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“It’s not that. I meant what I said.” I shiver. She’s playing with my hair, running her fingers over the braids. “I’m trying to get my hormones under control.”
“How are my boobs helping, exactly?”
“Sometimes theamma’kais brought on by a threat to one’s mate. Even if it’s not a real threat. I’m reminding my body that you’re right here.”
“I’m here,” she assures me. “Can I say something about what you did just now?”
I prepare myself for her disappointment.
“I know,” I sigh. I’m always messing up my chances with her, just when I think I’m breaking through to her heart. “That was an inappropriate reaction, and I’m sorry that—”
“Stop,” she cuts me off. “I wanted to say thank you.”
I forget everything I meant to say to her about how our people have been going through a rough patch with too few matings. I was going to make some excuses that Satto really doesn’t deserve about our culture and its recent brushes with tragedy.
“You did?” I ask dumbly.
“What you just said? The way you stood up for what I wanted? That was the sexiest thing you’ve ever done for me.”
“That can’t possibly be true, considering I’ve been knuckles deep inside you while you begged for my cock.”
“Don’t ruin the moment,” she says, eyes flashing dark at me. “You defended me in front of people you care about. You could’ve ignored it and let his comments slide, but you didn’t. And honestly, I thought you might try to stop me yourself, but . . .” She trails off.
“Why? Because I locked you in a room a couple of times?” I grin at her, and she thankfully finds my comment worth laughing at.
“Yes, you have a history of protecting me against my will.”
“I do, and I won’t pretend that there won’t be times in the future when we’ll butt heads over what risks are worth taking. But this is different, and things have changed between us. Haven’t they?”
“Every moment I spend with you changes things between us,” she says. “But you talk about our future like that, and I’m not sure we’re on the same page.”
She slowly releases my hair as if realizing for the first time that she’d been playing with it. Is she afraid of our intimacy, afraid her feelings for me are growing?
“Is that why you’re staying here instead of with me? To stop those changes from happening?” I look over at the place where she’s been sleeping. “I miss the feeling of your body in bed beside me. Don’t you realize that even if you never reached out to touch me, I would want that small gift? Just the warmth of your curves . . .”
“I want to touch you right now,” she admits. “But I don’t want you to think it’s. . .”
I incline my head. “You want—what’s the word you used?—You want it to be casual.”
She nods. “Can you do that?”
In my language, the words ‘casual’ and ‘mating’ do not go together. I suppose what she wants is similar to the exploring I did in my youth. At that time of my life, I was curious and eager to become “good” at the act. I switched partners often, not caring who it was that chose to play in practicing sex with me.
Since I’ve been away from my own people, there have been times when I rutted a female simply because the opportunity arose, and I had no hope of finding my mate anytime soon. Those encounters felt off to me. My body felt like a bot needing service. If pretty females looked my way, I would ignore it more and more because it didn’t satisfy me. Particularly when that female saw me as a potential mate, I hesitated because I knew that I couldn’t be that male for her.
I know Raina is not waiting for a special mate to come along, so she doesn’t feel the way I feel.
Those icy blue eyes are sparkling with curiosity as she waits for me to make a response.
I decide to take her. I took her once, and she fought me like a wildkaia. It will be no different with this. Let her call it whatever she wants. Bodies don’t speak to each other with words, after all. My body only knows one language with hers, and that is the language of mates.
“What I’ll do is pleasure your body,” I tell her. “I’ll fuck you and lick you and make you come. How you respond to it is entirely up to you. Call it whatever you will.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
RAINA
I’m notsure what I’ve started. I turn around, swallowing the nervousness as I head straight for the bed. Niko’s all over my mind; he’s all I can think about. If his tongue wasn’t a liability, I’d drown this self-doubt in kisses.
