Page 42 of Meet Me in the Stars

“I keep forgetting that’s not the usual case where you come from,” Elio bit his lip.

“We have seers and stuff. Most of them are omegas, but not all of them.”

“I don’t believe that. I think most alphas probably just shrug off ghosts. Like a fully formed man is talking to me. Either he was alive, or he was a brain tumor. He couldn’t have been a ghost.”

“Is that what you were when I met you between lives?” I asked.

“I was a spirit.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It depends on who you ask. I was still me, though. Well, the old me. The me from before. The me that was a beta. Only beta isn’t the right word, I don’t think. It is on your world. Here, we don’t use it as much anymore. It just means someone who hasn’t chosen yet or doesn’t want to choose, maybe. Unchosen would probably be the best term.”

“Oh, so until you met my Lotus you were indecisive,” I teased him, trailing my hands down to his ass.

“I’m not having that debate, even playfully,” he shook his head, but let me pull him in so that our hips were pressed together. He was starting to get as hard as I already was.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered, “before her, I was fickle too. Not the poly thing. Just in the direction of my life. It was easier to turn around in a circle and go wherever I wanted than to pick a direction and stay on track.”

“That doesn’t sound bad. You followed the things you really cared about,” Elio said.

“What’s the punishment for romping with the leader’s nephew in the woods?”

“Ummm… The woods belong to everyone too,” Elio said, a hot blush spreading across his face.

“I love when you’re flustered,” I said, claiming his soft, kissable lips with my own.

I stepped forward intending to walk him backward deep into the woods for a bit of privacy. I wasn’t modest, but would guess no one wanted to see what we were about to do by accident.

“Hey, wait,” he said, and I almost let him go, but didn’t want him to fall.

“You okay?” I asked, glancing around for unwanted company.

“Are you doing this because you can’t stand to keep your hands off me or because you’re putting off what you might see?”

“Both,” I admitted. “You’re the one who stopped walking and pulled me into the trees. I don’t know what you’ll show me, but I know what we can do here. What I want to do here. What I wanted to do as soon as you pulled me into the wilderness.”

Elio rose up on his tiptoes and kissed me hard. He was already shirtless like most of the dragons on Starscale 1. I ran my hands over his lean, muscular body as he walked me deeper into the woods. Our tongues danced between our mouths, and I lost myself to him. I gave him who I was and what I was, letting the rest of my life drift away for the hour or so we spent alone with only the trees and forest creatures to bear witness.

We made love in the grass and fallen leaves and I kept my hand under Elio’s head to protect him from anything sharp or blunt. He wrapped himself around me as we let everything go. The truth and the past had a way of changing everything and we were a couple hundred steps away from both. We needed one more moment that was just ours. Everything inside me craved – not in the ways I craved Lotus, but just as much. When our relationship was open, we did so much work and therapy to understand all love wasn’t the same, but the quantity or quality of it could be. I wanted to open my mouth and promise Elio the world, but that wasn’t a promise you made when you were balls deep in someone. They hardly ever took you seriously in that position. All I could do was hope that everything we felt and everything that grew between us was real.

After our passion was spent, we lay in the grass with his head on my chest. His ear pressed against the new red scale over my heart. I was a Starscale now. That much was true. If I believed that’s how someone was inducted to his flight then I had to believe that it was our magic – our choice – that brought us together and not some dark, sinister motive.

Elio dozed as I let my thoughts line themselves out. In the quiet of the strange woods, surrounded by plants I’d never beheld before, it wasn’t so difficult to believe Lotus would fall in love with someone even if she were dead. It wasn’t hard to believe that if she called to me while I was conked out that I’d go to her anywhere. I still would. Then again, everything’s easy to believe when the sex blows your mind, and your balls are empty. That’s how Duke’s carrier once emptied my wallet while he was searching for his brother. That was so fucking long ago. We were older now. Older but I wasn’t sure if any of us were any wiser.

“Wisdom is flexible and easily forgettable while you’re living,” my dragon yawned into my thoughts. “It’s always there, but that doesn’t mean you glance in its direction. The priest or guide or whatever they’re called here will tell you this too, probably, but I’ll say it now. As far as I know there is not nor has there ever been a way to fake a true-mate response. It’s like faking life magic, itself. Elio is ours. I’m not sure I understand the how, but then again, I barely remember the how of Lotus, but she was ours. Is ours.”

I let his words lull me to sleep and when I woke to Elio stirring the purple sun was gone, sucked up by its purple fog. At least, that’s what it looked like through the tall, skinny trees.

“I’m glad I brought water,” Elio yawned, sitting up. “They’ll be plenty of supplies at the Star Room, but I’m so thirsty. I don’t remember the last time I slept like this during the day.”

“Nice, isn’t it?” I grinned.

“Almost perfect,” he smiled.

“Almost?” I arched a brow.

“Well, we still have the Star Room to get through. I dreamed the guide lied about having my memory and you ate me and not in the nice bury your face in my ass way, either.”

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