Chapter 24

My mate was sleepingin my coils.

The human bed at the castle bed and breakfast was too small for me and I had curled up around the bed. Laying on the bed next to my mate with just my upper body was an uncomfortable position, so instead I had coiled up.

My mate had watched me for a moment before asking if she could join me.

She didn't just join me; she sprawled across me.

She rolled across me, stretching her limbs as I shifted underneath her. She wiggled until she was lined up next to my upper body, then she had wrapped her arms around my waist and was now making a small repeated rumbling sound with her nose, her cheek pressed against my abdomen. There was a small bit of liquid dribbling out the corner of her open mouth.

It would be a while before I could fall asleep.

The atmospheric pressure had brought the nerve sensitivity back to the surface of my skin, and I could feel every shift of her body against mine. Focusing on her touch was mesmerizing, like basking in the sunshine and feeling the rays of it soaking into my body. My mate was special, but it wasn't just her that was entrancing me.

There was so much beauty on this planet. The stability of its weather patterns, the thriving diversity of its plants and animals, even the taste of the boar that had been added to the dinner's meal. Our hosts had cooked a portion of it, and then after repeatedly making sure I didn't need more food, they had rubbed salt all over the legs and then hung them from the ceiling. They had another one that had been hanging almost a full cycle of the sun. They called it dry curing, where the meat aged in the open air, perfected by the changing of the seasons.

Just the fact that they had reliable seasons where they could learn how to process specific foods based on the weather was a delight. To have the gift to evolve with such stability was why they were so soft and delicate.

Their world has been a garden to their species.

There was so much to learn about these humans, so much to learn about the soft, nose growling, mouth dribbling little mate snuggled into my coils whose shifts and sighs brought flutters of pleasure to my heart.

What a gift it was to be here, holding her.