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.”
Her eyes stung, her throat thick. She couldn’t speak for a long time. When she did, her voice came out husky. “The dinner is technically in my honor. It’s mandatory for those of my blood to return home on our four-hundredth birthday.”
She knew she should tell him she wouldn’t leave again for five hundred years, but the words stuck in her chest, hard and taunting. “I thought you’d make the dinner more fun.”
Naasir’s cheeks creased, his eyes glinting. “We’ll have fun,” he promised. “I’ll bring your parents a present.”
Her instincts shouted an alert. “Ah, Naasir—”
Laughing at her dubious tone, he pulled himself up and out of the water without warning. She saw the hard curve of his buttocks, the strong muscle of his thighs, the sleek strength of him as he stood on the bank and shook himself dry like a big cat. His silver hair glittered even in the darkness.
He began to turn toward her.
Skin so hot it seared her from the inside out, she forced herself to shut her eyes and go under the icy water, staying there until she was no longer in danger of combusting. When she came back up, she saw Naasir had pulled on his wet pants. He didn’t look happy about it, though. Nostrils flaring, he picked up a couple of things he must’ve left on the ground and slid them back into his pockets, then examined his T-shirt and finally started to pull it on, no doubt figuring it’d dry faster on his body.