He didn’t, however, take his hands off the swells of her ass.
They lay in silence for a little while as Taylor tried to process what had just happened.When he finally spoke, he pulled back to look at her and surprised her by asking, “Why did you say ‘I’m sorry?’”
She blinked up at him and replied, “Because.Because I…I didn’t expect that I would…”
“Orgasm,” he rasped.
She nibbled on her lip.“Yes.”
“It is natural,” he told her.“There is no shame in that, especially with your mate.”
She swallowed thickly and tried to hang on to reason, “You’re not my mate, Vikan.”
His eyes flared, but it wasn’t anger in them she saw.It was…determination.
“I decided something as you slept,” he told her suddenly, just as a ray of morning sunlight penetrated the circle of aloe vera leaves they’d slept within.
She was almost scared to ask.“What?”
“This distance between us will be no more,” he said.Taylor almost choked, but he continued before she could say anything, “I realized that I could not ask you to give me a chance, when I had given you no reason to.”
She blinked, surprised.
“From now until we reachLopixaand then journey back to the Golden City, I will give you reason to,” he told her.“I want to make this right between us.But I wish for you to be open to what could be.Will you do this?”
Slowly, and without quite meeting his eyes, Taylor commented, “It doesn’t change the fact that you’re still in love with her.With Nitav.”
Vikan tilted her chin until his gaze connected with her own.“I realize that if there is a possibility for a future with you, I must let the past go.I must let her go.She will have no bearing on our matehood.”
“It’s easier to say it than to do it, Vikan,” she murmured.“You ask for a lot.And I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if it’s something I can even give.”
“All I ask for is that for the next few spans, you keep your mind open to me.To us,” he murmured, his gaze completely and utterly focused on her.“We can be good for one another.You have foreseen it.”
“I don’t know what I’ve seen,” she whispered.
Vikan dropped his forehead down to her own and it made her throat close…because in her dreams, Vikan had often done the same thing out of affection, out oflove.
“Three spans,” he murmured.“If you wish to journey back to Earth once we reach the Golden City…then I will let you go.We will say goodbye and we will never see one another again.”
Why did that thought fill her with fear, with wrongness?
“Three spans,” he said softly again.“Please,luxiva.”
And it was the ‘please’ that did her in again…because she eventually found herself nodding, albeit slowly.
“Okay,” she whispered.“I’ll give you that.”
And she wondered whether she’d just signed her own heart away with those words.Because if real Vikan was anything like dream Vikan, she had a feeling he wouldn’t need three days to make her fall in love with him.
ELEVEN
VIKAN WAS…DIFFERENT, Taylor thought, about mid-way into their afternoon.
It wasn’t quite the expression ‘night and day,’ but the change in him was noticeable.
And it flustered her.
Because for one, she was discovering that the ‘new’ Vikan was definitely more affectionate than the ‘old’ Vikan.He seemed to always find a reason to touch her, whether it was helping her over a rock the size of a snail or bending down before her to adjust the twine across her makeshift sandals, making sure to touch her ankle or her hips as he pulled himself to stand.
