Page 117 of Fate

She didn’t feel guilty for it any longer. They’d forgiven one another, somewhere along the way, and she would not harbour it as some private grief for a beginning she could not do over. It was theirs, tempers and all, and she was rather satisfied with the outcome.

She let him kiss her. Let her pulse race, let her fingers delve into his robes, holding him close to her. But there was something else that needed saying, a reassurance she needed to give, even if he did not need to hear it. “We’ll keep your mother, too. And Orma.”

He hummed, massaging the back of her neck in a way that seemed to turn her muscles to liquid, and it wasn’t fair that he could affect her so.

But then, she could do much the same to him. When her fingers skimmed through his hair. When she touched him, teased him, and his eyes would close at first, then open again when she paused for too long, his look heated and not angry—no, not angry. But willing her to do something else, to touch him, to take hold of him and...

“If you say so,” Lucian agreed, as if only to please her.

The bond said otherwise.

Warming. Tugging.

Pulling her back to him, to kiss him, to make her claim and keep her with him.

“Is Vandran expecting you back?” she asked, because some part of her was responsible. Some part of her was not quite as selfish as the other parts.

Small though it might be.

“Yes,” Lucian murmured into her skin as he allowed his lips to drift against her neck. The shell of her ear. Which tickled and made her squirm away from him, which left him lookingstrangely bereft when they were suddenly an arm’s length apart. “Tomorrow. Early, but...”

Which was far better an answer than she’d anticipated.

Made it easier to take his hand. To urge him up into their loft.

With the bed that fit the both of them so nicely.

To be pleasantly surprised when it was Lucian that reached first. That started with her hair, pulling out the delicate ribbons she’d twined into the braids at her temples, massaging her scalp to ease any of the tension he found there. “You have such lovely hair.”

She did not consider herself one that needed very many compliments, but she supposed she would have to amend that—for her heart swelled and she felt far more pleased than she ought.

“I like that we match,” she confessed. “A proper pair.”

He shook her head, and perhaps he thought her silly.

But then he was tugging at the ribbons at her shoulder, and she didn’t mind so much if his amusement came at her expense.

“I question your standards, but I won’t complain.”

She couldn’t either, not when he dropped the tie on her shift as well and his hand was at her breast, and wasn’t she supposed to be the one pinning him to the bed and divesting him of clothing?

Mama had always said daydreams weren’t visions.

Weren’t snippets of the future.

They might feel that way, sometimes. When she sat at her kitchen table, her finger making little patterns on the wood.

When she imagined Ellena coming back. Sometimes for tea, other times to bring a new piece of art to decorate their walls.

She imagined Mama struggling through learning tapestry with her, just because she did not want her to face the challenge alone.

Of the children they’d make. Fair-haired and with wings of a soft-grey sky. A bit of both of them, melded together.

She would visit her mate when he had an office all his own. She would rub his shoulders and insist that he worked too hard, but that she was proud of his dedication.

To her people.

To her.

---