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Niska giggles, and I turn my head to look at her. “Are you holding your breath?”
“No.”
Was I?
Maybe.
The smile she has on her face could rival every sunset I have ever seen.
She’s laying on her side, her head propped on her hand, elbow bent and digging into the pillow - my pillow. The blankets covering her from chest to toe do nothing to hide the form of her. I can clearly see the valley of her waist and the crest of her hip. There’s just something about that shape that is so inviting. The Earth Goddesses knew what they were doing when they made human women this way.
“What do we do now?” I ask, prying my gaze away from the landscape of her body.
Niska laughs lightly again. “We can talk. What do you want to talk about, Prince Kiahn?”
I give her a look. She’d said my title correctly, but the tone had been teasing.
I let it slide, of course.
I think there are a lot of things that I would let slide for this female.
“What is… cuddle?”
Niska raises her brows at my question. I wet my lips before continuing.
“Before, you said that we could lay together, talk, and maybe cuddle. What is it?”
The grin she gives me is eclipsed by the way she scoots her body forward, pressing herself to my side. She then lifts my arm and settles it over her shoulder, molding herself to me. “This is a cuddle,” she explains, laying her head on my chest as one of her legs hooks over mine.
I am frozen to the spot, but I can feel my fangs start to slowly slide from my gums. “Oh.”
“Breathe, Kiahn,” Niska laughs, lightly tapping my chest. “It’s meant to be nice.”
“It is nice… It’s very nice… Really, really nice.”
“But your heart sounds like it’s trying to burst out of your chest right now,” she leans up to look down at me. “Are you sure you’re ok with this?”
I shake my head, my arm tightening on her in case she tries to move away. “It is just my first time participating in a cuddle. I’m sure I’ll calm down once the novelty wears off,” I lie through my fangs.
Niska chuckles, but lays her head back down on my chest, her hand coming up to draw nonsensical patterns on my pectoral with her fingertip. I’d never considered embracing someone in bed before. It’s thrilling, and yet cozy at the same time. I can feel every breath my little Niska is taking, her chest pressed into my side. How do humans do this and not immediately start mating with each other?
Then she says in a quiet voice, “tell me more about your family,” and suddenly all thoughts of mating flee my mind and my fangs practically disappear in their hasty retreat.
“My… family?”
“Yes,” she says, her finger making swirls on my chest. “I just want to talk to you like a normal person. Not two people with a contract. Not a prince and the human he bought-”
“Technically, my Aunt purchased you for me, so…”
She barks out a musical laugh and playfully slaps my chest. “So nothing. That’s still weird as hell!”
Right. It is, isn’t it?
I rub at my horn, staring at the ceiling while I let out a long breath. “My family? Well, there’s my brothers, Aunt and cousin, but you’re on your way to getting to know them pretty well so far.”
“I really like Vel,” she tells me, “her obsession with humans is sweet. She’s always asking us random questions. This morning she asked Jaya what the purpose of a rubber duck is.”
I chuckle along with Niska, though I do not quite understand what a ‘duck’ is or why its purpose would be baffling. “She is a good person, my cousin. But if her questions ever get too invasive or…” I wave my free hand around at the wrist as if that would pull the right words from my lips, “… weird, just let me know. She is a very intelligent Xavia
Niska lifts her head to peer down at me. She’s so close that I can see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes. “Aren’t you glad of her ‘weird obsession’ now? Considering she knows how to take care of us so well?”
My gaze falls to her lips and I swallow. “Yes,” I reply, my voice a little hoarse. “But I would like to learn how to take care of you.”
Niska smirks. “Well, then, sounds like you could learn a lot from my girl and her ‘special interests’.”
I grunt in agreement as she settles back down on me, nestling her cheek into my chest as her hand goes back to tracing circles and loops on my skin. There is silence for a time. My chambers are dim with only minimal up-lighting at this hour, but my senses feel heightened somehow, with Niska performing a ‘cuddle’ on me. I love the sensation of her pressed to me, the warmth of her relaxed body, the scent of her surrounding me. I even find myself returning the gesture of Niska’s swirling finger patterns as I mirror her fingertip’s dance on her exposed hip.
I don’t know what it is that makes me say it, but the words, “my mother is dead,” ring out in the quiet room and for a beat or two, I don’t even realize I’d said them out loud.
I can feel Niska tense, but she is soon leaning up on her elbow to look down on me again, a concerned looking expression cresting her brow. “I’m so sorry, Kiahn. When did she pass?”
“When Za
I chance a glance at Niska, but look away again quickly. Her expression is so open, so encouraging, it almost scares me to think about what I might confess when she looks at me like that.
“He… when he sired my youngest brother, he bit my mother.” I hear Niska suck in a breath and hold onto it. “It was an accident. She bonded to him.”
I open my mouth to continue, but find the words behind my tongue all jumbled and unintelligible, so I promptly close it again, tensing my jaw. A small, soft hand cups my face and turns me to face her. “What happened to her?”
I take a deep breath. “She did not fare well under the one-sided bond. She… she stopped eating. When she wasn’t weeping or raging, she would stare off into the middle-distance lost in her own mind. She wasn’t herself. She filed her own horn off to scribe my fathers name on her bedchamber walls over and over again.”
“That’s awful,” Niska whispers, her eyes watery and her brows pinched.
“Aunt Zalora pleaded with my father to visit more often - to stay in our principality even, considering. But you could tell he was getting more and more horrified and saddened by mother’s condition each time he did visit, until he just stayed away. This obviously made her mental state worse.” I pause to swallow. “She caught an infection that her immune system wasn’t strong enough to fight. Aunt Zalora has never forgiven my father for what he did to her sister.”
Niska nods slowly. “And what about you?”
The snort I let loose is soft. “What about me? He is the king, it wouldn’t be wise to point fingers at him. Not when he can so easily cut off my principality and its people. Our lands need harmony, chaos will only bring ruin and suffering.”
On my more generous days, I imagine that my father stayed away due to the heavy weight of guilt at what he had done to my mother. I remember being there when Aunt Zalora had called him to deliver the news of her death, his projected image hovering over one of our palace conference room tables. His expression had crumpled, and he was that male I remember seeing when he would visit to play games with us again. I genuinely think he had loved her. He told me how sorry he was for what had happened. Both Za
But then there was a knock at the door behind him. A servant called through the polished darkwood that his new contract bride was strapped to the breeding bench and ready for him. His expression had hardened, and I don’t think I’ve glimpsed the other version of my father since. I’ve heard whispers that he’s had my mother’s portrait commissioned over a dozen times since her death, but what good that does to ease his conscience, I don’t know.
Niska’s eyes shift between both of mine, and she looks as though she wishes to ask more about my feelings toward my father. And in the state I feel myself in? Warm, and participating in my very first ‘cuddle’ with my Niska? I think I would answer her.
Instead, she must read it clearly on my features that the topic is understandably a delicate one, and she shows mercy by laying her head back down on my chest and asking, “what was your mother like before all of that? What kind of person was she?”
It takes my mind a little while to unlock the fond memories, but I tell her everything I can, and ask about her family, too.