His arm slid around my waist. “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that.”
He tried to pull me down against him, but I shoved his hands away. “Oh, I very much need to worry about that!”
He chuckled and tucked his arms behind his head. “I take it you still haven’t gotten a lesson about the differences between humans and Vitaeans then, huh?”
I glared at him. “No, I haven’t. Would you care to share with the class?”
“Well, there are a lot of differences, actually. We tend to run considerably warmer, most of our senses are better—hearing, smell, and so on. Though not to any biologically impossible extreme. We’re still carbon based life forms, same as you.”
“Oh my God!” I shouted, punching his shoulder considerably harder this time. “Can we save the lecture for a time when I’m not freaking out?”
“You did ask me to share with the class,” he said, smirking.
“Sin…” I warned, my voice heavy with the promise of vengeance.
“Fine, fine,” he said, tossing up his hands in a placating gesture. “Vitaeans are naturally sterile, Rain. There is no way I could impregnate you even if we fucked all night long.” Hegrinned. “And I do intend to make that happen as soon as you stop looking at me with murder in your eyes.”
I shook my head. “How is that even possible? You wouldn’t survive as a species if you were sterile.”
“No, we wouldn’t," he agreed. "There is, however, an herb that relaxes a certain muscle inside the male body. Without it, there are no… swimmers I guess you could say. Which means I can come inside you as often as I want. And, Rain? I very much want.”
Despite the heated promise in his eyes, my tension eased at his words, and I fell back against the pillows. “So, in my world, females have to poison our bodies with side-effect riddled hormones, but here, the guys only have to take an herb if theywanta kid?”
I hated to admit it but damn. Dey might have been a tiny bit right. Vitaeans were superior to humans. At least in this one thing.
I snuggled up against Sin, and he ran his fingers through the loose waves of my hair. “There are a lot of things about Vitaea that are different from your world. Our evolution never lent itself to a biological drive to reproduce. Possibly because our source of magic is limited in how many may draw upon it.”
He ran a hand down my skin that no longer felt overheated, and I shifted so that my head was laying on his chest. I wanted to ask him questions—about Vitaea, about magic—but I had put off this conversation long enough.
“Sin,” I said quietly. “I need to tell you something.” His hands stilled in my hair, but he remained silent, allowing me to continue. “I asked Corym to do the language transfer. He couldn’t, not fully, because he was fighting against a mental block, but he was able to store the knowledge in my subconscious. I can’t speak it or understand it, but… I can catch snippets if I’m not paying attention.” I took a deep breath. “I'vealso been reliving past conversations in my dreams. When I do… I understand everything that was said in them.”
Sin’s body stiffened under me, and I wondered which conversation he was recalling that had him so nervous. I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t.
I shifted so I could look at him. “Say something.”
“How much do you remember?” he asked, his face dangerously neutral.
“Everything,” I whispered. “I remember you telling me that you love me. And I remember you telling me that you sacrificed so much to keep me away from here.” I paused when his eyes shuttered, but I had to ask. “What did you sacrifice for me, Sin?”
His eyes slowly opened and their lovely green hue was dampened by sorrow. “I can’t,” he confessed. “I can’t tell you, Rain.”
I nodded, unsurprised by his response after our earlier discussion. “I understand that but… do you want to tell me?”
Apparently that was the wrong thing to ask because Sin pulled away from me and sat up, swinging his legs over the side so his back was to me.
“No.” The word was so quiet, so faint, and yet it thundered through my ears.
He said wanted to tell me things, but apparently that didn't extend to whatever he had given up to protect me. And I had to decide if I could live with that.
I debated for a few seconds, but the answer came easy—I could. For now at least. I just wasn’t sure if I could forever.
I sat up and snaked my arms around his ribcage, pressing my face to his scarred back. “Okay. I can let it go.”
He reached down to where my hands were clasped around his bare waist and pulled them up so he could kiss each one of my knuckles.
I drew him back to the bed, my chest pressed against his back, letting him feel my skin against his. Neither of us had mentioned the L-word and maybe that was for the best. I didn’t know what I felt for Sin, but I did know it couldn’t be love.
We lay there in the heavy silence of the flickering light for a long while, languishing in this brief moment outside of time. No prophecies. No rifts between worlds. No manipulative kings. And definitely no secrets that might tear us apart.
