The Golden Dynasty (Fantasyland #2)(155)

Oh yeah.

I was home.

* * * * *

I watched Lahn walk back into our room after putting down Tunahn who I just fed.

Night had fallen but candlelight lit the room softly. If I was lucky and fell asleep quickly, I could maybe get four hours in.

Lahn got under the covers, stretched out beside me, shoved an arm under me and curled me to his long, warm, hard side.

Okay, f**k that. No way I was sleeping.

I lifted up on an elbow, rested my hand on his chest and looked into his dark, beloved eyes.

“Do you make trainee warriors buff your saddle?” I asked and he blinked.

“What?”

“Trainee warriors. Do you make them buff your saddle?”

His mouth twitched. “Warriors in training learn and do many things, kah Lahnahsahna. Buffing saddles is not one of them.”

My eyes drifted to his shoulder and I muttered, “Oh.”

“Something they do learn,” he went on and my eyes moved back to his, “is not to waste time performing deeds that are not worth performing. Like buffing saddles.”

I started giggling. Lahn’s arm gave me a squeeze as his lips tipped up into a smile.

I rested my chest into his, my arm curving around him, my face getting closer.

“Did you really lose your virginity when you were twelve?” I whispered and his eyes immediately shuttered so I shook his body with my arm. “Lahn.”

“Meena,” he said shortly.

“No joke?” I asked, eyes wide with surprise, he studied me then he shook his head.

“No joke.”

“Wow,” I breathed. “That’s kinda young isn’t it?”

He kept studying me. Then he stated, “A warrior’s trainer will decide when a warrior is ready to advance through all facets of his training. My trainer decided I was ready to take a woman at twelve. So I took a Xacto at twelve.”

I felt his gaze sharpen on my face when he said the word “Xacto” so I told him quickly, “Baby, I know you’re not going to step out on me. If a guy like you who needs it as often as you do and the way you do can hang on for eight months for me, I have no worries about you going to the Xacto.”

“No, my Circe, you have no worries about me going to the Xacto,” he said quietly.

I smiled at him.

Lahn smiled back.

Then he asked, “What is a… dork?”

I giggled again. Then I explained, “A kind of, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. A person that does stupid shit, kinda klutzy, kinda bonkers, kinda foolish, not enough of any of those to be really stupid or harm anyone, just, I don’t know, a dork or…” I tipped my head to the side and grinned, “Me.”

Lahn wasn’t grinning. “My golden queen is not a dork,” he declared.

I slid in closer and said, still grinning, “Big guy, I lost it and spirited my pregnant ass home for five months, leaving you behind when I promised never to leave you at all. Then my Pop gave me a big lecture about leaving the man I was in love with, I got back, forgave you weeks before I told you I did, which was about the time Karrim told me you never gave up on me, then got myself caught up in procrastination, which, by the way, Pop also used to lecture me about all the time, so it got harder and harder to talk to you about it to the point where I pissed you off and made you give up on me. Calling myself a dork is being nice. I was way beyond a dork.”

“This is true,” he agreed so swiftly I blinked.

Then I stared.

Then I burst out laughing.

And I didn’t stop when I was pulled full on top of my husband, he rolled me to my back, covered my body with his, shoved his face in my neck and I heard his deep laughter rumbling against my skin as I felt it shaking my body.

And passersby, spies and those who were just plain nosy who were paying attention outside our house heard the mighty Dax and his rahna Dahksahna’s mirth and about forty-five minutes later, they heard something else entirely.

And all they heard was all over Korwahn the next morning.

* * * * *

The sun was touching the sky when something woke me. I felt disconcerted before it hit me.

I was not sleeping under Lahn’s warm body. I was pressed to the side of it, his arm around me, my cheek to his shoulder, my arm around his abs.

My eyes opened and I stared at my daughter, her rosy, chubby cheek pressed to her father’s brown, muscled chest, her eyes closed, her pink lips pursed in a cute, little baby pout, her sweet little fist resting light on his smooth, dark skin.

I felt my lips turn up and I slid my arm from my husband’s stomach so I could rest my hand on my daughter’s fat rump.

Then carefully, I tipped my head back to see my handsome husband’s sleeping profile.

I hadn’t heard her and this meant she’d probably woken and, as Isis was content to do, she just quietly took things in.

But my husband’s sensed her awake and went to go get his daughter.

That made my lips turn up deeper.

He either felt the slight movement of my mouth or sensed my eyes on him, his opened and his head turned to me. When I looked into their dark depths I saw they were somnolent and sexy and all the love he felt for me was warm, sweet and openly read in the depths of them.

Yes, oh yes, I was home.

I pressed against Isis’s bottom.

“We’re going to have to talk about this,” I whispered.