Then he said softly, “I know things about you now, things you like, sounds you make, expressions on your face that I may not have understood or would have missed before. I would assume you now hold the same knowledge about me.”
He would assume correct in a big way.
“Yes,” I whispered.
His head bent so his forehead was touching mine and he was whispering too when he replied, “It will never be the same between us because we hold that knowledge, we’re more in tune, we better understand not only what brings pleasure to each other but also to ourselves. We won’t miss those things as we might have done before, wee one, we’ll know how to take advantage of them. It will not be the same as we just had but it won’t need to be and it will make something that was already splendid much better.”
Wow. That was actually kind of beautiful.
“Boy,” I breathed, “that Adele knows what she’s doing.”
Frey gathered me closer and tipped his mouth so his lips touched mine.
I felt his were smiling.
Then he said quietly, “She is a goddess, Finnie.”
“Right,” I whispered, he chuckled and moved his head slightly back.
Then I asked the question no girl should ask, no time, no place, no reason, no matter what.
But I asked it.
“Have you done that with other women?”
His big relaxed body grew stiff and I closed my eyes tight then opened them and tried to repair the damage.
“I’m sorry, Frey, so, so sorry. It’s none of my –”
He cut me off to say, “Two.”
I blinked at him in the dark then asked, “What?”
“Two,” he repeated then continued. “A courtesan in Fleuridia and that time it was not about a deeper meaning but an intense experience. It had no meaning. I don’t even recall her name.”
Hmm.
“And a woman in Sudvic,” he went on. “A widow who I visited frequently when I was in the city and this acquaintance lasted some time. She introduced it in an attempt to get me to feel more about what we shared than was there. But if it isn’t there, you can’t make it be there. Her attempt backfired for she exposed how she felt about me, feelings I knew I couldn’t return. I came to understand it was unfair to give her hope by continuing our liaison and shortly after, I stopped visiting her.” His arms gave me another squeeze and he explained, “Adele rules passion but she holds no sway over love.”
I was pleased he was honest and trusted me without hesitation with stories of his past. That felt nice and said a lot of good things about him.
But at his mention of love, I held my breath hoping he wouldn’t notice I was holding my breath and also hoping that maybe he was about to share something so I could share something, both of which were crucially important.
I quietly let my breath out when he didn’t.
I hid my disappointment with another question. “So the Lunwynians don’t actually have a goddess of love, just passion and motherhood?”
“For the ancients, when the dragons flew freely, they did,” Frey answered and he gave me another squeeze and whispered, “Her name was Sjofn.”
I held my breath again and after awhile let it out when he said no more.
Then I shared, “My parents named me after a Norse goddess of love. She was an ancient goddess too. They did this because I was born with my hair. They thought it looked like snow. There’s a lot of snow in Scandinavia so that’s why they decided on that. They were going to name me Tabitha.”
His body shook with a brief chuckle before he stated, “You are not a Tabitha.”
No, this was true.
“It’s spelled differently,” I informed him. “No one would get it the way it was spelled and they didn’t want people to mess it up so they spelled it S… e… o…a… f… i… n.”