“Gets their fucking on?” he said, shaking his head.
“Come on, one of us has to bring the vulgarity.”
His lips quirked. “Very true.” Unfortunately, that humor was too short-lived for him and he started pacing deeper into my room and shoving at his hair. “What am I going to do?”
“Well, the two of you aren’tjust friendsanyway, right? You told me you’ve kissed and even fooled around.”
He stilled and eyed me. “Fooled around, meaning I… you know… tasted her.”
“You ate her out. Got it.”
He screwed up his face. “Way to take the romance out of it.”
“See?”
“What?”
“You’re not just friends and you’re not wannabe fuck buddies either. You really care about her. You might even… love her.”
“Love? I… I don’t know.” He fisted his hands. “And I can’t even entertain that, can I? I mean, after I… pleasured her, which, yes, I really liked doing with her, and she made it very clear she liked it too… she wanted toreciprocate.”
“To suck you off.”
“Evi!”
I chuckled. “Just trying to give it a bit of normalization.” And to help him to see just how much he adored her, that things were naturally escalating, and something he needed to start dealing with, instead of pushing off to the side—and repressing.
“But I couldn’t have her… do that to me.”
“In case you lost control?”
“Right. In case it revealed what your dad and grandmother have worked so hard to keep secret. That my brother suffered to keep secret for me too.”
Yeah, Torvek wasn’t a regular fire dragon—and not just because of his tainted heritage, or the fact that before the war he’d technically been next in line to rule the Dracoryn Realm.
It was because his bloodline had been experimented on by his maniacal grandfather, Malrik Titanus, and that horrific fallen Celestial being, Draco. It meant that Torvek possessed Celestial-level abilities.
Like his older brother, Torvek possessed Primal Celestial Resonance, which meant he could dominate Celestial power and force it back, to retreat. But the ability that would be dangerous for others to know of—especially in the Dracoryn Realm—was Command of Beasts, where he could basically control any supernatural beings with an animal nature. Most definitely dragons.
It was known that Vorzyr could do those things, because it had been exposed in highly publicized battles over the years. But the supernatural populace had been made to believe that it had skipped Torvek, that he didn’t have those extra powers.
“Exactly. If I’d let her pleasure me, I wouldn’t be in full control.”
“Even if you released your Primal Celestial Resonance, it wouldn’t be noticeable because it only impacts Celestial beings, and none of them are gonna be down atIgnis Row.And as for Command of Beasts, I really don’t think for a second that you’d suddenly unleash that, no matter what. You’d never take control of anyone’s body like that.”
“I want to think that, too. But it’s happened before.”
“That was once in all twenty-one years of your life. And under extreme, stressful circumstances.”
Ten years ago, when he was eleven and I was ten, I’d been trapped under my own ice and frost, and he’d called my dad in to help, because Torvek’s dragon fire hadn’t been strong enough then to melt through it at that age. And in his panic he’d accidentally taken control of my dad to make him rescue me. It had only been for five minutes max, and he’d freaked out and run away for several days. Until me and my dad had managed to track him down. And we’d dealt with it. It hadn’t been his fault. And since then, he’d been going to Haven Initiative with the Celestial children every week to learn more about that aspect of things, where he’d trained with his brother and even been around actual pure Celestial magic in the form of the children there.
“I mean, yes, that’s true, but—”
“Do you think all this worry being rooted to that is a manifestation of your actual fear of having sex for the first time? Especially with Fanor who is more experienced than you?”
“I’m glad she’s experienced.”
I smiled. “I know you are.”
