“Seems reasonable.”
“Good to know.”
Claire reached for his hand and drew one finger across his palm, and Tai opened his eyes to watch her weave her fingers between his. “You know what’sunreasonable? The way you do a tuxedo such total, unrelenting justice.”
“Unrelenting, huh? Have you come to any platonic conclusions as to why?”
“No,” she said. “I was never considering the matter platonically in the first place.”
He didn’t move; he truly was wiped out. But his mouth lifted in a slow smirk that sent a flutter through her middle.
“I have a non-platonic conclusion, though, if you’re interested.”
“Riveted,” he said.
“It’s not the tux. It’s the man inside the tux.”
She pushed herself up from her slouch, and Tai took her in his arms and took her mouth with his. They started slower this time,but in a moment the wild hunger was between them again, and Claire couldn’t get enough of him, of his taste, his lips insistent on hers, his strong shoulders under her palms.
“It’s not your tailor,” she said between kissing his mouth, his roughly shadowed jaw. “Just so you know.”
“Okay,” he said, then crashed his lips into hers again.
“It’s you, Tai. It was always just you.”
“Me?”
“In a tux or in swimming trunks behind a waterfall. I haven’t dated for years, and it’s made me so mad, because we were never even together back then. But since you, there’s no one else I want.”
“Claire.”
“Obvious solution: I saved up to buy you out,” she said.
“To get over me.”
His smirk was back, and Claire forced herself not to cover it with her lips, to lose herself in his taste all over again. This man. What he did to her, what he’d done for the last three years.
He sobered as he studied her. “You weren’t the only one trying to get over the…the ghost of the thing between us. I never knew what it was either, just that it wouldn’t let me go.”
After words like that, she had no choice but to kiss him again, and in his response she might have tasted relief. By the time this kiss ended, she no longer hated the truth. It was Tai for her. Or it was nobody. She’d lived happily single. She could do it for centuries, if this didn’t last. But she couldn’t be with a man who wasn’t Tai.
When they drew apart again, he ran his thumb over the inside of her bicep, over the small tattoo. “Why a feather?”
“I didn’t want a whole bird.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Why bird-related then?”
This, she could tell him. Verena the Vigilant didn’t belong tonight, but her tattoo was an easy topic after all these years.“Feathers are super strong, stronger than they should be for their light weight. They lift and carry and last against storms. I didn’t want a phoenix; I haven’t been through real fire, you know? But an eagle or a hawk, something that soars in solitude, makes its own way from up high. Strong and free. I wanted that.”
He was quiet a long time. At last he said, “Anything to do with being single?”
“That’s how I’ve liked to think of it the last few years. But when I got it at twenty-one, it was more about being okay on my own, an independent adult.”
“I like that the meaning evolved along with you.”
Claire lay back and let herself feel that she was truly tired. Tai reached for her bare feet and began to rub them, and she gave a happy little hum and let herself rest.
Then, voice hushed and content, he said, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
