Even though he’s crawled over me in this decidedly erotic position, butt-ass naked, just like me, Baldur still holds himself back. He’s breathing hard like me, though. His sinewy, strong chest heaves like a bellows as his muscles thrum with a powerful desire.
Passion scalding from his eyes.
He’s fully erect now as his fingertips smooth over the safe parts of my chest and belly, over and over. It’s a combination of his sigils, but also just needing this touch between us, as I lay beneath him and drink it all in, enraptured.
As I admire it, however, I feel how our healing has stalled, because this dynamic differs from anyone Baldur has worked with before. I feel his hesitation and hot eagerness both now, as he pauses above me.
Not knowing what comes next.
“Rikyava, it’s time for me to go deeper into your aura, so I can figure out what’s been done to you…” he murmurs now as he caresses me, holding himself up from touching me as he stares down at me with his dragon’s eyes. I feel the deep vortex of his power, combined with the earth’s energies and the cosmos, pull at me now, as it heaves all around me.
And shakes—deliciously.
The heaving is like Baldur’s breath as he watches me, the shaking like the tremble of his lean, powerful muscles as he holds himself up above me. Suddenly, I know that neither one of us knows just how this will go, though Baldur’s done healing ceremonies like this countless times.
But what’s happening between us is not like anybody he’s ever worked on before. I see that frighten him now, as a flash of unsure terror lances through his beautiful, cosmic eyes.
“What happens now, when you work with people?” I ask then, as I see this unexpected fear in Baldur—in this drake who has lived through centuries and done so much.
“Usually, I ask them to relax… so I can figure out what’s been done to them. If it was a curse or something deeply disturbing, that cemented their fate,” Baldur says now as he regards me—vulnerable, for the first time since we met.
I understand with a flash of deep instinct that he needs me, then. Reaching up, I set a hand to his face, touching him for the first time during all this, rather than him touching me. “Do what you need to. We’ll face the consequences… together.”
“I don’t want to accidentally force you to bond with me without your permission,” he says then, as that terror and a deep reticence flash through his eyes again. “With other drakainas, I could always resist their auric pull when they were attracted to me, or me to them. But with you…”
As he trails off, I feel what he means, and what he’s afraid of. Because I’m afraid of it, too, as I feel our inner dragons already twisting into that ancient, spiraling dance, coiling up hard together in the cosmos the longer we hold our connection here on the earth.
The longer we stare into each other’s eyes and shake with our need to join and bond completely as one, the harder it gets to resist. I swallowhard, closing my eyes now, because I know my moment of decision has come.
Even as I do, I feel Baldur pull his power back as much as he can to let me make this decision in a clear headspace. The meaning of his words is plain; if we go through with this healing that he thought was going to be so simple, we will bond. It’s a foregone conclusion; everything inside me knows it as I feel Aesa’s Truthstone flare upon my chest, quiet until now.
Because she knows the truth like I do; Baldur is supposed to be mine, and I’m supposed to be his. Any simple healing magic we do will always end in our joining, forever and ever. It was written in the stars, somehow, that we would find each other.
And we have.
We’re only resisting now, what we know we must do.
“A warrior can’t give in to fate.” I bare my heart to him, even though I can’t open my eyes to look at him yet.
“I know.” His voice holds not sadness now, but understanding, as he lowers himself enough to lay a soft kiss upon my chest. It’s right above where Aesa’s Truthstone burns in my bones and skin; her power flares again, urging me not to be an idiot.
As I take one more moment to face my fate, at last.
“Fate or destiny?” I open my eyes. “Which is it, do you think?”
“Does it matter?” Baldur holds my gaze, steady now rather than afraid. “For eons, I thought destiny and fate were the most important thing. Now that I’ve finally met you—now that I feel this incredible, intense connection we already share—destiny and fate don’t even matter anymore. I just want to be with you, deep in my heart of hearts, where I’ve wanted no one and nothing with so much passion as I do right now. I want to be withyou, Rikyava. Do you want to be with me?”
I take one last moment to resist my fate, or destiny, whichever it is.
And then I crumble to his beautiful blue eyes.
And something else inside me expands.
Complete.
“Yes,” I say softly then. “I want to be with you. Not because of destiny or fate, or because of the power you could give me and my bond. Just… because of you. Because I need you.”
“Your skin on mine. Your breath in my lungs. Your heartbeat pulsing in time with my own.” Baldur’s poetic side comes out now as he takes up my hand in his, twining our fingers together and kissing my thumb. His dark blue eyes shine, honest and vibrant, as I feel us reach an accord.
