“Rarely.”
I lift my head and kiss his cheek. “Thank you for telling me. I know talking about some things can be hard.”
He gives me a small smile.
My heart breaks for what he’s endured and what he’s lost. He clearly cares about his princess, his people. I know, without him saying it outright. Just like I know that he lost family, friends, people he had known for the whole of his life on those battlefields. How horrifying must it be, I wonder, to watch those you love become completely emotionless and lay down to be slaughtered?
I fight off a shudder. While I’m glad he was able to talk to me, trust me with this, the images are terrible. In true people pleasing mode, I desperately want to make him feel better and take his mind off of his memories. Making him sad was not on my check list of how I wanted this night to go.
“Want to watch a movie?” I blurt.
He pulls back, his eyes searching my face and he seems relieved by whatever he finds. The look in his eyes tells me he knows what I’m trying to do and I think he’s grateful.
“Is that what you want to do?”
“Yep,” I say, with forced cheer. “And Chinese?”
He smiles. “You get the food and I’ll pick the movie.”
I try to focus on picking a movie, but my thoughts keep drifting back to Ash asking about being soul bound. There were so many things I wanted to say but I couldn’t. I can’t risk pushing her too far, too fast.
When I was a boy, it felt like gravity. Ember became the center of some invisible constellation that I didn’t know I was orbiting. When she was happy, relaxed, it felt like sunshine on my skin. When she cried, something wrapped around my ribs. When she bled — gods, when she bled — my heart beat slower for hours, as if it were mourning.
It’s more than emotion, more than recognition. It’s a truth too immense to burden her with right now.
You are the answer I carry in my bones.
Even when she forgot, when her memories shattered and she became Casie, I could feel her. Distantly, dimmed, but there.
It might be easier, being fated. It would give me the confidence that this would resolve itself, somehow. That she will find her way back. Because we’re destined.
But soul bound doesn’t mean entitled.
It doesn’t meanowed.
It means chosen. Again and again. Every. Day. Itmeans choosing her every day, every time. It means loving her when she can’t name why the sound of my voice is familiar. It means stepping back when she flinches and staying close anyway. It means waiting — for the moment she remembers that the rhythm of her power once matched the beat of my heart.
And if she never does?
I guess I’ll love her quietly. Because it isn’t about what I get from her or from us. It’s about who I am, who I get to be, when the other half of my soul walks the world beside me.
Even if she doesn’t remember it yet.
After eating, it’s getting late, but we’re laying together on the couch. Flint’s long limbs make it difficult, but not impossible. With some maneuvering, he assumed the big spoon position, his legs hanging off the arm of the couch, one arm tucked under my head. He’s pulled me snug against him, my back pressed to his chest, his arm snug around my hips. It’s nice to lay here and exist. Unfortunately, the movie he chose has plenty of sexy scenes and his body is making them harder to ignore. Or vice versa.
What I’m trying to say is I am acutely aware of thelength and hardness of his body pressed against mine and watching steamy scenes is making my imagination run wild. Usually, I find his warmth comforting, but tonight, it’s more than that. It doesn’t help that the tank I changed into has come up, displaying a bare inch of my stomach, and Flint has been idly running his thumb over the exposed skin.
I swallow, thickly, and focus on the feeling of his fingers gently stroking, back and forth. My core clenches at the feeling of his callouses on the tender skin of my stomach. The spike of desire I’m experiencing isn’t exactly unexpected, given how long it’s been. Who am I kidding? It’s Flint. Everything about him is exciting.
And the mouthwatering bastard is still watching the movie, laughing in all the right places. Completely unaware of the effect he is having on me.
Minutes pass. The longer this goes on, the crazier I’m going. The soft, gentle, feathery touches are driving me wild. I just want his hands on me, his mouth. Weeks of friendly kisses, lingering hugs, and other seemingly innocent touches have built this up inside me until I’m ready to jump him.
Whether it’s a change in my breathing or my scent, I can feel Flint stiffen behind me. In more ways than one.
Maybe, for once, I’ll let my impulsivity win and stop trying not to wonder what it would be like to be with him.
Deciding to be daring and bold like the women I hope to write one day, I adjust my hips, ever so slightly, knowing that I’m causing friction against where he’s pressed against me. I hear his breath catch in his throat, even as my pulse quickens, and his hand seems to stutter to a stop on his current stroke of my skin.
