He sat up and looked at me, his finger pulling on my chin, tipping it so I would look at him. "Yes. Very much. Sex is fun but meaningless sometimes. This is not meaningless. You are better."
I fully giggled this time. “I am better, huh?” I sat up. “Oooo… careful Mr. Rathmore. Those words sound dangerously close to a sentiment like you might be the one falling for me.”
"Possibly. You never know," he teased back before standing and stoking the fire.
I took him in, watching him standing there before me. His physique even sexier with the lights and shadows of the flames licking the curves of his muscles. “Tell me... just how am I better?”
His back was to me, and he stopped moving. He looked like he was thinking a moment before replying. "You feel like a warm breeze."
“You, sir, are oddly distant yet poetic.”
Still facing the fire, he scoffed, humored, “I have my moments.”
It was then that I knew I was in trouble. Just not the kind I originally thought. No. I was dangerously close to my walls crumbling and falling for him. It took every bit of my own self-restraint to not go to him and wrap up in his arms. This was uncharted territory for me. And it was so sudden, it felt like sky diving, just jumping from a plane and watching the ground come up fast.
Instead, I shifted in the chair, feeling completely exposed. “Tell me about your world.”
He turned around with one eyebrow raised as he admired me. He walked over to the bed, pulled a blanket off of it that had been folded on the foot and brought it over. Shaking it out, he laid it across my legs.
“Thank you.” I pulled it up over myself.
Kane knelt down in front of me, facing the fire. His back against the chair, he reached back and pulled my hand to his shoulder as he spoke. "It's half unexplored. The gods left this world when Brialjhorn, one of the seven elder gods, went on a tyrant. I spoke of him before, when you first arrived. His actions caused the elder dragons of this world to awaken. Lots of different races banded together to fight.”
“Is that who I saw?” I asked, almost to myself.
He looked back at me. “Who you saw?”
It dawned on me that I hadn’t said anything. Nor could he have known. I shook my head. “Back in Nirevale, as we were walking into the shop where you got me the clothes, I had this strange vision of a war in that city. You were there. Everything was chaos, screaming, fires, blood. Then, I saw you, sitting on a throne with others around you and two dragons.”
“You had this vision?” He spun around, his full attention on me.
“Yes.” I pulled the blanket up around my shoulders.
As if on alert, he sat up straight. “Do you often see visions?”
I shook my head no.
He chuckled. “No?”
My shoulders dropped. “Only a few times. And only in dreams, not while awake. That’s why it startled me then.”
“What was it?”
“My dreams?”
“No. Your vision. In Nirevale.”
I blinked. “I told you. A war. The city was being ravaged. Buildings were on fire. Doshanesh were being slaughtered. I could not see by who. But then the vision flashed to you… throned… surrounded by what was seemingly your top persons and creatures. I assumed that it was you that attacked the city. That was part of why I feared you so much then. I am sorry if I was wrong.”
He turned back to the fire. “I have had to put the people of Nirevale in their place. But it was never an event such as you are describing. That only happened when Brialjhorn came to Naelyra. Then, I fought to save them.”
I went to lean forward, wanting to touch him. But I pulled back. “What did they want?”
“This world.” Kane leaned his back against the chair again and watched the flames. “Sometimes they can be greedy, the gods. And sometimes they can be cruel.”
“As can all creatures,” I countered.
He wrapped an arm around my leg and pulled it over his shoulder, massaging my calf. “This is very true, little one. And in this case, it took me, many of my kind and the elder dragons a number of years to fight off Brialjhorn and his army. Many, many people lost their lives.”
“Well? You have won it seems.” I rubbed his shoulders. The flames flickered, casting their shadows across us. The reflection of the fire vivid in his eyes as I bent to look at his face.
“We have won so far."
“And that is when the claw was left in the Nirevale building? Why do they not remove it if it is a reminder of such horrors?” I pulled a lock of his hair off his shoulder and started to play with it.
The act of me playing with his hair seemed to relax him as some of the tension fell from his shoulders. “Dragons, while extremely intelligent, are animals. And the Doshanesh revere animals above their own kind. But on top of that, the dragon was protecting their city when it happened. It is a symbol of protection to them and a way to honor the one that left it.”
“Like a memorial?”
“No. He is not dead,” Kane explained. “He is very much alive. But not all symbols are of the dead. None of the animal gods they worship are dead. And Brialjhorn is certainly not dead.”
My fingers stopped working the stands of his hair. “That’s what you meant when you said that you’ve won so far.”
“Yes.”
“Do you fear
