“Oh,” he said at first lowly.

Noah leaned his head over and ducked it under her hand and nuzzled up into it. As he expected, she had misunderstood him, but it was hard to tell her exactly what he wanted of her, at least it was for him. Noah grew up in a family where emotions and wants were communicated by motion alone. There was an air about his family’s home that told of moods and when someone wanted to be bothered and when not to. He often showed those moods to Elann but she didn’t know the language enough to interpret the moods he was giving off. The fact that his face was placid unless he directly sought to communicate with her meant his quiet state of being was easily misunderstood and otherwise unseen motions were left unseen.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said after a moment’s thought. “Well, it is what I meant, but not like this. Do you remember when you told me to be slow that time we had sex after the movers took the things out of the apartment?” He looked up at her, her hand sliding over his forehead as he did so. “I guess you like that sometimes, so I wanted to show you something I liked as well.”

He took a breath, pausing to think. His sights came back down as he scratched his chin. “You are… very [i]laouru[/i], fiery, or… too hot to handle, like fire,” he explained. “It’s not all the time, but when you get really excited it can be overwhelming. I like it sometimes, it’s endearing, but it’s also shocking.”

Noah pressed his head further up into her hand. “Does that make sense?” he asked. “I don’t want you to hide it. I just want you to know that I’m not like that, okay?” He paused again and chewed on his lip. “You know that though, don’t you?”

Noah hoped she did. To him, it was easy to tell Elann’s moods and emotions usually before she even showed them on her face. It was why when they did basically live together for a time he managed to avoid getting in her way or felt he knew how to approach certain situations because of how she would flare both in their bond and in the room before she reacted physically.