tea so he didn’t have to get up from the couch, when he was bored and wanted something to fiddle with, when he wanted to convey warmth or support. It’d never felt like he was trying to seduce me. His hand was warm, but when his thumb stroked the center of my palm, I shivered.
“What if I wasn’t nice?” he asked. “How mad would you be?”
