“Yeah, it relaxes me. How about you?”
“Sex relaxes me,” I said, before I could think better of it.
Marilee made a noise that wasn’t quite human.
“But I also like to swim,” I hastened to add. “Maybe we can go to the pool tomorrow before our sessions.”
Marilee
Iwas bored. So bored. I spent the whole day at Hazel’s side during roundtable discussions about diplomatic relations and presentations about ‘comparative advantage’ and ‘trade liberalization’ and ‘capital mobility’. I didn’t understand most of it, but Hazel clearly did. She was in her element.
“This all makes sense to you?” I asked her as we walked into the ballroom for lunch.
I spotted Martha, Boris, and Allie standing at different locations in the room, ostensibly looking for a place to sit but actually watching the crowd. We settled at a table near the side door where I could have eyes on the room.
“All what?” Hazel asked. “The presentations?”
“Yeah. You seemed super interested in them, taking notes and stuff. And you didn’t fall asleep once.”
Her face lit up. “Oh yes, this is all so fascinating. I love it. You were bored, huh? I could tell.”
She could? I was sure my face had stayed impassive – I was trained to keep it that way. I wondered if the beginnings of the mate bond were making her more tuned in to me, the same way it was doing for me.
“When I was in the military I once had to lay on my stomach in the middle of the desert for two days not moving while I waited for someone we were trying to capture, and that experience was less boring than those presentations this morning.”
“Did you get sunburned?”
“Huh?”
“When you laid on your stomach in the desert for two days, did you get sunburned? You’re very pale skinned.”
I frowned. “No, I had protective clothing. And sunscreen.”
“You had food and water with you, right?” she asked.
“Yeah, of course.”
I gave a chin tilt to Allie as she wandered by, looking like she was trying to find a colleague.
“How did you pee?”
I tore my gaze away from the room to study my mate. Her expression was serious, but her eyes were sparkling with amusement.
“What do you mean, how did I pee?” I asked grumpily. “The usual way.”
“If you couldn’t move from your stomach for two days, I was just wondering how you were able to eat and drink and pee. Also, at any point did you get a leg cramp from not moving for so long?”
I blinked. “Well, I moved a little. Smartass.”
Hazel started laughing. “I thought so. But I hear you, this is boring for you.”
Some other attendees joined our table, interrupting our conversation, and I picked at my salad while another boring old white guy started speaking on the stage. Jeez, couldn’t we have a single meal without listening to some windbag drone on about trade wars?
I tuned out the speaker and thought about this morning. Hazel and I both woke up early. She wanted to go for a swim, which was apparently her favorite way to work out, and even though Ididn’t have a swimsuit with me, I went along to keep an eye on her. As her bodyguard, of course.
It had been torture seeing Hazel in a swimsuit, her curvy little body sliding through the water as she did laps with a focused precision. She was a good swimmer and much fitter than she looked. Her boring diplomat clothes hid tight muscles, strong legs, and the most perfect breasts I’d ever tasted.
Wait no, I didn’t need to think about that kiss last night. I needed to focus on my job. Plus, Hazel hadn’t exactly leapt at the opportunity to be mates. She’d seemed more freaked out about the mate reveal than anything else that had happened so far. The sexual attraction was there, I had no doubt about that, but she wasn’t feeling anything more. At least not yet. Of course, growing up the way she had, I imagined she didn’t trust easily.
