“Finley, you are exactly the person she would wish to have it. It’s not that we don’t get along, it’s that you call me on my shit. You always push back. She would’ve wanted that for me. It keeps me grounded.”
I blew out a breath, my cheek still pressed to his back. I moved my hands so that they were gripping right above his pecs, more of a hug than a precaution against falling.
“Well, I guess I’m going to have to get good at using the sword now.”
“Obviously. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
He slowed the horse to a walk as we neared some rocky terrain. I ran my hands across his muscular chest and down his bumpy stomach. How lucky was I that I got to touch his stellar body? That I got to feel it moving against me in the height of passion?
“I read your letter,” I said as I continued moving my palms downward.
“Oh?”
“You’re very charming when you write letters. Very eloquent.” I wrapped one arm around his stomach and slid the other over his bulge. “Are you always hard?”
“Around you? It seems so. It’s incredibly distracting.”
I rubbed up that hard length, closing my eyes for a moment. “Thank you for explaining yourself. It helps to know why you freak out.”
“I never freak out. I, instead, express my concern. Without emotion, of course. Men are not emotional.”
“Ah, yes. Men love to sell the idea that they are not emotional, as if anger weren’t an emotion. But it’s not that you aren’t emotional, it is that you store that one emotion up until you explode with it. It’s ridiculous, really.”
“It must seem that way to someone who calmly waltzes into a three-against-one battle and proceeds to slice everyone up and throw one of them out the window.”
“Talked to Hadriel, did you?”
“Yes. I was speaking to him, very unemotionally, about you being in danger.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“Which is why he is not black and blue today.”
I shook my head, pulling my hand away lest he make a mess of himself. “Is it the curse that says you can only impregnate your true mate?” I asked, back to rubbing his chest.
His muscles flared under my palms and across his back. He didn’t answer.
“Magical gag, huh?” I murmured, though if that were the case, how could Hadriel have told me? Then again, Hadriel had almost died when he let too much slip, so maybe Nyfain was trying to stay on the cautious side. I didn’t blame him.
I tried to go a bit broader in questioning. “Do you know how to end the curse?”
His muscles flared again, and he adjusted his seating in discomfort. Clearly a yes. At least partially, I waged, if there was such a thing.
I rested my chin against the center of his back and rubbed up and to the outside of his shoulders, my mind working.
“If there’d been no curse, would you have been able to mate a person like me?” I asked, and regretted it when I felt his emotions through the bond. I knew what was coming.
“Likely not with my father’s blessing. You’re gifted enough that you would have been invited to eat at his table, maybe even join the court, but without a dowry or any connections, you’d have only been granted a lower noble to mate. My father was not one to flout custom for any reason, hence my current—the kingdom’s current situation.”
I wondered if true mates tended to also be of the same social class, then remembered that they had to be the same animal, and dragons here were all noble. Clearly in other kingdoms as well, since his mother wasn’t from here and she had still been a noble. Of course his father would want to bake that into the curse. He’d want to force his son into a “proper” alliance, as befitted the kingdom.
“Your true mate, then, would be a noble of good standing,” I said in a small voice, mostly to myself.
His muscles flared again, and he struggled to take in a breath. Alarm bled through the bond. His dragon yanked power from mine, pulling everything we had. Fire flooded me as my animal generated her own power to give to him.
“Nyfain?” I clutched his shoulders and tried to look around at him.
He sucked in a noisy breath and then coughed, pulling on the reins to stop the horse. He bent over and coughed again, palming his throat.
“Stop asking about the curse,” he growled. “I can’t answer. You’ll do the demon king’s work and kill me.”
“Sorry,” I said, remembering the flare of his body, his unspoken yes.
For a moment there, I’d half wondered if maybe, against all odds, I could be his true mate. If this deep, damning need for him was indicative of something greater than lust and affection.