With a slight smile, Dain tucked my hair behind my ear with one wing-hand. "I don't believe you right now, but maybe if you tell me enough, I will," he said. "Let's go to bed, and test that theory when we wake."

"Deal," I said, then turned my head and kissed his palm.

Dain made a soft sound before drawing his wing-hand back, then picked me up again and carried me back to bed, smiling down into my face with love in his eyes.

45. Out in the Open

Chapter 45

Out in the Open

Open court wasn't for another five days and we could skip the banquet in between if we wanted, so we spent the next few days mainly relaxing and catching up on sleep. Getting undressed with me watching seemed difficult for Dain, but once he was undressed, he barely seemed to notice his unclothed state. I certainly enjoyed having him mostly naked; my Dain was absolutely a sight worth seeing. The fur of his legs went all the way up to his groin in the front and faded to down at the edge of his ass in the back, while the scales only went up to mid-thigh, and seeing those powerful legs outside of pants gave me all sorts of filthy thoughts. The scales of his back looked like they belonged to a dragon, gleaming black plates of armor, and his chest was... delectable.

Despite our mutual interest, neither of us initiated any more sexytime adventures. I thought that Dain was as aware as I was that what we needed – what I needed – wasn't proof that we were sexually compatible. We had that in spades. Spending our time together having orgasms, while lovely, wouldn't give us the eternity we both wanted. So instead, we talked, played games, and went riding, and Dain tried to tell me his secret.

"Tried" being the key word.

Whatever it was that Dain had walled into the center of his heart terrified him. He could pick his way around the edges of it, but he couldn't bring himself to so much as approach the gates. From the things at the edges, I could start to draw a shape around the thing he couldn't say. It had to do with being moon-called, and it had to do with Faerqen. It was related to why he was so gifted at glamor, and I suspected that it was tied to a lot of other differences, as well. Whatever the big secret was, it defined why he was different, and I thought, too, that it made him far more different from the other fae than even his appearance let on.

"You don't have to tell me," I said gently, stroking Dain's hair as he curled miserably around me late one evening.

"Eleven days," he said, that misery lacing through his voice.

"Okay." I kept running my fingers through his hair while he laid there, tense and unhappy.