Mate (Bride, #2) (103)

“I . . . believe this might be common,” he says. Uncharacteristically diplomatic.

“God. Do you— do you like it?”

He stares at the bed with a blank expression that my single brain cell interprets as disapproval.

“I can redo it. Right now, if you— ”

“Don’t . . . I’m sure it’s pretty. My instincts don’t really lean toward the aesthetics and architectural integrity of nesting.”

I frown. “What instincts do you have?”

“They are much less wholesome.” His laugh is a half groan. “Less about making nests, and more about . . . wrecking them.”

Because that’s the point of a nest. I made it in a fugue-like state, an automaton on a flow experience. But while I was obsessing over every square inch of it, I never stopped to wonder what I’d do once it was ready.

It’s obvious now that I made this one for Koen to—

Yeah.

I should not be this blindsided.

“What was in the right?” Koen asks, voice rough-edged. He’s behind me. Closer than a moment ago.

“What?”

“If I had chosen the right hand, what would I have gotten?”

“Nothing as exciting as a mound of blankets.”

“That’s for me to judge.”

I turn around. “I would have told you something.”

“What?”

“Can’t say, or you’ll have both prizes.”

“Would it be that bad?”

“It wouldn’t be realistic. I told you, real life requires choices.”

He grunts, annoyed, and leans back against the desk. A thousand warm little pangs gnaw at my body. Comfort and hunger and heartache and love and inevitability, all swirling in my belly.

Maybe tonight is different. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, to bend the rules of reality. “I would have told you that . . . that you don’t have to do

what you’re about to do.” My heart thumps slowly, loudly. Feverish. “If you help me through my Heat, it’ll be at great cost to you. If the Assembly ever found out, it would be a disaster. So I would have told you: thank you, I appreciate the offer, but I cannot ask this of you.”

“You don’t— ”

“Need to ask. Yup, that’s what you would have said. And I would have pushed back a little— told you that I’m willing to deal with this on my own, because I wouldn’t want you to regret it afterward.”

“You can’t— ”

“But you would have seen through it. So I would have asked you whether you arranged for someone to cover your absence in the next few days. And you’d have said . . . Amanda?”

He nods, displeased in that endearing way of his.

“And that’s when I would have told you how . . .” I take a deep, shaky breath. “I would have told you how vulnerable I’ve been feeling in the past year. Stripped of my life. My identity. My agency. My health. And now, of the most personal thing of all. A few hours from now, I’ll be out of my mind. I will be a creature made of need, beyond thought. And you will take care of me exemplarily, like always. You will . . . You will kiss me, and touch me, and fuck me, because it’s what I require, and those will be the memories I carry for the rest of my life: you, satisfying my needs. And I would have tried to make you understand that I . . . I want more. I would like some real memories of us. Not because we’ve been cornered into it by biology and circumstances, but because being together is what we both want . So, while I’m still in control, I would have asked you to . . . to kiss me, and . . .”

Koen doesn’t come to me. He leans forward and pulls me into him with a tug at my wrist. I offer no resistance and stumble into his arms. “Yeah?”

I nod. He hunches forward. Cups my head and uses his thumb to tilt my jaw upward, lips brushing against mine. Then he makes me wait.

And wait.

We stay there, on the brink of everything. I feel him everywhere. His scent. The steady warmth of his skin. His fingers, traveling to curve around my rib cage. “Let me make something very clear, Serena. I’m never going to regret any of this, okay?”

Our mouths are touching. I feel as though we’re made of the same stuff.

Me and him, set apart from the remaining matter of the universe. “I think . .

. this is going to hurt, Koen.”

“After, yeah. But not yet.”

“Not yet.”

Our first kiss is about as romantic as our first meeting, the first night we spent together, or my first visit to the ocean with him. It’s a pattern for us: unmemorable (at best) or questionable (at worst) firsts. This once, though, it might be my fault. The impatience. The lack of harmony. I should have thought this through better, but it ends up being a scrape of teeth against the corner of his mouth, the delicious drag of his stubble, a lot of sharing air and breathing in between us. My upper lip slides against his lower, because that’s as high as I can reach. He doesn’t kiss me back, but there is a faint groan in his chest, just loud enough for me to hear.

“Serena,” he sighs, and makes it better. Flips us so that I’m sitting on the desk, him between my legs, and then it’s the rough swipe of his tongue against my lips, loud breaths, the heat of our open mouths. Fingers pulling at my scalp, new angles, tongues stroking. He tastes like a distilled version of his scent. I laugh against the seam of his mouth, giddy, and he grunts,