Analyze this as you wish but I had risen to the occasion without even realizing it. It was only moments after, when Levi mentioned something about my tattoos, that I even knew what had happened to me. A full blush started at the tips of my ears before it slowly crept across my cheeks. The red on either side bridged together over my nose and once my face was fully red it started to go down, down-down, past my neck, past my shoulders, across my bare chest and painting every dragon red – every dragon – and I had to look away by then when I realized there was no way for me to will this small problem away. I couldn’t help myself – Levi was incredibly beautiful and gentle and kind and touching my knees. Could you blame me? Honestly? Really – could you?

“Thank you.” I said in a small voice with eyes turning to look off at something other than him, anything but him, anything that was less interesting. I should have warned him. I should have been more careful. My decision to strip off every last bit of clothing came as primitively as defending myself if I were to get attacked by a predator. Of course, that was not the case, so it let me wondering why I’d decided to do something so compromising, especially for the situation I was in now.

“Uh…sorry.” Is all I said when I was sure he saw it. “I’m not sure what’s come over me.”

No pun intended. No pun intended at all.

His hands felt good along my skin as they tended to the wounds and I could not help the sooty rumble of pleasure I felt once the worst of the damage was covered up at last. I decided to distract from the obvious by sharing more about the tattoos. “I’ve had them since I could remember…I’d been hideously scarred from some things…at the time he was gentle to me – he helped me cover the marks, all of them.” I ran my hand along the rough patches of skin that appeared smooth if only because the tattoo created the optical illusion of such. Despite how it looked it was still rough to the touch – like sand paper, I sighed thinking about it. “He died before the last one could be finished and it is still unfinished to this very day.” I mentioned as I showed him the inside of my left calf muscle where the scale work had stopped entirely, the head of the dragon missing as the tattoo was incomplete. I wasn’t sure why I shared such useless information with him – but perhaps he would find as much appreciation in them as I had.