I know what he’s getting at, so I decide to drop the most important question right on the table where we both will have to face it. “Am I your mate?”
He sucks in a breath and grabs the tops of his thighs aggressively, then he breathes out, and all that tension melts away. “I’m thinking that’s a pretty good possibility.”
It’s such a massive realization, yet his confirmation is so blunt. Perhaps he’s already accepted our circumstances, while I am only just now beginning to process it.
“Okay,” I draw out slowly. “What does that mean exactly?”
Jamie takes his time formulating an explanation, but I can tell there are depths to this that even he can’t quite explain.
“Simply put,” he says, “we’re bonded. Fated to be together.” He turns in his seat to face me full on. “But that isn’t a prison sentence, Rae. We’re not stuck together. We both have a choicein this. It’s just…” His voice trails off as his eyes land on my mouth. I’m nervously biting my lip, and it seems to have distracted him. “Werewolves live in pairs,” he continues after refocusing. “It’s just how it is. We all, at some point, have an obligation to find our partner, but they don’t have to be the one our souls are pulled to.”
Again, he mentionsthe pull. Only, this time, it’s in relation to the soul. Is it truly my soul that’s trying to tell me to be with Jamie? If so, this bond he speaks of feels more metaphysical than just an act of nature.
I swallow the lump that’s formed in my throat as I play with the edge of my T-shirt. Jamie’s T-shirt. When I got back to Jamie’s condo, I took a shower and changed into dry clothes. I found a worn but comfy pair of leggings left in my drawer to wear, but I didn’t have a clean shirt, so I borrowed one of Jamie’s tees from his closet. His lingering scent is all over the material—the same woodsy musk I smelled before, only now it’s mixed with the undertones of powdery soft detergent. It brings me back to the feel of that same smell wrapped around me as I slept in his bed, waiting for him to come home.
The words he’s saying make perfect sense, but my senses are so muddled by his presence, I can hardly bring myself to focus on them.
“So our souls are meant to be together,” I suggest, then add, a bit quieter, “romantically.”
He nods.
“But we don’t have to be together, physically, if we don’t want to.”
He nods again. “Right.”
I wish there were a better way of going about this. A class we could take in which we are provided a complete list of instructions on how to act and what to say, now that we are no longer considered to be just friends. Though we haven’t acted onit, the desire is clearly there. I feel it like sticky sweat clinging to the back of my neck brought on by Jamie’s eyes as they radiate his clear desire to undress me.
He might be fully clothed now, but the image of him in the shower is plastered to my subconscious like a poster of my favorite boy band in my childhood bedroom.
His eyes turn downward, probably to keep himself from continuing to stare. “We’re compatible. Why wouldn’t we be?” Then I see his eyelids flutter upward, and he’s focused back on me. “You’re my best friend. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be mated with than you.”
While his sentiment is well-intended, instead of thinking about how well suited we are as a pair because of our emotional connection, my brain goes straight to how compatible we’d be in bed.
Suddenly my cheeks are burning. My epidermis is sending out an emergency flare in the form of flushed skin, basically saying‘Help! She’s overheating from arousal!’
I stand up quickly and take Jamie’s empty plate to the sink to rinse off. I can feel his eyes on my back, and now I’m very keenly aware that I’m not wearing a bra. When I turn back around, Jamie will most definitely spot the peaks of my hardened nipples through his T-shirt.
“This is what I was afraid of,” he murmurs quietly.
Whether it was his intention for me to hear or not, I don’t know, but now he’s getting up from the table. I hear his steps shuffle closer, and then he’s close enough that I can feel his breath on my neck.
“I never wanted any of this to freak you out,” he says.
My shirt is clinging to my back from sweat. Now I feel like I’m the one running a temperature.
“This pull we both feel toward one another,” he starts, “we can ignore it. We can move on like none of this ever happened.”Gently, I feel his fingers trail the edge of my hip as I face the sink. “If that’s what you want to do, I promise I will respect your wishes.” His voice turns huskier. “But my wolf likes you. He wants to be near you.” Then I feel his lips brush the shell of my ear as he whispers, “And so do I.”
My grip slackens around the plate I’m holding and it clatters noisily into the sink. I don’t care that there are more important conversations that need to be had, and I certainly don’t care whether or not the stars are trying to dictate who I’m meant to be with. Right now, the only thing that matters is the infinitesimal amount of space between us as Jamie inches closer.
I need to know what his lips feel like.
I need to know what his body feels like pressed against mine.
He takes a handful of my hair and pulls it away from my neck, then gently,painfully, he places a single kiss to my clammy skin.
The sigh that comes from me is enough to assure him I’m okay with what he’s doing, because he finally closes the gap and presses himself against me, flattening us against the edge of the counter.
He groans deeply against the back of my neck. “The moon has been driving me crazy, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what it would be like to fuck you, Raegan.”
