It was a good thing she couldn’t see in the dark or she’d probably leave.
He didn’t want her to leave; he wanted to play with her.
“Down.” She pushed at his shoulders.
Going under, he washed out the grass from his hair. This time when he came back up, she was paddling over to grab his pants so she could wash them out. Her wings were spread out on the water, the blood having sluiced off, and he really, really, really wanted to touch. Sidling closer, he ran one hand over her primaries.
She jerked and shot him a look over her shoulder. “You know that’s bad behavior.”
Heading to the bank, he reached up and grabbing his wet but clean T-shirt, threw it at a tree. It hooked on a branch and opened out. The night air would dry it a little at least. “I’m often bad,” he said honestly. “I like your wings.”
Instead of continuing on the topic, her skin suddenly flushed red hot. “Um, here are your pants. I rinsed them out.”
“Thank you.” He knew it was polite to say that when someone did a nice thing for you. “Why are you red?”
She swam away instead of answering. Throwing his jeans toward a tree and managing to get them hanging over a branch, he swam after her, his pulse racing. Was she playing with him? But when he came up beside her after having dived under the water, she gasped. “You said you wouldn’t look!”
“I didn’t. I closed my eyes.” It had been tempting to break his promise, but promises were to be kept. It was one of the first things Dmitri had taught him—by keeping his own promises.
“I’ll bring you the cured meat you want when I return.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
Dmitri had been gone a long time in the child’s mind—it must’ve been three months at least. Naasir hadn’t forgotten the promise, but he hadn’t really expected Dmitri to remember. He’d just been excited at the return of the man he saw as his father.
“Dmitri!” He pelted out the door, escaping the hapless vampire set to watch over him. “Dmitri! Dmitri!”
Strong arms grabbing him tight and lifting him off the ground, Dmitri’s dark eyes sad even though his mouth smiled. Naasir didn’t know why Dmitri was sad but he’d seen the way Dmitri’s eyes began to warm after they were together for a while, so he knew he wasn’t what made Dmitri sad.
“Have you been behaving, Naasir?”
Naasir ducked his head. “No.” He’d eaten the school’s pet bunny. He hadn’t meant to—but it was right there in front of him and he’d been so hungry. “I’m in big trouble.”
“Ah.” Deep male laughter that made him look up and bare his teeth in a feral smile because he could see Dmitri wasn’t angry. “You can tell me about it while you eat this.”
Naasir took the package and tore it open to find the gift for which he’d asked. “You remembered!”
Sadness in his eyes again, Dmitri ruffled his hair. “A man keeps his promises, Naasir.”
“Naasir?”
He shook off the memory of childhood to hold Andromeda’s pretty, sparkly gaze. “I didn’t look,” he repeated. “If I look, it’ll be because you invite me.”
Cheeks hot, she smiled at him. “Want to race?”
“I’ll beat you,” he warned. “Your wings will slow you down.”
“Give me a head start to make it competitive. You don’t start until I’m halfway across.”
Delighted at the idea of a private game with her, he nodded. “Okay.” Elena had told him cheating was allowed when one party was weaker than the other in some way. As when they’d sparred, Andromeda was cheating, but it was the good kind of cheating. It meant they could play together.
When Andromeda struck out for the opposite end of the pond, he saw she was more graceful and faster than he’d expected. His mate had been keeping more secrets. Laughing inside at her trickiness, he waited until she was at the halfway point, then began to slice through the water. He’d been born knowing how to swim.
Having reached Andromeda, he could’ve overtaken her at any point, but he did something sneaky. He lowered his speed as if tired, so he could swim with her. And when they reached the end of the pond, he let her lunge out and grab the bank first. “I win!” she said, her whole face alight. “You owe me a forfeit.”
“What do you want?” he asked, bracing his arms on the bank as she did the same beside him. “I have a treasure of shiny things.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened but she shook her head. “I don’t want a shiny thing this time—maybe next time I win.”
Naasir liked the idea of more games.
“I want you to do something for me,” she said.
“What?” He moved surreptitiously closer, so that her wing brushed his arm.
“Go with me to a dinner held by my parents.”
Naasir blinked. Women liked to rut with him, but he’d never been invited home for dinner, and since Andromeda didn’t want to lie with him, he didn’t understand her request. Unless . . . “Do you want to shock your parents?” Naasir was different and unique. Many in the world wanted him for his skills, but he was also deeply other.
He accepted himself. His mate would have to accept him, too, not treat him as a freak.
Andromeda laughed as if he’d told a great joke.
Scowling, he began to get out of the water.
Seeing the water sluicing off Naasir’s muscular body, Andromeda lost her mind for a second. Only when the upper curve of his buttocks was exposed did she squeak, and, placing a hand on the taut strength of his arm, hauled him back down. “You’re naked!” she reminded him.
He shrugged, looking at her with silver eyes that glowed white-hot. “I don’t care.”
“Well, I do.” Her heart was still racing at the sight of him. He was built like the most beautiful statue she’d ever seen, only he was flesh and blood.
“I’m cold. I want to be out.”
She’d forgotten the cold, she’d been having so much fun with him. “Oh.” Disappointment a lead weight in her stomach, she closed her eyes. “You can get out.”
He didn’t move. “Why did you laugh?”
“What?” Her eyes flicked open at his harsh tone.
Seeing the anger he made no effort to hide, she belatedly realized he’d taken her laughter in the wrong way. “My parents are incapable of being shocked,” she admitted with a shrug that hid the echoes of childhood hurt. “Ever.”
Expression altering to disbelieving fascination, Naasir leaned in close. “Even by me?”
“Even by you,” she assured him. “If there is a debauched thing on this earth, they’ve indulged in it.” Sex, brutal violence, rare narcotic substances, that was Lailah and Cato’s way of life, their compulsive desire to do more, feel more, endless. “They’ll probably proposition you.”
Frown lines on his forehead. “But I would be with you.”
“They have no boundaries.” She thought of the young angel with whom she’d been in puppy love, of how she’d walked into the great living room one day to find him and her mother naked and in the midst of copulating. Her father had been sitting in an armchair watching while a male vampire sucked on his erect penis.
Her gorge rising, Andromeda had to go under the water to wash off the memory. Some things no child should ever have to see. The awful thing was that the nauseating incident had been far from the first or the only one. Andromeda had too many such images stored in her mind, images that she resolutely refused to think about, but that would not fade.
Taking position beside Naasir again after wiping the water off her face with one hand, she went too close. So close that her arm pressed into his and her wing touched his back . . . but he didn’t push her away, instead looking at her with those wild eyes that were suddenly painfully incisive.
“I will not rut with your parents.” A solemn promise. “That would hurt you and I will not hurt you.”