“I…” He stopped, as always, like whatever his first instinct urged him to say would always be the wrong thing. I wanted to push him on his back and make him lay there while I recited every single thing he’d ever said and done to make me so pathetically obsessed with him. “Don’t you worry that I might lose my temper with you?”
“I never worry that you’ll actually hurt me. Not ever.”
“I already have!” He insisted, and the second I felt his hand leave me, I popped up onto my knees, forcing myself into his lap so our faces were aligned.
“Kieran,” I started, hooking my hands behind his neck to anchor myself in place. “I want you to really consider the stuff I’m about to say, and let it sink in, not just float on the surface of the impenetrable wall of your brain.”
“My brain is penetrable,” he argued, giving me a wry look when I snorted.
“I’ve yet to see it,” I said, before leaning in and briefly pressing my lips to his jaw in a barely-there butterfly kiss. “My mom died when I was 10.” I pressed another kiss to the area just under the lobe of his ear. “I have a chronic illness that could kill me if I screw up managing it, even just a little.” When I kissed his neck, I could feel his pulse rampaging under my lips for a moment before lifting away. “And I’ve spent the last few years of my life in love with a guy who was incredibly determined to push me away and break my heart. For my own good, I’ll add,” I said dryly, when he groaned lightly.
“Is any of this supposed to make me feel better?” He griped, but his whole body tensed up when I moved to another spot on his neck, lightly sucking for a second. He shifted under me, maneuvering my thighs so I was straddling his lap.
“No,” I said honestly. “It’s supposed to remind you of who I am, and that I’m not whatever fragile, delicate thing you worry about breaking all the time.” When he opened his mouth toargue, I placed my palm over it to shut him up. “I need you to understand that whatever flaws you have and whatever mistakes you make, nothing you ever do will be too much for me to handle. Because I was made for you, Kieran. Every part of me, every cell in my body, was created to belong to you and to be everything you need.”
His eyes widened, somehow looking both lovesick and devoted and terrified all at the same time.
“And every part of you, even the parts that you think are ugly and unlovable, all of that was made to belong to me and to be everything I will ever need for the rest of my life.” With the hand I didn’t have clamped over his mouth, I stroked my fingertips over the back of his neck, hoping it felt soothing to him. “There’s a reason you can scent me through my suppressants and no one else can. There’s a reason you always knot when we’re together, even though I’m not in heat.” When he made a noise behind my palm, trying to speak, I only squeezed harder. “And there’s a reason you can’t stand anyone else to look at me or touch me. You know what that reason is, Kieran. Stop running away from it.”
When I finally peeled my hand off his mouth, he only stared at me, unblinking, for the span of several heartbeats.
“I love you,” he finally said, but his voice was soft and rough, like he’d only just finished screaming his lungs out.
“I love you, too.”
“I’m so fucking scared, Jordy.”
Shocked by the sudden urgency and vulnerability in his words, I was aware that he only let things like that slip out once in a billion years and that hearing him sound like that was like witnessing a comet falling into our planet’s orbit.
“Why?”
He swallowed hard, tilting his head back again so it was resting on the glass as he stared up into the sky. His breathcame out sharp and ragged and pained, like he was breathing out broken glass.
“What if I’m not?” The words were so quiet, I almost couldn’t hear them.
“Not what?”
“What if I’m not your mate? What if I bite you, and it doesn’t take?”
And here I’d felt so stupidly proud of my intelligence, like I’d finally cracked the code to understanding Kieran James and his many,manyinsecurities and all that ugly, poisonous self-loathing. I supposed I wasn’t nearly as clever as I’d built myself up to be.
“That’s not going to happen,” I promised, drawing my eyebrows together as I clung to his neck. He was so close I could see a barely-there glimmer of moisture in his dark, haunted eyes. “Iknowyou are. You know it too, you’re just afraid to admit it.”
“No,” he insisted, and the agony in his voice was impossible to ignore or not take seriously. “You can’t know for sure.”
“I do,” I said again.
“Will you promise me something?” He asked.
“Anything,” I said sincerely. I would have promised him anything in the entire universe if he’d just stop hurting himself by believing the lies his brain forced onto him.
“If it doesn’t work… Promise me you won’t go looking for him.”
“Who?” I asked, confused.
“Your… Your mate. Whoever that person is that’s better for you than I am. I know it’s horrible and I’m the most selfish person in the world, but if you just promise me that you won’t leave me if it doesn’t work, then I’ll try.”
I wanted to argue with him, to tell him again that there wasn’t even the shadow of a doubt in my mind that he was my mate, but I knew it wouldn’t help.
