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It’s not miserable. The planet is no longer so cold I can’t think straight. The beach is lovely. The people are nice.
I feel like such a fraud.
I sniff.
“R’slind?” R’jaal is behind me a moment later, rubbing my arms and hugging my back to his chest. “What is wrong, my heart? Tell me and I will fix it. Do you hate it here?”
I shake my head, turning and burying my face against his warm, comforting chest. “You heard them, R’jaal. I’m not a real person. I’m a clone. The reason why I don’t have all my memories isn’t because I was hit on the head. It’s because I never had them in the first place. The pieces I do have are from someone else. I’m not a librarian. I might not even be a Rosalind. Someone created me.” I let out a ragged breath, full of disgust. “Like I’m a—a thing—and not a person.”
“You are a person,” he reassures me. “You are mine.”
The way he says it makes it sound so simple. Like it doesn’t matter that I was created in a lab or that I’m not who I thought I was. All that matters is that I belong to him. That I’m the mate he waited so long for.
When he cups my face and tenderly raises it up, the smile he gives me makes me ache deep inside.
“You are perfect,” he murmurs. “I would change nothing about you. Seeing your face for the first time made it worth all of the waiting.”
God, I love him. I love him for always making me feel like I’m an absolute goddess. I love him for being supportive and sweet and never making me feel like I’m less, even when he has to carry me for miles. “I love you,” I tell him, sliding my arms around his neck. “I love you so much, R’jaal.”
“My sweet resonance. You hold my heart in your hands.” He rubs his nose against mine. “I adore everything about you, my R’slind.”
The khui song in my chest feels like it’s at a fever pitch. He’s vibrating just as strongly as I am, as if our parasites—our symbionts—are pointing out that we’re alone for the first time. There’s no more running from the enemy to do. We’re safe.
We’re safe, and we’re home.
“How do we fulfill resonance?” I ask him between soft, slow kisses. “Is there anything special we have to do?”
“We mate,” he breathes against my mouth, and even his breath is comforting. “We mate, and we mate, until I put a kit inside you.”
I moan, because right now, that sounds pretty good to me. “Let’s do it.”
“Are you…ready?” He pulls back and strokes my cheek, brushing away the tears there. “I am content to wait until you feel it is the right time.”
God, and that’s what makes him so amazing. Because he could have pushed me at any point a hundred times over and I would have gladly given in. But he hasn’t pushed at all—he’s let me know quite clearly that he’s interested. He’s given me smoldering looks and kissed the hell out of me…but he’s always let me drive the bus. I’m in charge.
And I’m more than ready. “I want this,” I promise him. “I want you.”
I want to feel alive. The best way to do that is with R’jaal, in his arms, giving in to the primal urges we’re experiencing.
He kisses me again, his mouth hungry, and then he pulls back. “I want to make this perfect for you,” he tells me, his breathing ragged. He kisses me again, and again, and then seems to remember himself. “I will make a fire. I will put on tea so you can have a comforting drink. I will warm water and I will bathe the travel from your skin. And then when you are warm and relaxed, then we will explore each other and complete our resonance. Yes?”
That all sounds lovely. “Yes.”
True to his word, R’jaal gets everything set up. He crouches by the fire pit and makes a fire, with speed I didn’t think was possible. When the blaze is going well, he sets up a tripod and a pouch over the fire, then adds a few chunks of ice from a clay pot by the door. It’s one of the “ass-ugly” pots Tia joked about, and the thought brings a smile to my face. R’jaal talks about his clan while he washes his hands, then gives himself a quick bath all over with a towel and undresses. He sets his boots by the door and hangs his new kilt, then washes his groin, and he’s just as erect and magnificent as before. Maybe moreso now that tonight, that big, ridged cock is going to be inside me. I’m still puzzled over the “spur” above his cock, but then I remember he said it’s for teasing my clit and the thought makes me breathless.
