“Shh,” he said, running his fingers over her cheeks, her temples. “Don’t try.” He had the thought, Perhaps your body is trying to tell you something?

As if in response to that thought, she looked him in the eye and put nervous fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to be like this.”

“I . . .” What to say to that? I know you don’t want to be like this, but you are like this. He was torn between wanting to ease her into it and halting the proceedings altogether. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“But I do want it, I do. I . . . I really like you.”

Oof. Something in the way she said that loosed a tiny arrow right into his heart. She put her hands around his neck, and then ran her fingers through his hair, awkward, mechanical, like it was choreography she was still in the process of learning. He leaned forward, kissing her long and slow, as if by doing so he could psychically transfer his calm energy into her.

He pulled back to look at her, and she smiled, seeming a little more relaxed. “You’re a really good kisser,” she said.

He laughed softly. “Thank you.” He kissed her again, doing a daisy chain down her cheek, then her neck. He held her body to his, her muscles still taut like a belt that had been pulled too tight. “Just relax,” he whispered into her neck. He could feel her trying to cooperate. “Do you want me?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Please.”

“Do you trust me?”

At this, there was hesitation. She swallowed before responding, “Of course.”

He propped himself up on his elbows so he could look into her eyes, gently tracing the outline of her face with his thumb as he did. “Then I’m yours.”

36

36

Kaveh snapped awake at his phone ringing. His landline ringing, which meant it was probably one of his parents. He groaned, his lower back a little sore from last night’s activity, and he stretched out his wings, slapped his hands on the phone, and dragged it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Mazandarani.” Sol Kaplan’s nasal sub-tenor.

“How the hell did you get this number?” Funny thing about Kaplan—much as he hated Kaveh, he was one of the few people outside the Iranosphere who pronounced his name correctly.

“How do you think? He’s asking for you.”

“What?”

“‘Nikola.’ He’s asking for you.”

Kaveh rubbed his eyes and sat up. “How?”

“We have computer keyboards, dude. He figured out how to use them pretty quickly. He’s a lot more . . . eager than we’re used to.”

“I’ll be there in a few hours.”

“We’d prefer you get here now.”

“Are you paying me?”

The human toenail on the other end of the line hesitated. “No.”