Page 71 of Sunder

To be seen. To be cared about.

The sitting room was wrong. There were no sweet memories there to counteract the bad ones to come. It had potential, but it wasn’t there yet, and she’d not have it become a room she actively avoided.

Which left only one other place she could think of.

Athan followed, arms full of books and papers that made up only a reasonable start, according to her father. Some from the beginning. Some from the end.

She was perilously close to crying already, and Athan could not carry her up the steps, and her wings gave a half-hearted swish when she thought of simply flying up the stairs and asking her hip to take her up there.

“Just let me...” Athan began, but she shook her head. Up she went. Slow, but determined. They needed this behind them. He needed to know who and what she was, and she needed to stop worrying herself sick that he’d think less of her once all the parts of her were exposed.

But there was more, wasn’t there? He might read about it. See pictures that an unskilled healer had attempted to create of her person, but someday there would be more.

Glimpses of her in a bath. An open door before a shift was fully pulled down. Those little happenings that came from living with a person. When knowledge became something more. When it was skin and bone and mate that lived with it all, and there would be no more talk oflovelythen.

They were not dressed for bed, but they weren’t exactly in day-clothes. It was a delightful sort of in between as Athan continued to spoil her by sending his patients to another healer if their needs were immediate, or in asking to be given a sennight as he settled into this mating business.

He said it all with a smile, and the people at his door would smile back, often offering an embarrassing tease about those first early days and how exhausted he must be.

Orma was horrified the first time it happened, but by the fifth she had only a lump in her throat as she nervously cast a look at the back of Athan’s head.

Then he would soothe her through the bond. Reminding her they were just fine, and people could think what they liked.

He was getting better at that. She’d had far longer to understand the workings of the bond, but it rarely felt an advantage. It was a friend to him, working with him rather than against her every effort to control it on her own.

She didn’t resent him for it, but she could admit, if only to herself, there was a little bit of envy.

Athan kept pace with her on the stairs, even though she gestured for him to move ahead. “I’m in no hurry,” he answered, which was infuriating on its own. She felt watched and bothered and he was capable and strong and did not need to remain with her. He could have made the trip there and back twice over if he wanted to, but instead he took each step as she did while pushing patience at her.

She gave the bond a tug and was gratified how his head popped up to look at her. “This is silly,” she insisted. “Just... go.”

“I could,” Athan agreed. “I could fly up there and come back to get you, and we would establish that I am faster than you and it’s more convenient.” She rolled her shoulders because it was true, and she did not need to be reminded in such a manner. “I would prefer that you come to realise I’d rather go with you at your own pace than speed about and make you feel incompetent.”

“But it’s a waste of your time,” she protested, stopping so she could look at him fully.

For once, he actually looked affronted. “Respecting you and you capabilities is not a waste of my time.”

She flushed deeply. He was missing her point. Or maybe she was missing his. “I don’t like feeling...” she began, then huffed out a breath. He waited. Let her speak. Surely his arms were tired holding all those papers and notes and he was going to get frustrated with her, either with her slowness or by her insistence that he move on and there wasn’t really anything she could do, was there? It was always going to be wrong, and... “You’re going to tire of me,” she finished, because that was the truth of it. Either by what she said, or what she did, or what she couldn’t do. There would come a day, perhaps this season, perhaps the next, that he would long for someone else. Someone better.

He dropped the books on the stairs. The notes. The papers tied in their twine that shuffled and protested and threatened to scatter all the way back down to the first storey. “What are you doing?”

He reached for her.

And it wasn’t the slow, careful movements she was used to from him. The wondering looks and the patient silences while he worked out what the bond was telling him.

This was reactive. Frightening and exhilarating as he pulled her into his arms. Not for the embrace she’d readied herself for as best she could, not a kiss to the top of her head while he poured reassuring words into her heart.

Instead, he pulled her to him. Lifted her high enough where he might meet her in the middle.

And kissed her soundly on the mouth.

It was wildly inappropriate.

She was sickly, after all, and he’d promised her time and wanting and to respect her bed.

She did not know what to do, either with her hands or with her mouth. He was clutching her upper arms, and it should havehurt, except that it didn’t. Not when she settled on holding onto his shirt and tentatively... cautiously...

Seeing how it felt to kiss him back.

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