“Exactly.” I tangle my hands in his hair, like I am already tangled in him. “You know that I absolutely don’t have a plan yet for tomorrow.”
“So rather than work on one—”
“I don’t need tothink, I need tomove.”
“You have many, many katas for that, and not one of them involves my cock.”
I let out a crack of laughter. “None of them are as satisfying as your cock though, I bet.”
“Yora.”
“I want it, Zan.”
Zan closes his eyes as if in pain.
“I mean—yes obviously your cock too, but I meant I want a life withyou. I was going to let you get used to the idea, I really was, but you need tobelievethat I am going to try to stay with you. That I’m going to do whatever I can to stay alive. And I think...” I swallow. “I think I need to know that from you, too.”
Because if we’re bonded, if one of us goes, so does the other.
That’s why he wants to wait, in part—to not risk me.
And that’s why Idon’twant to wait.
I want him to know in his bones that I am in this for the long haul.
I canfeelZan’s tension; his rapid pulse beneath my hands.
Finally he says slowly, “You only agreed to take things slow formysake?”
“Yeah. I don’t have five hundred years of believing the one person who I wanted would never be available to untangle.”
“No, you have five hundred years of believingno onewanted you, and you shouldn’t have to settle for the first—”
“Settle?” My wrath pulses over my skin, and my hands tighten in his hair. “You think I am settling for a person who refuses to put others at risk for his own benefit, who has spentliterally centuriesriskinghimselffor strangers because it was the right thing to do and hecould, who has been doing everything in his power to not influence me with it?”
Zan opens his mouth as if to interrupt, but I flare my magic brightly between us to distract him.
I’m not done.
Not even close.
“You think I am settling,” I growl, “for a person who has been my anchor and my light and who I want so badly I have been exploding furniture to bring closer to me? A person who has been supporting me figurativelyandliterally in everything I can imagine and more that I can’t? A person who makes me laugh with horrifying puns when I’m doing the scariest thing I can imagine, and cleans the kitchen so I can make more ice cream, and doesn’t flinch when I lash out and steps up to meet me?”
Zan’s eyes have changed color.
Imade them do that.
I lean in so close our noses are touching and whisper, “You think I amsettling, for a person who enables me to fly?”
Zan’s mouth crashes to mine.
I open for him, the wave of him crashing over me.
But it’s over almost as quickly as it began, Zan’s breathing hard like he has just run up a mountain.
Running up a mountain didn’t wind him, though.
The person he’s obsessed with seeing him—wantinghim—is what he doesn’t know how to contend with.
