We’re lying in his bed, having just finished an especially long session where he made me come three times with his fingers and tongue before finally flipping me over and fucking me into the mattress until I saw stars. We rarely make small talk afterwards. In fact, I rarely linger for longer than it takes to get dressed, but I’ve been dying to talk about this, and Fox is probably the safest person to mention it to. It’s not as if he’s going to go gossiping with anyone else.
“Kastian has a soul-bond,” I repeat, staring up at the ceiling.
Fox frowns. “Odessa?”
“No…that’s what I thought too, actually…but he said it was someone else. He told me about it a few weeks ago.”
Fox sits up, leaning back on his elbows and looks down at me. “Why would he tell you?”
I glance at him, startled by the sharpness in his tone. “I guess it’s a complicated situation. He wanted to know if I had any seer abilities.”
“Do you?”
“Not really. I mean, I’ve always thought I had good intuition, but I’m not a real seer like Kastian is looking for. I gave him the name of someone who might help.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Fox asks, still watching me.
“I just thought it was interesting…I had no idea he was already bonded.”
Fox makes a noncommittal sound and lies back down, turning his gaze to the ceiling.
“What?” I ask, for once unable to interpret his wordless answer.
“I just assumed his bond was Odessa. He looks at her like…”
“Like what?”
But Fox just shakes his head and doesn’t answer.
After that first conversation, we start talking more and more.
Or at least, I do.
Other than when he’s talking me through an orgasm or praising how well I’m riding his cock, Fox never grows much more talkative himself, but I linger longer and longer in the evenings, talking through whatever happens to be on my mind, while Fox nods along, making the occasional monosyllabiccomment. If he were anyone else, I would think I was annoying him, but for some reason, I think he likes listening to me.
Of course, I’m only guessing. I don’t really know that much about Fox beyond the surface level. As time goes on, though, we have enough small exchanges that I can piece together an incomplete picture of who he really is.
I know he’s from Thermia and was a soldier at some point. Of course I know he was sent to Dyaspora—the most infamous and dangerous prison in Ellender—because he met Daemon, Kastian and Jett there. But I don’t know what he did to be punished so harshly.
Sometime around Beltane, Fox mentions that he likes sleeping in the barracks because he’s never really been alone before, and is used to all the people.
“Because you were in prison for so long?” I ask tentatively.
“Yes,” Fox grumbles. “But not just because of that. I was in the army, and it was always crowded in the camps.”
“What about when you were young? Were there a lot of people around then too?”
He looks at me blankly. “Yes. In the army camp.”
My brow furrows. “I mean before that, though. When you were a child.”
“I joined the army when I was six.”
I reel back, shocked. Six? How would that even work? Why on earth would he be drafted so young? Does he remember his parents? Or maybe they were soldiers too…
I open my mouth to ask him to elaborate, but then I glimpse his expression. It’s dark and wary, and I instantly change course. “How long were you in Dyaspora?”
“About forty years,” he says, some of the darkness clearing from his face.
