Page 52 of Nine-Tenths

"I just don't want to risk it. This—" I gesture between us, and he licks his lower lip, which is still kiss-bitten and that isillegal, sir, you cannot justdo thatin front of me. "This is too nice to fuck up with puking."

And once he's seen how gross and pathetic I am, curled up on the tile and praying for death, he won't ever want to kiss me again. That's something I absolutely can't allow.

"Understandable," he concedes.

"I've been thinking about my food intake, and nothing's different. I'm eating the same stuff, using the same condiments. Except for the lunch at the boardgame pub, and Steph's burgers are good, but I don't think they're 'cure a food allergy' good."

"I don't know of anything that can," Dav agrees, sitting back and letting only some of his weight rest on my calves. We tap our wine glasses together and sip in tandem. "It's funny, I don't recall food allergies being so severe in my youth."

"What, a thousand years ago?"

"Hush." He taps my thigh with a teasing grin. "You're wretched."

"Ouch!" I pantomime pain. "So cruel. So old, and decrepit, andcruel, andancient—"

"I'll show you ancient, you brat." He pulls the glass out of my hands, places it on the coffee table, and pushes me back down into the flat throw pillows. "Just kissing?" he checks in as he slides his legs over mine, trapping my knees between his on the cushions.

"Roger, roger."

"Dav," he says, with that silly, eye-crinkling grin as he lowers his face. "In case you’ve forgotten."

"Yeah, no, that's not very likely."

We fall asleep like that. The slow, wet slide, the soft push-pull lures us into dreamland. I wake up with a crick in my neck and a dragon asleep on my chest when the pizza guy rings the doorbell. I poke Dav upright, and before he can muzzily apologize, I chivvy him toward my bed. He's face-down in the pillow by the time I get back inside with dinner, so I stow it in the fridge and move the wine glasses to the sink.

I'm tempted to strip him down for his own comfort, but that’s one intimacy-step too far for tonight. I wake him a little, make myselfnothave a heart attack over how cute he is when his face is all scrunched up in half-sleep, and leave him alone to wrestle into a spare pair of pajama pants. When I come back from pulling on my own pajama pants in the bathroom, he's dead asleep on his back, one arm thrown up over his head. He's also shirtless, and the pants are so tight around his hips that he didn't do up the string.

I am exhausted, but that doesn't stop my mouth from absolutelywateringat the sight of hiseverythingso casually on display. He's got a soldier's body, lithe and conditioned power with a sweet, concave tummy, and no belly button. I guess that's normal, dragons coming from eggs. He still has a treasure trail though, spare and brilliantly orange, arrowing down from the sparse spread across his chest to a thin line that disappears into his waistband.

That'snicenice.

Stop being a perv, I tell myself and crawl in beside him.

Sure, I could sleep on the sofa. Or even in my roommate's bed.

But there’s a snuggly dragon sleeping in mine, and to paraphrase the girl with the golden locks, he looks just right.

The alarm startles Dav so bad he shreds the pillow. Good thing I was jetpacking, curled up against his back and lovely pert bum with my arms around his middle, or it might have meant another trip to emerg. We have enough time before we have to be at the café to mutter apologies and tumble around one another in the bathroom. Dav washes quickly, then I jump in the shower as he rifles my barren fridge for breakfast.

We end up munching on cold pizza. I was planning to seduce him, why don’t I have somethingthat isn't mustard and half-finished margarine to feed my conquest in the morning? Ugh,fail.At least I have a stash of spare toothbrushes from dentist visits.

We don't talk about last night, and though it might actually make a blood vessel burst, I refrain from any jokes about having Dav in my bed. He's already sheepish about showing up to Beanevolence in yesterday's clothing. I'm not about to scare him off by being obnoxious.

As we're pulling on our shoes, I say, as casual as possible: "I'd like to see your place sometime." I don't want to push, but Dav's walked me home or been in my apartment nearly every night for the last three weeks, and I've never even seen hiscar. Dav's face makes me add: "Sorry, is … is that something I shouldn't have asked for?"

"It's fine." His expression is doing a complicated dance between confused, and scared, and delighted. "You cannot realize how serious a request that is. It's not common for us to allow humans who are not, ah…" he scratches the back of his neck. "Notcollectedto be allowed into a dragon's keep."

I snort as I usher him out and lock up. "I'm not asking to marry you, bro. I just wanna see your place. You've seen mine."

Dav smirks, and there's something gorgeously lecherous about the way he raises just one of his sculpted eyebrows at me. "Indeed I have."

"Hey, if it's not cool, it's not cool," I back-pedal. "I don't mind us going to mine all the time. Though I'm gonna have to get bread and eggs or something."

"Maybe one day," Dav allows, wrapping his pinkie around mine. "But it's a very big step for the present."

"I won't push. Rules Two and Three."

"Yes, whatarethese Rules?" Dav asks. He reaches up and flicks what turns out to be dried toothpaste out of my scruff by the corner of my mouth, and I think, suddenly, without any warning:I love you.