"Not always," Jeera assured me.
"But it happens," I insisted.
"Sometimes," Jeera relented. "I'm just curious if you'd ever kiss anyone like that?"
"I don't want to be married," I mumbled.
"And up here, you don't have to get married to kiss someone," Brielle pointed out. "Kissing is allowed, Ayla. No one will force you to get married for doing it."
"Yeah?" I asked.
Jeera nodded. "She's telling the truth. But what I'm curious about is, well, if you had to kiss someone, would it be a man or a woman? Do you like either one?"
"I..." My eyes jumped between them.
"Do girls make you feel silly?" Brielle tried instead. "Make you smile too much and have your tummy get all fluttery feeling? Or maybe boys make your heart beat faster and you want to look at them a little too much? Or maybe the other way around? Both? Neither?"
I just shrugged. "Everything makes my heart beat faster. I get nervous because I don't know what I'm allowed to do."
"Wait, wait," Jeera said. "Bri, I think we're asking this wrong." Then she turned to me. "Ayla, when you see a pretty woman, do you wish you could touch her leg, or maybe hold her hand? When you see a handsome man, do you wish you could touch his arm, or maybe hold his hand?"
"I like when the men hold my hand," I relented. "And sometimes I might stare at their chests, but that's only because they have muscles."
"Ha!" Jeera barked out.
Brielle waved her off. "But you only do that with boys? Well, men?"
I shrugged again, feeling like we shouldn't be talking about this here. Or maybe not this loudly. My face felt like it was heating up, and I was fighting the urge to look over my shoulder and see if anyone was staring at us.
"I don't..."
"It's okay," Jeera said, waving Brielle off. "Ayla, we can talk about this stuff. You're not going to get in trouble. And if someone gets mad, I'll tell them it's my fault, okay?"
"Really?" I asked.
She nodded her head once, and the gesture was very decisive. "I swear."
So I finally glanced back, not really surprised to find no one else seemed to even notice we were here. Then I leaned in and lowered my voice. "I was told it's evil to think about what I want like that. We're supposed to believe God will provide for us, and we're told we will learn to love our husbands, regardless of how they look - but I didn't want some old man. I kept hoping for this one man, Jamison. He was very handsome, and because he was a hunter, he had very broad shoulders. But he was courting someone else, so I knew he wouldn't propose to me. Never mind what happened with Gideon."
"So you do like men!" Jeera gasped before letting out a peal of laughter. "And you like the muscular ones, which means my brother might even have a shot."
"Or Rymar," Brielle pointed out.
"Kanik!" Jeera squealed, sounding more excited than I'd ever heard.
"But..." They didn't stop, rambling at each other like I'd just given them the best news. "I don't want to get married!" I blurted out.
Jeera just waved that off. "Then don't. That has nothing at all to do with kissing the guys."
"Yes, it does," I insisted. "Because kissing a man leads him on, and then he will want sex! Sometimes they even take it, and then the woman has to marry him - "
"No!" Jeera said, cutting me off. "Ayla, that's called rape. Here, if a man rapes a woman, he goes to jail and she never has to see him again. Men know better. There's nothing wrong with having sex, but only if the woman agrees, and sex - or kissing - has nothing at all to do with marriage, okay?"
"Okay," I relented just as Rymar made his way back with a tray full of food and drinks.
"Oh, this looks serious," he said as he began passing things out.
Jeera murmured in agreement. "I think I just found out why Ayla is so timid around you three."
"Oh?" He looked at me with a little smile, then back to Jeera. "Do tell."
"Because when a Mole man rapes a woman, she has to marry him."
Rymar's hands paused. No, it wasn't only his hands. It was all of him. For two whole seconds, it was as if time stopped for his body and he turned into a statue. I'd seen all of the Dragons do something similar, but it had never been this obvious. Leaned halfway across the table, with a drink only inches from where he was about to set it, Rymar had simply frozen.
"No..." he breathed as he began moving again. "Fuck, no wonder you keep getting freaked out when we do nice things, Ayla."
"I don't mean to," I mumbled.
"Not your fault," he assured me as he set a plate on the table before me. "And no one will make you get married."
"Like Father Dayne said," Brielle added, "they can't. You have to agree, otherwise it will simply be annulled."
"But is that before or after a man consummates it?" I asked.
Beside me, Rymar's tail lashed. "Ayla..." He quickly passed out the other plates, then turned to face me and squatted down so our faces were even. "We're friends, right?"
"Yes?"
