The warm prickle of sunlight slanted across my skin, and I smiled.
"Great dream. Wonderful dream. Dreamt I met up with a male nymph and had the best sex in my life," I said to myself, reluctant to open my eyes. Who would? I wished to prolong this feeling for as long as I possibly could. "Wish there was a man like that in real life. A nymph. A dryad."
"Evelyn?"
"And he tasted like—"
An arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me toward a warm body I recognized even just by the scent.
Not a dream, then. Reality.
"He tasted like?" I heard the barely restrained laughter in his voice, and when I finally opened my eyes, it was to meet his emerald gaze, just as sharp and startling as the night before. "What did he taste like?"
Feeling a bit like I was back in grade school in the throes of my first love, I tucked a lock of hair behind his ear and let my hand rest on the curve of his face.
"Hmmm, he tasted like everything good in this world. Something clean, fresh, earthy." I kissed him and found there were advantages to him being what he was, the most distinct of those being he didn't have such thing as morning breath. Crisp like spearmint, but not as cloyingly sweet as peppermint.
The floor hard under my hip, I noticed that somehow during the night we'd rolled off the rug to end up on the floor, him almost underneath the beige coffee table. My body ached, and as I shifted so my hipbone wouldn't grate on the wooden floor, I winced.
Arjun saw it and sat up, eyebrows furrowed in concern. "Are you well? I did not hurt you…." His eyes drifted down to my legs, and I followed his gaze. A bruise marred my upper thigh. "Too much, did I?"
"Don't talk stupid," I said and then, suddenly aware of just how naked I was, especially in such unflattering light like the weak sunlight, I tugged at the rug and pulled it up to my chin. It seemed dumb to worry about being naked after I'd had sex with him, but I couldn't stand being nude unless I absolutely had to.
Meanwhile, he looked completely at home, but then again, he didn't have anything to worry about. If men looked like that all the time, we women wouldn't have had a chance in hell in resisting them.
"I thought you were a dream. Either that, or you'd already left."
He tilted his head to one side. "Really? And why is that?"
Now was the moment of truth. And to be honest, it didn't feel as hard as I thought it would be to spit it out.
"You're a dryad. Or something to do with nature. Trees. Whatever. But you're not human." I was proud of how logical and calm I sounded.
A corner of his lip quirked up in amusement. "Is that the conclusion you've come up with?"
"Well, yeah." Unable to meet his eyes anymore, I turned my gaze to the window where the sun peeked from behind a cover of thin gray clouds. "But here's what I don't understand. If you're a dryad, or a nymph or whatever, why are you still here? Shouldn't you be gone when you've gotten what you wanted? Which in this case would be sex, by the way."
Arjun took a deep breath, his chest rising under my hand.
"You're right. About everything. I'm a dryad. Legend mentions nothing of male dryads, but we exist. There are far more females than males, and the stories were told of them. But never of us," he said. The corners of his eyes crinkled. "I can only surmise that the poets were all males and far more interested in the nubile female nymphs."
I didn't know what to say. I'd braced myself to accept it, but now that I'd actually heard it, words absolutely escaped me.
He rose to his feet, golden, like a thing of the sun, and my mouth went dry all over again.
"Would you like me to leave?" he asked, and I'll be damned if his face didn't color a delicate pink. And when he blushed, he blushed everywhere.
I know. I checked.
"What? No! Why would I want you to leave?"
"I realize that perhaps last night was lacking in many respects and it was entirely my fault, but I just couldn't…."
His voice trailed away, and I felt the urge to start laughing hysterically.
Thankfully I didn't, but it was a very close call.
"Didn't you hear me when I said that it was the best sex I've had? Mind you, it's not that I'm a very experienced woman when it comes to matters like this, but I'd like to think I know enough to judge what is bad from what is good."
Now came the tricky part.
"But it just wasn't the sex, although that was excellent." I ducked my head, feeling a bit like a girl confessing her feelings to someone completely unattainable. "And it's not the fact you're not really supposed to be real. I don't know how to explain it. It's like…."
How to explain I wanted him?
More than anything. Because when we touched, I wanted more. When we kissed, it wasn't enough. His body called to mine in the most primal way, and all I could do was respond.
I took a deep breath and stood up, feeling like an idiot with the rug still tucked under my chin. "But what I'm trying to say is…I don't want this to end. I don't want a slam bam, thank you, ma'am sort of deal, you know?"
His facial expression didn't change. "Slam bam, thank you, ma'am? And that would mean…?"
"I mean, I don't want you to say, 'Hey, that was great. Come by my tree if you feel like doing that again.' Can you understand?" I realized just how close I was to begging him to stay, but I couldn't seem to stop the words from coming out. I was completely disgracing myself, but I couldn't have cared less.
"I can't. If this is all we were meant to be, if this is your exit and your stop to leave, then that's not fair. I felt…I feel…."
He held up a hand. "Wait."
"What?"
"I don't recall ever saying that I wanted to leave."
Rendering me completely nonplussed, graciously he allowed me time to pick my jaw up from where it rested on the floor. "I'm sorry?"
The sunlight washed over his skin as he took a step toward me, so close that I felt heat radiating from his body and I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
"I said, I don't recall ever saying I wanted to do the slam-bam thing that you seemed to fret about." A smile started to curve those beautiful lips, and my heart took an odd veer down to my feet. "I don't want to be lonely anymore."
"But you're a dryad. You can't go far from your tree or trees or whatever, right?"
Odd how easily I was taking to this idea that I was talking to someone not quite of this world. But that didn't matter anymore, did it? I wanted to be with him, I wanted to know everything about him. I wanted to see him smile, I wanted to see him laugh, and I wanted everything he could give me.
So what would be wrong with me giving up my heart?
If I could call him mine, if just for a while, even if this should end, it would be worth it, wouldn't it? I wouldn't regret it.
His smile deepened.
"Evelyn?"
"What?" I decided not to trust the teasing glint in his eyes.
"You talk too much."
He reached out and cradled the back of my head. His lips touched mine in an infinitely soft kiss that was barely there, and I sagged against him, the strength gone from my knees. The rug fell from my fingers as I rose on my tiptoes and wound my arms around his neck, tugging him closer, so much closer than I thought could have been possible.
He pulled back after what seemed like an eternity and leaned his forehead against mine in a move that I found surprisingly intimate. "I don't have to be there. Even with a garden, if it's with you, I'm sure it will be fine. That is…if you will let me stay. I would like to stay with you."
I was at a loss for words, so I ended up saying the most stupid thing of all.
"You're just with me because I'm the only woman who's been around you for the past God knows how long." I immediately regretted it.
"Is that what you think? You think I haven't been with someone for centuries?" His shoulders shook with laughter, and my face heated. Great. Now he knew I was jealous of the other women who got to ha
ve him, even if they'd died at least three hundred years ago or something.
"Will you stop laughing? I think I got the point now." I sounded as perturbed as I was, and his laughter only grew.
By the time he was done having his giggling fit, I was all but ready to push him back out into the snow where he belonged.
"You think that I haven't tried? You believed I'd been standing in that meadow, waiting for a fair maiden to come and rescue me?" he asked.
I squirmed with embarrassment.
"Well, put that way…."
He laid a quick kiss on my forehead, and it lingered after his lips pulled away. "You listen to me, and you listen well, Evelyn Kent. I have walked these lands for longer than I care to remember, and there was no one who called to me like you did."
"Really?"
He traced my lips with his thumb, and again, I felt like a little kid, about to confess to her first love. "You're different. I cannot say how. I do not know, but this is not normal, and I would have to be a fool to let you go."
His gaze flicked behind me and widened slightly. "Look."
I followed his gaze, and he whispered, "It's beautiful, isn't it? Almost as if the world has given us permission."
Outside the window, snow fell like scraps of paper being blown from above, and the entire scenery looked as though we were in a winter kingdom land, just the two of us.
"You know, most people would get to know each other first before hopping into bed," I said nonchalantly and caught a playful spark in his eyes that was impossible to mistake as anything harmless.
"But we haven't hopped into bed. Although, doing that sounds like an excellent idea." His hand drifted down the curve of my back, and he drew me toward him, a determined expression on his ethereally beautiful face.
"I think you humans say: There's no time like the present," he said, and I couldn't agree more.
There'd be plenty of time for talking later. Plenty of time to do all the things I wanted to do with him. To him. For him.
Everything was clear in Arjun's eyes, and he bent his golden head, kissing me breathless.
No time like the present, indeed.
THE END
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for reading Arjun.
I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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