I deserve to be allowed to be soft.
“Yora? May I?”
The moment of my racing thoughts drags on long enough that now Zan is kneeling before me with a jar of ointment.
My mouth goes dry at the sight of him there. I nod mutely.
His gentle touch on my hands sends those tingles through where we touch again, but it’s more than that.
There is something about being tended—abouthimtending to me, like this.
This, too, is intimate.
I feel his care in my heart, and it’s that that has me unable to speak.
But when he gets to his feet, I stand, too, and grab the jar from him. “Now you. Your human form skin got the same scratches mine did.”
He opens his mouth to protest.
I jab a finger in his chest and echo in an exaggeratedly growly voice, “You don’t have to accept bad.”
He scowls but switches places with me, sitting down as he mutters, “I guess I deserve this.”
I narrow my eyes, kneeling in turn. “Being taken care of?”
Zan stills.
“No,” he says softly. “Being called to account by you.”
Argh. Maybe we’re not done with difficult conversations today after all.
I get to work, trying to be businesslike, hoping that might make this easier for both of us to talk about. “If you’re just staying out of guilt for turning away from a complete stranger approximately a million years ago—”
“Oh no, I got over that after a few decades.”
Decades?
Not sure I believe him, I tease lightly, “Not quick on the uptake, I see.”
“Some of us don’t have the benefit of five hundred years of meditation behind us to help assimilate revelations quickly,” Zan says dryly. “And dragons... are not especially emotionally balanced, in general.”
Hmm. Maybe that’s why he thinks he has to shut down by default.
But I of all people can handle volatile emotions, and maybe someday he will trust me with all of his.
Regretfully coming to the decision that I’m out of excuses to keep touching him, I close the ointment jar and stand.
Zan stands with me and catches my hand before I can retreat.
That point of contact sears through me on every level.
Our eyes are even with each other; locked.
“Idoregret my decision back then,” Zan says in a rough voice. “If I had been able to open my eyes more, so much might have been different. But I hadn’t unpacked enough of my own upbringing yet, and I didn’t have the information then that I do now.
“But I’m not here because I feel guilty about having once been young and foolish. I’m here because I want to be. And whenever you want me to go, you say the word. I will not overstay my welcome with you.”
My gaze searches his. Hesaysthat, but given how harshly he judges himself, I’m not sure he fully believes it.
