Mer wanted to pass out on the bed, but one look at Rush's expression when she neared it said that was not where she was going. With a whine of protest and all around grumbling, she followed Rush's pointed finger out of the room and down two more doors like a child who'd tried to eat before washing her hands. That was where the showers were, the ones Mer had begged him to install a water heater, or three, in.

The room was as grand as any, with showers coming from the wall near shields of clouded glass, but they all opened into the pool sized tub with varying jets on either side of it. What astounded her was that Rush used to use this room with frigid water. How had that not woken her the first night she was here? If she'd been Rush and had showered her in this ice box, her dick would have been too shriveled to get aroused by her in the first place.

A small giggle escaped her as she thought about the day they'd met, how he'd dragged her from that post with the expectation that she was going to try and kill him. How he'd been so awkward about just speaking at first and all the misunderstandings they had over simple euphemisms and normal gestures that he took as murder attempts.

It wasn't even in her to say they were past some of it. Every time she got that cockeyed look as his brain train crashed into another brick wall, she knew she had to backtrack and explain. Rush learned fast though, unlike her, so she didn't have to repeat anything. It seemed uncanny that he just remembered every idiom or non-literal phrase she explained to her. Part of her expected a tiny notebook in his back pocket that he used to reference at light speed every time she talked.

How would she see him do that with how fast vampires moved?

That wasn't why she gripped his ass so hard most of the time, but it didn't help to have more reasons.

The door shut behind her, and she turned to Rush as he came in, stark ass naked when she hadn't even taken her shirt off yet. It was grimy with sweat and she was too shaky to think about lifting her arms. Instead, she was over here thinking about his muscled gluts and deliriously reminiscing. Rush was hers now. Hers. It hadn't really sank in with how fast everything had happened and her balancing on a teeter totter of whether or not they were just going to die anyway. Now that everything had slowed down, she really looked at him, and his eyebrows crunched between his eyes.

This man always knew how she was feeling, but she had to pry him open for his feelings. That wasn't to say he didn't tell her if she asked, just that he didn't broadcast it like the cheap tabloids. Rush approached her at a crawl, as if he were nearing an active bomb that could go off at any minute, and she frowned.

"What?" she growled at his tension, and he eased up a bit.

"You've been..." Rush looked to the side with a slow sigh. "Buzzing."

Huh? Mer cocked an eyebrow and he fiddled with his fingers.

"You know, that thing you go when you get upset," Rush elaborated, and then she really did jump in surprise. Rush was talking about how she shot out a negative magic aura that gave him a headache when she was upset sometimes.

"Really?" Mer frowned harder, but she didn't know if she could turn it off this time. The thoughts spinning in her head were complicated, it wasn't as simple as him saying something lewd on accident that had triggered her defenses way back when. This was serious, and she was afraid to say something.

"Talk to me, Meredith," Rush insisted, slipping up and sliding his hands around her sides.

The man stripped off her shirt, and she was in no emotional position to deny him as he wiggled her out of her pants either. The clip of her bra was last since the underwear had gone with the pants. Alone and naked, she stood with her back to him, but he didn't close the inch of space separating his cool skin from hers.

"Was it something I did?" Rush asked carefully, and she spun around to face him with a grumpy expression that drew his lips up into one of his light smiles. "I'm sorry." Despite the words, a chuckle came out with them. "I've never had a mate, so I am trying to figure out what to ask first. I don't want to end up in the dog house."

Mer really laughed on that. It shook her and she leaned into Rush's chest and his cool arms around her sent a shock up her spine that Rush was well used to. It was only a few moments until they warmed to her skin and she nuzzled into him with bliss.

"Who taught you that idiom?" Mer asked with amusement in her eyes, and Rush let out a purr that took her off guard. It was really affectionate for such a question. Maybe she'd stopped buzzing.

"You father," Rush said plainly, and she snorted.

"Of course he did," Mer said as she turned on a shower ahead of them and waited for the warm water to start running. "I bet he taught you all sorts of fun phrases."

"Mostly ones of outcomes he'd favor," Rush said with a flash of fangs that Meredith was used to. Man, her father and Rush were like bickering children about her. Now that they were mates, she hoped that Damien would accept that she wasn't going to ask him to off Rush. On occasion, he still checked if she wanted to accept his offer to kill the man.

Mer left Rush to slide under the water, but he came in tow like a little tug boat. The man did have a loofa and soap for her, so she wasn't arguing there. The water was so nice on her neck and face, but she sputtered as she took too much of it to the face. Before she could even raise her hands, Rush's were in her hair, shampoo and all, working out the sweat and dirt. It was so gentle and unsexual that tears lined her eyes, and he froze.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asked, indicating that she'd started buzzing again. She was like a phone alerting for the same text over and over.

"No," Mer whispered, and he continued to work through her hair, making sure to brush away the bubbles when they sank near her eyes. It was a feat to get all of her curls washed, and his fingers running over her scalp was nearly orgasmic. "Rush," she said finally.

"Yes," he responded in kind. Pulling off the side shower to rinse the soap out of her hair, he combed it with water jets from the top of her head to the bottom so the bubbles ran down her shoulders and not over her face.

"Do you still want me?" she asked into the tiled wall, and Rush stopped, hanging up the extra shower head.

"You're my mate. There isn't really an undo button for that in the vampire world. Our bonds are too deep for something like divorce to be possible," Rush said practically, like he always did. Why had she expected something emotional from him in the first place? She knew him better than anyone.

"But do you still want me?" Mer repeated, still not looking at him.

"Of course," Rush said, leaning forward and kissing the side of her face. "I'll still murder any man who looks twice at you, Meredith. You're all I want, all I need."

"But I killed a bunch of your kind," Mer rasped as Rush poured more soap onto a loofa behind her back. All she could see was the bottle lift and drop out of the corner of her eyes because she didn't have it in her to turn to him yet.

"Is that what is bothering you?" Rush asked in a groan that sounded a lot more like relief than any real worry. "I've killed plenty of your kind, Meredith," Rush answered all practical again, running the loofa over her shoulders and working the old skin off in circular motions that were better than any back massage.

"I don't have a kind," Mer grumbled. "What is that? Human, mage? Neither really have a place for me. When you said you wanted to be my mate, I was so happy to have a place, a family to call my own."

"Has that changed?" Rush asked as her ran the loofa down her sides and wrapped her in his arms, scrubbing her stomach in a way that almost tickled.

"No. You just agreed to be my mate knowing who I was, just some mage slowly learning magic with you and always at your side. Now I'm getting dangerous. I killed people today, and I'm getting stronger. Maybe one day I'll be stronger than you. Will you want me then? No matter how much blood stains my hands and how far I've drifted from the woman you brought home?"

Rush paused with the loofa and pulled her back closer to his naked chest. They sloshed and made an awkward suction noise as the small of her back pulled on the creases between his abs

"Some things change, Meredith, other don't. The sun comes up and goes down, but sometimes we have a particularly harsh winter. The water flows from the source to its mouth, but over the years it dries up in one place and moves to another," Rush whispered into her ear, and for once she was lost. This was what she got for teaching him metaphors.

"Explain that to me in Rush," Mer said with a desperate groan that had him chuckling against her back.

"Now you know how I feel all the time," Rush said as he nibbled her ear and drew a blush across her face. "Days come and go, Meredith, some harder, some easier, but they still move into the future. We'll work through the tough times together, always. And I'll always love you, like an overflowing river that pours down over the land, but what I love may shift.

"You're upset that you killed my kind, but they were men trying to take from us. I too killed my kind and some with a heavy heart. Tanya was a monster, but a woman, and we have so few as vampires. It was painful to see her go, instinctual for me to want to save her, but the rational part of me knew we needed her gone.

"Neither of us are cold-hearted, though I appear so, I'm told. Your heart will stay the same, Meredith. No matter what happens, who we fight, what obstacles we have to tackle, you'll always be a snide mage who used phrases I barely understand but has the softest skin when she touches me despite how rough she can look on the outside. Magic won't change that.

"I'm not worried that you're going to change into someone like your father who wants to kill me just because you ended a few of my kind. It also doesn't bother me that you feel guilt over killing men I think of as nothing but pests that needed to be squashed. If it pains you, I will feel your pain as well, and we can work through it together."

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Word Count: 1942