Page 72 of Sunder

It was not how she imagined it might be. Back when she would indulge in fantasising about such things. They’d sit out underneath the largest tree in the courtyard. He’d take her hand. He’d ask if he might kiss her. Just once, he’d say. And it would be chaste and just the brush of lips against lips. She’d smile demurely and say it was quite nice, and they might do it again someday.

This was not like that.

This was frustration and...

He was making some sort of point. But the bond was tangling, trying to insist on something else other than his intent, and it muddled it all until all that was left was a rapid flutter through the cords between them. A tug and a pull in her heart that this was right. She wasn’t broken after all. Orma could feel and she could know passion as any other woman might, and it made her hands leave his shirt to delve into his hair. And that wasn’t proper, was it? She wouldn’t like if he pulled at her hair, would she?

Except he moaned when she did it, and he pulled back, which she didn’t want at all, settling her back on her feet but not releasing her. “Stop deciding I’m going to be horrid to you.” Not a request, not a plea. As close to a demand as he’d ever given her. She was breathless and shaky, and to her great horror, she wanted to wrench him back to her. Make him kiss her again because it made her feel...

Made her feel like the desirable woman she wasn’t.

“Not horrid,” Orma countered when she’d wrestled the pulsing bond into settling enough so she might answer him. “Tired.”

His hand came to the back of her neck, and he pulled her closer. Leaned his forehead to rest against hers. “The same,” he insisted. “If there has ever been anyone did that to you, I am sorry for it. But a mate does not tire of their other half. It simply isn’t possible.”

Those were the romantic promises set deep within the literature handed out to every young person who chafed and wondered at the bond.

She glanced down at the scattered papers and books. Her father would be horrified. Treasures, he called them. And it was a privilege to hold such knowledge in their home, and they should treat every one of them with respect. “Not everyone is happy in their bond,” she murmured. He might not know that. Perhaps his parents had been one of the fortunate. They cared easily and quickly, and it all settled with little fuss. They would have told him to expect the same, brought him up on stories of their meeting and the joy that followed.

She thought of Lucian’s parents. Even her own, although those occasions were few. They were dedicated. Committed, to be certain. But it wasn’teasy.

Or maybe it was. When they were alone, with no one to watch them. To judge. When they could kiss and forget and tell each other to set aside worries and expect it to be possible.

She would if she could. Didn’t he know that? If she could just shove doubts and old experience aside and accept him at his word?

“No,” Athan granted. “Selfish people can make selfish mates.” He tucked her hair behind her ear and urged her to look at him. “You are not selfish.” He said it with such certainty. He’d known her for such little time, and yet... he knew.

“Neither are you,” she answered back because there was a glow in her chest that told her it was so. He was kind and generous, and he wanted to care for her.

Wanted her to care for him.

Not as patient and healer. But as mates.

She wanted to kiss him again, not to banish sour feelings, but because her skin prickled all over when he looked at her that way. As if she was precious to him, as if she mattered more than anything in the entire world.

Her foot moved, and she stepped on a bundle of papers, and she glanced down, distracted. He’d dropped them because of her, and she could help to pick them up again.

“I’ll get them,” Athan insisted as she began pulling at the papers. A few had broken free of their ties, so she shoved them back where she thought they belonged.

“Let me help,” Orma urged. “I just...” her hip gave a twinge, and her knee threatened likewise, so she sat on the step and pulled it out straight. Athan saw. Or maybe the bond sent flickers of pain, and he frowned at her.

She didn’t rub it, didn’t pay it any mind, and just kept picking up the papers while he attended to the books.

He kept looking at her, then glancing away when she met his eye. He was nervous about something, and it was an odd sort of reversal. It left her strangely calm, and she stood with only the use of the wall and a flutter of her wings to get her upright. “Orma,” Athan said at last, when she managed another two steps while he lingered. Waiting. For what, she couldn’t say.

“Yes?”

He rubbed at the corner of a book. “I do not regret it,” he blurted out. “Kissing you. But I might if you disliked it. If you were not ready for it.”

He did look at her then, his eyes earnest. The bond should have made her feelings quite clear on the matter, but perhaps it had been as murky for him as it was for her.

She hadn’t been ready. Or thought she wasn’t. Was there a difference?

But now that he had, andtheyhad, she wasn’t sorry for it. Not for his boldness and not for her newfound knowledge.

That she liked kisses.

Liked his kisses.

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