“Everything changed, yes.”
She touched his hand where it rested on the wheel as if she couldn’t quite believe it was real.
“Luca?”
The way she said his name was like the brush of soft fingertips across bare skin.
“Yes?”
“What does this mean? I mean, what does it mean in the... in therealisticsense of the word? Like... do we get married? Do we move in together? Rikki’s told me a little bit about this, but she and Will knew really young, they were college sweethearts, and I... I don’t know anything about you, and they planned alifetogether, and I don’t even know what you like to eat or where you live or—”
He took her hand firmly in his, risking a glance at her as he drove.
“I’ll eat most things, but I like Sonoran and Vietnamese food the most. I have an apartment in Elk Grove, but I’m on the road a lot. You can ask me anything you want, but that’s not the problem right now, is it?”
Something ached inside him at even insinuating there was a problem, but Macy, his mate, looked frantic, like a cat faced with too many mice to catch, and at least he knew how to deal with that. You didn’t try to fix every little thing, because that was a good way to lose your mind. Instead, you fixed what youcould reach, and then you figured out how to take care of the rest.
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice small. “Can I have a minute to think?”
The uncertainty in her voice made him ache, and he nodded.
“You take whatever you need.”
Macy didn’t speak, but she allowed him to hold her hand over the gearshift as they pulled into the town hall parking lot. In the dark of the fall night, they sat together in silence, and he listened to her breathe, a soft in and out that brought him a kind of peace he’d never felt before. It wrapped around him and settled inside, here to stay.
“Okay,” Macy said decisively.
He blinked. Suddenly, she was sitting up straight, her mouth—her lovely mouth—was drawn into a determined line, and she turned to him.
“Okay?”
“We’re fated mates. Right up until this evening, I thought I knew what that meant. Then I found out that I know absolutely nothing at all, and that’s where I am now. And that’sfine.”
Luca couldn’t help the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He was briefly worried that Macy might see it and think he was laughing at her, but it drew out a smile on her face too, small and maybe a little nervous, but so real it warmed him up from the inside out.
“That a fact?” he asked softly, and she nodded.
“It’s fine because we’re going to make it fine. I’m going to learn about you, you’re going to learn about me, and the moreinformation we have, the better off we’ll be when we decide what we’re going to do about this.”
Luca stuffed down his initial impulse to saywe’re going to do whatever you want,because that wasn’t helpful, even if his panther was encouraging it. If she was going to be spending time getting to know him, she would figure that out sooner or later. In the meantime, what mattered, and what he liked very much, was that his mate was a problem-solver.
“Sounds good to me. You just tell me what you need, and—”
“No,” she said, startling him.
“No?”
“No, you need to tell me what you need, too. That’s the only way this is going to work.”
“I need to kiss you.”
The words were out of his mouth before he could call them back, and Macy’s eyes went wide. Her lips parted, and he couldn’t stop looking at them, and—
“Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”
There was no space or time between herpleaseand his mouth on hers. One moment he was staring at Macy as if she was the only thing in the world, and the next, he was kissing her, her hands on his shoulders and her nails digging in as if she was afraid he would somehow get away.
It’s all right, it’s all right,he wanted to say.I’m not going anywhere, not without you, not ever.
