Page 34 of Caged By Dance and Desire

I felt a pang of envy. What would it be like to be loved, trusted, needed like that? To have an unassailable place in someone’s heart to the point they’d die to preserve you?

Where they accepted all your damaged pieces because that was better than nothing—and pieces still reflected light.

I couldn’t imagine that level of closeness, and I hadn’t realized until now that I craved it, and ruthlessly suppressed the craving along with everything else I’d given up on.

Companionship, intimacy, sex of any kind. Simple comfort or conversation at the end of a long day.

The effortless sync of dancing with a partner familiar with every line of your body, the unshakable trust they’d hoist you on every lift, never let you fall. I wanted it.

I wanted it withhim—only he didn’t need me. I was here because some spiritual/biological force had snapped us together, not because he’d wanted me. And even if he did, the disparities between us. . .he tried to gloss over them but the time approached where that protective caul would be ripped off.

“You’re not less to me,” Andrei said, bringing me out of my silence. “You’re my bonded. One day. . .one day we’ll call each other luudthen, and it will be the truth.”

“You don’t need me when you have them, Andrei. They give you everything.”

“Do you want us to give him up?” Constin asked.

I met the reason for that resoluteness in his eyes. They’d been steeling themselves. They expected me to ask them to walk away from each other.

“Of course not,” I said softly. “I would never do that, certainly not to someone I cared about.”

I held out a hand. After a moment, Constin took it, with a slight tremble that wasn’t mine.

I squeezed gently, then released him. “Please believe me. The last thing I want is to break up your family.”

Constin nodded, jaw tense, then let out a breath. “We’re not his bonded,” he said. “Luudthen is a chosen bond, but yours—there’s no choice. It is.”

“Eventually our minds will be one. They know me through time and experience.” Andrei’s gaze held mine. “When our bond fully locks, you’ll know me as if we inhabited the same body.”

The note in Andrei’s voice told me he meant those words literally. But. . .I wrapped my arms around myself.

“No choice.” That wasn’t romantic, at all.

“I had a choice. I could have fought in the moment the bond first emerged. I didn’t. Hasannah—don’t think of it as if I was forced.” He gentled his tone. “As if I wouldn’t have chosen you otherwise. That doesn’t matter. I want this. I wantyou.”

The weight of those fiercely spoken words kept me silent. Constin squeezed Andrei’s shoulder.

“We all want you,” Andrei’s luudthen said. “The older he gets, the more powerful he becomes, he’ll need you. Need the balance you provide.” The men exchanged a glance, this one dark with the bits of shared experiences I wanted no part of. “Too many of our High ones go mad with time and power. A bonded is an anchor. It’s a boon Andrei found you while he’s so young.”

“Under five hundred is a spring chicken,” I said. “I’d forgotten.”

Constin smirked. “I’m two centuries the elder.” He held up his fingers. “Two.”

“I bet you even changed his diapers.”

“Why, yes. I did.”

“I hope I pissed in your face,” Andrei murmured.

“Why do you think I’m still so hard on you?” was the purred reply.

The sly heat in those words, in the veiled glance Constin shot Andrei. . .well, my imagination sparked. More than my imagination.

“So youhaveslept with all your guards.”

Andrei smiled sweetly and examined his nails—matte black. “It's safer to choose pleasure from among your guard, even if they aren’t luudthen. Most of the High Lords choose to do this, or take lovers so far below them in?—”

I held up a hand, making a face. “Understood. Not exactly a healthy dynamic, but I can’t judge. I will never be a High Lord of anything but maybe your nail polish collection—which is excessive, by the way. Who needs. . .never mind.” I gave them a mock glare. “You could have told me all this, I wouldn’t have run naked into the woods howling.”

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