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R ichard sat cross-legged on the area rug in the suite he now shared with Lucas and opened the paper bag in his lap. The enticing aroma of over-salted fast food hit his nose.

“Don’t worry, Dragonfly, nothing in there will bite,” Lucas teased as he mirrored Richard’s position across from him.

With a baleful glance at Lucas, Richard dug into the sack and plucked out a burger. “I’ve eaten from here before. I know that.”

“Marwoods eat fast food?”

“It’s almost like we’re normal people,” Richard said with mock surprise.

Lucas chuckled, and Richard loved the crinkles at the corner of his pure gray eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but there’s nothing normal about your family.”

“You live in this house. You’re my soulmate. Is it still so hard to accept that the Marwoods are your family too?” Richard asked, genuinely concerned about whether Lucas was comfortable. He handed fries to his soulmate and studied his face for any signs of distress. Thankfully, there were none.

“I guess I wasn’t sure if it was okay to call them mine too.”

Richard was grateful he’d applied his cosmetics with a light hand since he was teetering close to a bout of tears. If he cried, he wouldn’t wind up looking like someone had melted crayons on his face as the varied colors oozed together. Lucas was so damn sweet.

“Of course you can,” Richard said. “Anyone would be proud to have you in their family.”

The inspirit sighed deeply. “I wish that was true.”

“Another week without Foxe bothering to at least send you a text to let you know he’s alive?”

The necromancer who’d brought Lucas to life was seriously pissing Richard off. Lucas had spent ten years at the man’s side and loved him. But Foxe was so wrapped up in his feelings that he didn’t bother to consider how his silence was affecting Lucas.

“Don’t get pissed, Dragonfly. He’s mad at me.”

“Because you want a better life for him? He can be mad if he wants. I get it. No matter what struggles he’s faced, he wants to gamble. He has an addiction. You refused to help him. He doesn’t understand it was for his benefit. Hopefully, he will someday. In the meantime, good for him. What does that have to do with being a selfish prick?” Richard asked. “I get mad at the people I love too. Sometimes I want to strangle them. But I never lose sight of what they’re feeling. Because they matter to me. I’m not going to yell or scream even though I want to. It’d upset you, and I strive to avoid that however I can. But you deserve better. That’s all.”

Lucas leaned over the meal they’d thus far ignored and kissed Richard softly. Those little caresses were becoming ingrained in Richard’s daily life, and he wondered what he’d ever done without them. How had he suffered through a day without Lucas?

“I appreciate that you want him to be nicer to me, but I believe he’s doing the best he can right now.”

“He’s lucky that you have such a generous spirit,” Richard said, though he wanted to rage, yell curse words, and go find Foxe so he could shake the idiot until he pulled his life together.

“Eat your dinner.”

Richard took a giant bite of his burger and nearly moaned. It was a little greasy and a lot delicious.

“Good, right?”

His mouth was full, so Richard nodded. Lucas winked at him, then focused on his own meal. They ate in companionable silence for several minutes, and Richard used his phone to play music through the speakers cleverly disguised as oversized books.

“How old were you when you fell in love with clothes?” Lucas asked.

Surprised at the question, Richard lifted an arched brow. “Uh, I don’t know. I can’t remember not caring about what I was wearing. Even as a kid, I was picky about how things looked and refused to let my mother select my outfits.”

“When did you start wowing people with perfectly applied makeup?”

“It wasn’t perfectly applied at first,” Richard said. The memory of himself as a preteen without a clue how to blend or select the right products rushed to his mind and made him smile ruefully. “You should’ve seen me. Mom will probably produce pictures of it at some point. I was a wreck. But Mari and I were devoted to being experts. We’d buy magazines and try to copy things. We eventually discovered social media and watched the same videos countless times. It should’ve been hard for us to be late for classes since we were homeschooled, but Mari and I managed it.”

“Did you have tutors?”

“I wish. We had my mother, and she was tough. Why the hell I needed to learn three languages and play the piano was an ongoing conversation with my parents.”

“You speak three languages?”

“English, Italian, and French. Some Spanish too that I’ve picked up since I was allowed to start my career. It’s close enough to Italian that I can figure some stuff out. I’d like to be able to engage with other staff and our guests whose native tongue is Spanish without them having to always switch to English. The world is an enormous place with many languages, and I can’t expect everyone to cater to me.”

“How come you haven’t played the piano since I moved in?” Lucas asked.

“Because I haven’t played in years. I’m terrible. Eric received every single one of my mother’s musical genes. I love listening to him play, but I have no desire to keep up the lessons of my childhood. Mari doesn’t play any longer either. Once a year, we sing carols, but otherwise we don’t bother trying to be musical divas.”

Lucas grinned. “Is that a family tradition? To sing carols as you open your mountains of presents?”

Since Richard had polished off his burger, he wadded up the wrapper and stuck it in the bag. “No, we have cocktails and sing on Christmas Eve. I put on something festive. Last year, I bought a red sweater and Santa socks. Mari and I got a little drunk. Later I found out that while I was dreaming of sugarplums and waiting for Santa, my brother was sneaking down the hall to jump Gabriel.”

“Can you blame him? If you and I were in a secret romance, I’d be sneaking into your room.”

Richard brushed a crumb from Lucas’s cheek, then kissed him. “No, you wouldn’t. That’d be impossible since I’d already have hauled ass to your bedroom.”

“This is a nice date.”

“I’m glad we finally did this. Our last date was two weeks ago.”

“What are we going to do next?”

With a shrug, Richard popped a few fries into his mouth.

“Not helpful, Dragonfly. How’s our romance going?”

“Tell me your opinion first.”

“Nope,” Lucas replied. “I’ve been doing all the heavy lifting on this date. I drove us to the restaurant. You tried to pay, but I beat you to it. I’ll give you half credit for that. Once we got up here, though, I’ve been asking the questions. Pull your weight.”

Richard gasped in mock outrage and nearly smiled at the grin Lucas flashed him. That dimple deepened on his cheek. Richard nearly broke and kissed Lucas. But he clung to his mock outrage with enough strength to avoid a bout of giggles. “I had no idea there was a scorecard. No one told me to come armed with a list of questions.”

“Don’t you want to get to know me better?” Lucas asked coyly.

“Of course I do.”

“So, ask me something about myself.”

“Fine,” Richard said. Giving himself no time, he blurted out the first question that popped into his head. “How long after you were resurrected did you have sex?”

Lucas gaped at him. “What?”

“Hmm, well, I suppose that’s none of my business. Have you ever been with a woman? I tried once. We made out for an hour, then decided it wasn’t for us. We spent the rest of the evening talking about makeup and clothes.”

“Never been with a woman. If Foxe was flush with cash, women and men swarmed him. He’d wind up with the women, but I wasn’t attracted to them. I wanted to fuck the men, so I figured I was gay.”

Since the night Lucas had rimmed Richard, they’d regularly included ass play in their lovemaking. Richard’s delight in the mastery of Lucas’s mouth and hands had him reevaluating his refusal to ever consider intercourse again. Lucas was a conscientious lover who treated Richard like a king in bed. What would it be like to have Lucas inside him?

A shiver ran through Richard at the thought.

“Have you ever bottomed?” Richard asked.

Lucas shook his head. “No. Fucking wasn’t a huge thing for me. It happened, but mostly it was jackoff sessions or blowjobs.”

“You like those things.”

Richard’s belly did a delicious little flop as Lucas aimed a feral smile at him. “Yes, especially with you.”

“Bottoming again has occurred to me.”

“It’s not necessary to have anal, Dragonfly.”

“I know. It’s not like I think I have to. It’s an increasing want. The way you make me feel is addictive. I’m growing more curious about what it’d be like to have you inside me.”

Lucas scooted closer to Richard and rested his palms on Richard’s thighs. “I like that you’re thinking about it because that means you feel safe and comfortable enough around me to consider it. But that’s because it was your idea to try it in the first place. That time you met up with that asshole, you suggested it. Which means at one point, it interested you. You deserve to walk through life without dickheads ruining experiences for you. Fucking with the right person feels really damn good. I enjoy making you feel good.”

“You’re excellent at making me feel like I can literally conquer the fucking world if I want,” Richard replied, cupping Lucas’s jaw and kissing him.

“You do that for me. I don’t know how this is supposed to work, but I lost my heart to you. It’s yours if you want it.”

Richard swallowed the lump in his throat and smiled as the first tear slipped out of his eye. It was impossible to pinpoint the moment he’d gone from admiring Lucas’s beauty to wondering how he’d passed his days without his kind, caring presence in his life. Soulmates had terrified Richard because he hadn’t understood how he was supposed to be in a relationship. No one had been able to explain the process of falling in love to him. Richard hadn’t been able to appreciate what it was like to find a person who suited him perfectly.

On paper, his relationship with Lucas shouldn’t have worked. They’d come from different walks of life. Richard was a sorcerer who could raise the dead, and Lucas had been summoned by magic.

Yet none of that had mattered. The real sorcery was how easily Richard had been ensnared by his feelings for Lucas. Or perhaps it was the lack of terror Richard had experienced as he’d fallen for the inspirit.

Words were trivial, but they were all Richard had.

“I love you,” Richard whispered against Lucas’s crooked smile.

“I love you too.”

“This may be silly, but I suddenly have this impulse to thank you for taking our relationship seriously right from the start. You didn’t fully understand soulmates until you met my family, but you were my partner from that first night together.”

“Before that night, I thought if I could choose a soulmate, you’d be it. I’d pick you.”

“Thanks for taking that hotel key and meeting me in that room.”

“Thanks for having the courage to ask me to be with you.”

“It was messy, but I’m glad I did it,” Richard said, caressing Lucas’s cheek. “Best decision I ever made.”

“Do me one favor.”

“Anything.”

“Never tell me how much money the Marwoods have, or my head may explode.”

Richard chuckled. “My father hasn’t brought it up yet, but I know him. He’s already planned for the future. You’re a rich man. A very rich one. He will have ensured the funds are there for you in case something happens to him or my mother.”

“Gross, Richard.”

Delighted by Lucas’s disgust toward financial things, Richard brushed their lips together. “You’re adorable.”

“One serious thing we should discuss.”

“What’s that?”

“Dragonfly, our souls are twisting closer together every night. How long do we have until it’s done and everyone else can sense destiny’s choice?”

“It’s different for everyone, so I don’t know. But we definitely can’t hide it forever.”

“We’ll figure it out. I don’t want anything to touch what we’ve built, and it wouldn’t make either of us happy to know that our love is hurting someone else.”

“That’s true, but it should be about us first, right?”

Lucas nodded. “But it’s more complicated than that.”

“Another week or two. We’ll put our heads together and figure out the best way to announce it in seven to fourteen days.”

“So official sounding,” Lucas replied with a nip to Richard’s bottom lip.

“Here’s something unofficial. I chose leggings for our date and skipped underwear since I’m wearing a long tunic.”

Lucas lowered his palms and cupped Richard’s ass. With a jerk, he dragged Richard close.

“Damn, that’s sexy,” Lucas growled.

Their mouths met in a deep heated kiss, and Richard forgot anything existed beyond him and the man he loved.