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“W-was my idea,” he manages.
“What was?”
“Being your mate… Let me lick you again.”
Being my mate was HIS idea? I hold my hand out, and at his groan of pleasure, feel a spike of my own. Ugh. I don’t know how I feel about that. I pull back again. “What do you mean it was your idea?”
“I…saw you talk to her. You paid her…I paid her more.” His gaze locks on me. “Because I want you.”
“You mean you want me in a shallow grave?”
“No…want you as mine.” He groans, eyes closing again, and his hips jerk. The cloth goes flying, and I scurry to pick it up. “Want you in my bed. Want you as my mate. Want your smile…”
I’m so utterly bewildered by his responses that I automatically hold my hand out for him to tongue bathe again. He nuzzles at my palm, and then strokes hard over it with his tongue, and I squeeze my thighs together. “Then why are you threatening me?”
“Never…”
“What’s with the door? It took me all day to clean that off!”
“Marking…territory…” he says against my palm.
I gasp, because he flicks his tongue against the sensitive skin between my fingers and sends a bolt through my body…just as I realize what’s going on.
He marked his territory. Sprayed like a cat. The kills on my doorstep remind me of my first cat, Mouser, who left me birds and dead mice at the foot of my bed.
Oh my god.
I’m being cat-courted and I never realized.
“You—you paid Bethiah?” I ask, curling my throbbing hand and placing it over my breast. “Why?”
“Didn’t…want anyone else even looking at what’s mine.” He says it so forcefully that it takes my breath away. “Because you are mine, Kim.”
“I don’t belong to you,” I protest.
“Not yet.” His agreement is soft, and then he starts to pant again. “Not yet. But eventually.”
I stare at him for a long moment. Then, I take a deep breath. Calmly dip the towels into the cold water and drape them—one over his junk, and one over his brow, covering his eyes. “I need to lie down.”
I’m not sure if my situation has just gotten better or worse. The bounty hunter betrayed me. My murdery neighbor? I don’t have to kill him, I guess. I just…really don’t know what to do with him now.
12
NASSAKTH
I feel ten times a fool when I wake out of a miserable sleep and find the noli has worn off. Kim is moving around in her kitchen, deliberately not looking over at me. There is a fresh wet cloth on my brow and one on my groin, which feels achingly raw.
All of me does, actually.
And I am ashamed. As the noli pushed its way through me, I confessed everything to her just so I could lick her small human hand. I told her about paying the bounty hunter. Told her about my hunger for her. Instead of falling upon me with gratitude, she looked at me as if I was sick-minded and left the room.
I suppose I have not made a good impression on her. I stretch and get to my feet, my trou full of half-dried seed. The moment I stand, the chair splinters under me and the cuffs snap, freeing my arms.
Right. I was pretending to be captive.
Kim looks over at me with that. Her mouth flattens as she stares down at the remnants of the broken chair. She thinks for a moment. “You could have left the whole time, couldn’t you?”
I rub my wrists, wondering if she will scream and hide now. “I…wished for you to feel safe.”
She just shakes her head. “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of this.”
I think it is rather obvious, but it is clear humans do not think the same as praxiians. “Ask your questions of me. I will try to answer them.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” I try not to scowl. Is she being deliberately vague? She and I really do need to learn how to communicate. “Why did I pay the bounty hunter to bring me instead of a stranger?”
“That’s a good place to start.”
“Because you are far too trusting. You paid her upfront for her services without any kind of guarantee. You do realize that most pay a bounty hunter only when the job is complete?”
“O-of course.” Her cheeks flush red. “Of course I knew that.”
I don’t point out that she paid her far too much, too. We are both treading on brittle ice, her and I, and I don’t want her to grow insulted again. Not when she is finally talking to me and looking at me. “You paid her, and I did not trust who she would bring back to you. So I paid her to take me instead.”
“But…I thought you hated me. I thought you wanted me dead.”
“Why would I want that?” I am genuinely puzzled. “I have tried to court you.”
