Only Him

Chapter 7

"Dimitri I'm getting fat!" I complained from my location in the bathroom.

"You are absolutely not fat, Rose," he said, voice floating through the open door. He was already in bed waiting for me.

"Oh yes I am!" I darted out into the bedroom in my bra and panties. "Look at this!" I pointed accusingly at the red indentations of button and waistband that were on my lower stomach. "I've had that uniform for two years! It used to fit perfectly. Now look." I pouted.

It was mid-March, we'd been back from St. Vlad's for three weeks, and I'd barely had time to see Dimitri. Lissa had been assigned a guardian to replace Jeff so Dimitri was back to guarding Christian full-time. They'd been traveling back and forth between Alder Academy and Court as of late, trying to lock down details for the pilot magic program they were starting there. They'd be leaving later this month for a two week stay as the classes officially started up. While they'd been doing that I'd been guarding Lissa and taking shifts here at Court. Apparently that wasn't enough activity for my ever-eternal love of donuts.

Dimitri had gotten up by now and came to my side. He wrapped an arm around my waist and dragged me towards the bed.

"You've been working with the Moroi magic users several times a week. That's a lot of training. The pants must have shrunk."

I appreciated the effort but I didn't think that was true.

"We're starting to train again," I told him definitively as we slipped into bed.

"We haven't stopped," he pointed out.

"Not enough. We're getting lazy, comrade," I poked playfully at his side. He slept only in pajama pants and his abdomen was as rock solid as ever, defined muscles exposed in their drool-worthy glory. I thought again about the small marks at the waistline of my pants and scowled. "Starting in the morning. We'll run, like the old days."

Dimitri laughed. "If someone had told me back at the academy that Rose Hathaway would ask me to go running I would have thought they were crazy."

"Yeah, yeah," I rolled my eyes and snuggled closer to him. "You were always saying it built endurance. Besides, we used to have a lot of fun at our training sessions."

Dimitri looked down at me with a deadpan look. "Those lessons were torture."

"Only because you wanted to touch me and weren't allowed to. Unless you were hitting me." I added that last bit as an afterthought.

He nodded solely. "It was definitely a test of my restraint."

In one smooth motion I'd shifted from his side and was straddling him. "It's a good thing you can touch me now." I think we were both aware of another situation at the academy where I'd been straddling him like this (admittedly with more clothes on) and he hadn't been able to touch me. He had no such reservations tonight and I quickly found myself forgetting about my body issues.

"Do you ever sleep, Rose?" Lissa asked me the next day. She'd caught me mid-yawn as she exited one of her boring meetings to where I'd been standing guard in the empty hallway. Technically I was allowed inside but I didn't feel like listening to whatever blather was going on in there.

I thought about her question. I had busy days between practices with Christian, shifts on Court grounds and my time with her. Dimitri and I had also started up our runs and workouts this morning. And last night we had definitely not been sleeping.

"No," I answered honestly, "I really don't."

"Well you should start," she said. I walked beside her as we moved from the council room where her meeting had been towards her apartment. She was finished for the day. "You look so tired lately."