“Briar.” He gives me another gentle squeeze with his tail and catches my chin between his claws, guiding me to look at him again. “There is no shame in taking time for leisure. In giving yourself space to find your feet.”
It’s too good to be true. He’s saying this now, but surely he’ll start to resent me as time goes on. Unless he truly does see me as a pretty pet to be kept. The thought leaves me cold, but I can’t tell if it’s because the fear is unfounded or not. “I like having a purpose.”
Now is where Sol will tell me that my purpose is bouncing on his cocks. Or remind me I’m only here because he wants me to bear his child. Something to snap me back into reality and remind me this isn’t some lovely fantasy without teeth.
He finally releases my chin and sits back. “Very well. What would you like to do?”
That’s the thing.
I don’t actually know.
Chapter 20
Briar
I don’t have an answer for Sol that day or the ones that follow, one week bleeding into another. He doesn’t pressure me, but sometimes I catch him watching me as if he expects me to shatter…or explode.
I keep myself occupied in the library. I could spend an entire lifetime digging through the stacks and still not make it through them all, but that’s not a bad problem to have. They keep me occupied. Distracted. Mostly engaged.
It would be lovely to say that being with him whisks away all the bad bits of my past, but it’s not the truth. I still have nightmares. I still jump every time a door slams or I hear unfamiliar footsteps.
Yesterday, I broke a plate and nearly cut my hands in a panicked flurry to clean it up, apologizing all the while. There was no one even in the room to apologize to. No one even noticed that the kitchen was missing a plate, or at least neither Sol nor Aldis brought it up.
At night, well, I love the nights. Sol and I fuck like each time might be our last, as if he can feel the seconds slipping through our fingers just as quickly as I can. Seven years felt like a small eternity, but as I reach the one-month anniversary of my marriage to Sol, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s nowhere near enough.
Seven years. Only eighty-four months.
Eighty-three now.
“Briar.”
I blink and blush. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”
Sol swirls his wine in his goblet. I know him well enough now to read his expressions most of the time, and he’s got a contemplative look I’m not certain I like. He’s very careful with me—that hasn’t changed in the past month—but I can tell something’s bothering him. He finally sits back. “Are you happy here?”
“What? Why wouldn’t I be happy?” Maybe I shouldn’t be. Even as pleasant as I find Sol’s company, it doesn’t change the fact this is an impossible situation with a deadline. We are at odds in purpose, even if we’re not at odds in anything else.
He doesn’t answer. He merely waits. I kind of hate it when he does that. He never allows me to divert a question with a question when there’s something he really wants to know the answer to. Or that he feels I need to share the answer to. It’s inconvenient, but no matter how frustrating I occasionally find this habit, I can’t pretend it’s done out of anything except caring for me.
I take a hasty sip of my wine. “Yes. I’m happy here.” It’s even the truth. He was right that day in the library. There’s something healing about having nothing but time to spend as I choose. To spend it with him in a comfortable way that makes no demands. He hasn’t brought up the child again, though filling me up plays into many of our sexual encounters.
I shiver and take another sip of wine. “I still don’t have an answer to your question. I don’t know what I want, Sol. Maybe this would be easier if I did.” He’s mentioned a few times that his late parents co-ruled together, but it feels like a huge imposition to the dragon people to attempt to do that when I have no intention of staying.
Sol considers me. “Let’s get out of here tomorrow. At least for a little bit.”
It’s something we’ve been talking about for weeks, but something always seems to come up and put off the plans. I smile. “What about the newest batch of reports that came in this morning?”
He hisses a little. “They can hold for a day. I’d like to show you the land beyond the keep.”
A thrill goes through me. I haven’t left the keep since the first day I arrived. Thankfully, the mating frenzy has eased enough that Sol doesn’t mind Aldis spending time in the library with us during the day, and I’ve really enjoyed her company. But he’s not comfortable bringing more of his people back into the keep yet. Not when every time Ramanu arrives for their weekly check-ins, they rile Sol up so much, he spends the rest of the day and night fucking me damn near unconscious and covering me with his seed. It might be vaguely worrisome if it didn’t get me off so hard. Maybe it’s worrisome that it does get me off so hard. I’m not an innocent bystander; I find myself taunting him in those moments, spilling words to make his frenzy spike and his control snap.