When she came, she tightened around him and Ben nearly lost control. His hips sped up and he flipped her onto her belly, hiking her hips up so he could move faster.
“Yes.” She gasped. “Yes.”
Her neck was right there.
Right there.
But she didn’t tell him to bite. His fangs drew blood in his own mouth when he came, and he collapsed over her, pressing his face into her shoulder and kissing along her spine.
We have to talk about the mating thing.
But he knew it would probably provoke a fight.
But we have to talk about the mating thing.
Her body was loose and languid in his arms. “You’re thinking very loud.”
“Am I?” He didn’t get tired when he had sex now. It was odd, but there was something he liked about the exertion necessary to make love when he’d been human. He missed that a little bit. Then again, he didn’t miss needing recovery time.
“Do you want me to ask what you’re thinking about?”
It was such a Tenzin question, he had to smile. “Do you actually want to know what I’m thinking about?”
“I don’t know. It could be something banal regarding sex, and that doesn’t interest me. Or it could be something about hunger. Or something about seeing Saba last night at the meeting with Hirut.”
Aha. So that’s where her mind was. Well, one could never say that she didn’t have focus. “I was thinking about banal sex things.”
She turned in his arms and faced him. She had a small frown on her forehead. “I want to be clear that sex with you is not banal. I was merely saying that often thoughts after sex are quite boring. And have nothing to do with the sex we had.”
“What do you think after we have sex?” He was going to regret asking that, wasn’t he?
“Just now, I was thinking that I like that position very much because it allows you to stimulate much of my body while we are having intercourse.”
Okay, that wasn’t too bad. “Noted. I like that position too.”
“And then immediately after, I was thinking about you seeing Saba at the meeting with Hirut.”
“You’ve been obsessing about that all day, haven’t you?”
She sat up. “Why would she do it? It makes no sense!”
He shook his head and reached for her hand. “Tenzin, Saba has always been this mythical figure to me. I mean, when you first told me her role in my turning, I couldn’t even say I was surprised.” He took a breath and tasted the lingering scent of rain and the flowering plumeria bushes outside their door. “What am I to her? Honestly? I’m a nobody. Sure, I’m a powerful nobody because I’m Zhang’s son now, but really…” He hated to say it because he already felt like Tenzin was carrying guilt—or whatever feeling that passed for guilt with her—about his turning. “I think that her role—with the Night’s Reckoning, with Johari stabbing me—I don’t really think that was about me. I think that was about you and your dad somehow. I was just… there. Maybe she saw me as a weakness for you.”
She nodded. “You were a weakness for me.”
“Thanks?”
Tenzin shrugged. “I cared about your life. Anyone I care about is a weakness; that was why I insisted that Nima be isolated on Penglai if I was traveling.”
There were so many times over the years that Ben wished he could have a conversation with Nima. This was definitely one of those times. “Well, thanks for not locking me up, I guess.”
“I’m just saying you would have been safer.”
Ben sat up. “This conversation has veered way off track. Saba was there. Probably. And she revealed herself to me probably for this exact reason, to get us confused and questioning.”
Tenzin nodded. “We have a plan.”
“We have a good plan.” He counted on his hand. “Steal Desta’s devotional, check. Find Desta’s crown—we’re getting there. Then find the bone scroll—”
“Which has only been lost for a little over a thousand years.”
Ben stared at her. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m only saying we’ve found older things.”
“Exactly.” He rubbed her back. “So we find the bone scroll, trade all of Desta’s treasures to Saba for it—”
“Then escape from Arosh, who is going to be very pissed off.”
“But we can fly, and he can’t.”
“How convenient.” She smiled, and seeing her fangs just made him hungry again.
“Okay, I really need to eat.”
16
“Why do you want to meet Liya again?” Chloe leaned back in her seat and scanned the outdoor restaurant that smelled of frying lamb and berbere spice. “She was happy to meet me, but I now I feel weird.”
“Why do you feel weird?” Ben looked around the spacious garden where every table was full and the patrons all looked local. “Zain was right; you definitely blend in here.”
Chloe laughed a little. “I’ve never been around so many Black people in my life. I just wish I could talk to more of them.”
“I know what you mean.” He sat across from her, enjoying the clamor of human life around him and the pumping music coming from inside the restaurant. The setup was more like a beer garden than a single restaurant, with two small places serving meat and vegetarian dishes to tables scattered around a large garden shaded by cedar trees while servers in black-and-white uniforms carried bottles of beer and large drafts across the patio.
Initially he’d wanted to sit inside—better to control the environment—but the noise had become far too loud for his sensitive ears. He could barely concentrate, so they’d moved outside.
“But really” —Chloe wasn’t letting up— “why do you want to meet Liya?”
“I’m meeting a fellow Angeleno in Addis.” Ben sipped the chilled beer the waitress had poured into a clear glass. “What’s weird about that?”
Chloe narrowed her eyes. “Because you and Tenzin are here on a job, and this nice woman I met who just happens to be an archaeologist is suddenly very interesting to you.”
“She’s an archaeologist. Everyone is interested in archaeologists. They’re cool.”
“Ben! I didn’t meet Liya with ulterior motives in mind! I thought I was just making a friend.”
“You did.” He took another long drink of beer. “And I want to meet her too.”
Chloe closed her eyes and rubbed her temple. “Remind me to only meet boring people from now on.”
“Impossible.”
“Chloe?” a cheerful female voice called from the entrance to the garden.
Ben turned and saw a smiling woman with a cloud of dark brown curls waving from across the lawn. She walked around, stopping once to say hello to a friend at another table before she continued toward them.
“You must be Ben.” Liya, a pretty human whom Ben guessed was in her late twenties, held out her hand. “Heyyyy, it’s so nice to meet you. Chloe talks about you a lot.”
Ben had already risen when she approached the table. He shook her hand and smiled. “Great to meet you too. I hear you’re from our neck of the woods.”