“Up you get.” There was no hesitation for Gren. He climbed right in, settling himself in, and patted the spot next to him. “I’ll get the light,” he added as my knee hit the bed. Turning with his hand on the lamp’s switch, he waited until I’d slid under the covers alongside him and my head fell on the pillow he had there, to click the switch off.
Tense, waiting for him to try and say something corny or make a play I’d have to pass on, I glanced at him when he snuggled closer, until our foreheads were almost touching, and the knuckles of his hands brushed over the tops of mine. Realizing I was clenching my hands, I pried one from the other, forcing myself to relax.
His fingers wiggled their way between mine then, his legs sliding closer until the hair on the tops of his feet tickled me and our knees brushed.
“I- I like this.” My skin flushed in the dark.
His head lifted, pecking a kiss to the middle of my forehead, to settle back where he’d been. “I like you.”
“Do you?” The creature in my chest fluttered uncertainly.
“I’d tell you I love you, but I’m afraid of scaring you off. I probably sound like a nutter, with everything that’s going on and how contrary I was before. I kept smelling what I thought was my mate, and it lingered on you but you smelled different. It hadn’t registered in my dull witted brain that that might have to do with your nerves or that it might be yo-”
“You weren’t attracted to me at first.” It wasn’t love at first sight for him like it had felt like for me. He hadn’t been smitten with me after one look, and my comment wasn't a question. It was a hard pill to swallow. Who didn’t want to be the most attractive creature to their male? But life wasn’t some grand fairytale. It simply didn’t work that way. I’d get over the sting of it eventually.
“W-were you- Was it… Were you with me?”
“Instantly.” Thinking of that moment, reliving it, I stared at him in the dark, glad his eyesight wasn’t as good as mine. Reaching forward, frowning at the thick frames still on his face, I gently tugged them off of his long face, folded them, and leaned over him to set them on his nightstand.
Gren laid there and watched, impassive as I did as I would, but his heart began to thunder.
The second I was settled again, his hands reclaimed mine and he lifted them to kiss the tops of each. “I wish I could have a redo. I’d do things different.”
“I don’t.”
Gren made a noise, surprised by my answer. “But I was- It wasn’t-” A grumbling noise rattled his chest and he shifted restlessly. “You’re lovely. You deserved better.”
A yawn stole over me, then another and another, until I was shaking my head to try and ward them off. I was just so sleepy…
Chapter 15
Gren
She’d fallen asleep. I knew the moment it happened, a tiny whistle of a noise escaping her as her body completely relaxed. It occurred to me I may have just talked the woman to sleep, or she was simply comfortable enough she’d drifted off. Curling a little closer to her, the soft, breathy sigh she let out had me counting on the latter, hoping.
My vision wasn’t all that great in the dark, but I could still make out her features as my eyes adjusted, blurry as it was without my glasses.
Her hair fluttered around her like a living creature, the tiny blossoms in her shiny locks giving off her scent. I couldn’t understand how I’d thought her plain at first. Aster was anything but plain. There was a subtlety to her beauty. Understatedly beautiful? Was that a thing? It snuck up on you, quietly but with a force that made you sit up and take notice. Beneath the nerves and wallflower-like shyness, there was a boldness. She was forthright, blunt but not in a mean way. Beneath those trembling leaves hid a core of steel—it peeked at times. It definitely took a determined heart to pursue my clueless ass.
Her face was squared but still feminine, her features, I suppose what one might think of as standard, not too small or overlarge—it lent a softness to her, adding to the vulnerability she wore so openly. Her cheek bones were low, working with her facial structure, further softening her looks. Sharp features would be all the more intimidating on her. Her neck was not unnaturally long or gracefully sloped, but I'd always compared necks like that to giraffes. Aster was, at first glance, sturdy. You had to move in closer to admire the details.
I supposed I was more about the looks than I realized. Her eyes weren’t overlarge or doe-like, but softly rounded, almost almond shaped, striking in color, her boldest features beyond her hair. Her nose wasn’t long or short, but somewhere in the middle, a slight upturn on the end of it where the rest of it was straight.
One might say she wouldn’t turn heads, but an hour in her company, I could see many a male falling for her once she let her guard down. And her legs… Muffling a strangled noise as I thought of strong thighs squeezing my hips, riding me, I swallowed thickly. Squirming at the unsettling idea of anyone else knowing her like that, getting to see this side of my flower, I resisted the urge to wrap myself around her possessively. Aster was beautiful, perfect. MINE.
She mumbled something in her sleep then, not quite my name but something close enough to it I smiled like a fool in the dark.
“I love you, Aster Marsh.” I whispered the words I didn’t feel I had earned the right to confess to her yet. I needed her to feel my love before I made my declaration. Our love blossom had several new buds, some partially bloomed, but nothing of the eruption there’d been, nearly overtaking my sunroom, before I’d taken her declaration, told her it was barbaric and vile, and thrown it in her face. Even now I fidgeted to turn and stare at it where I’d set it on the nightstand.
Worry filled me at the thought of it never erupting with her love for me again.
“Love you, too,” she mumbled in a dead sleep, shifting closer, until her head was snuggled against my chest, her arms wrapping around me loosely, our legs twining.
My chest felt like it would burst.
She loved me. Vines erupted from me, wrapping around her in a protective hold. Grinning like a fool, blossoms and thin branches poured out from me, moss covering it all following. MINE.
Chapter 16
