Page 145 of Falling in Love with A Tiny Bat

“Shh…” He wets his lips close enough to my skin that I can’t see the action, but I can feel it. “I have never been better. Hold on.” His hand glides down my side, bracing at my hip. His ear rests against my shoulder as he dips his face upward to leave a tickling kiss against my neck. “This is going to be overwhelming for you if I don’t control myself better.”

“Control…what exactly?” My attention catches on my hand when I lift my arm to push stray hairs off his cheek.

My skin. It’s…lilac. Lilac and star-scattered and foreign…andright.

He clutches my clothes. “Everything. My power, first, then maybe you can take the rest as you please.” He swallows. “Disregard the reprehensible desire in my emotions when my abilities surge into you.” Off balance, he drags himself away, fumbling with one of his cuff links. When his eyes meet mine, he melts, and swears. “For the senses connected to my powers.” Planting the cold metal in my hand, he curls my fingers around it and cups my cheek. “You are…so beautiful.” He wets his lips, searching me until heat rises into my face. “Your hair is a tangle of northern lights…your eyes a galaxy… Oh, Zahra…could you really be mine?”

I shiver when his thumb traces the shape of my mouth.

Then he says, “Own me.”

My heart thumps, filling further. Suddenly, his entire being is within my reach, my grasp. His emotions flurry across my consciousness, tempting me to parse through them. The weight of what he feels for me lifts me up, lighter, and lighter, and—

He laughs, holding my wrist like a tether as I discover I’m weightless, inches above the couch.

“I…can fly?”

“Yes. You control your own gravity. Many fae abilities are impacted by their emotions. You, my love, feel free. Safe. Correct.”

“Can I control your gravity?”

“Probably. Maybe practi—”

I yeet him into the air, and he goes lurching above me, tied to his grip on my wrist.

“—ce first,” he chokes out, peering down at me, eyes wide.

We…are floating above my couch. In my living room.

My skin is purple.

And his emotions are a symphony teasing my mind with the concept of more. His soul…his thoughts…they are majestically within reach. I’m scared to touch them.

“I am very glad you have high ceilings,” he murmurs, then he sprouts massive white wings. They stretch, elbowed and leathery, flap once, and push us together in the air, close enough that he can wrap me up in a hug. Naturally, our legs mingle, and we become a singular entity in the solar system ofus.

“Why can I sense your soul and thoughts like physical objects for me to take hold of?” I ask.

“Because, that’s what it feels like to be me. Everything is within reach, all the time. Anything unguarded is mine to steal. Anything else, mine to fight for if I so choose.”

“All this time…you could have taken whatever you wanted?” I close my mouth, swallow the sensations bombarding me. “But you asked instead? Did you not want to risk fighting me for things?”

“You’re my soulmate. I doubt it would have been hard to convince your soul it wanted to be closer to mine if I took it without asking. I asked, because I wanted your mind and your heart. Your peace. Your willingness. Controlling you without your consent was never the puppeteering I longed for.” His smile sinks deep into my heart—it’s so warm, sodesperate. He rakes me in, closer, because he can, because I am in too much awe to be anything but willing. “This look in your eye…it is what I have wanted.”

He wants me.

I feel it in every fiber of his being.

But the desire that coasts along in the realm of physical want lingers beneath a surface of wholehearted adoration. He wants nearness of hearts more than anything else. At my side, he forgets what it feels like to starve. At my side, love overwhelmsevery ache.

At his side, I don’t think I need to lie. “I trust you.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

Bliss lights in his eyes as he wraps me up, tighter than I have ever before felt comfortable with. Voice breaking, he whispers, “I know.”

Tears flood my eyes as I hold him, trust his wings to catch me if I lose my grasp on powers I don’t at all understand yet. “I…I have never felt this safe before. You’re beautiful, Alexios.Beautiful.”

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