And that leaves me nowhere to go. I rest my head in my hands as the need to mate rises until I can barely breathe, and every piece of my skin aches for contact. My nails rake against my scalp, then I succumb to the urge and draw my hard and swollen meq out of my pants, even though I know the relief will last only heartbeats.
The bumps are more pronounced and running my thumb over them draws a gasp. If Mia were here, it would be her fingers. That is all it takes for me to spill.
16
Mia
“Ihave sensed him several times, he has not truly left,” Edilk says as though that is supposed to make me feel better.
Orik has at least ceased his grumbling about the fake mate arrangement, and also about Sunif’s earlier mate taking. He has sworn that he will not spread the story, though he doubts the others will care. I don’t care about the others.
Sunif will care.
He doesn’t want his brothers looking at him with shock and disgust.
I should not have told, but I thought if they knew it would help. That they might understand his behavior.
Sabine and Bridget walk in front of me, Edilk is at the front and Orik at the back. While we are all carrying something, the men have the most because they have shared what Sunif should be carrying.
I am trying to be useful, but I am tired, and I keep crying for no good reason. I am not hurt. I never wanted a mate. I should be glad that there is no longer the expectation to even pretend. But somehow I have lost the attitude that I carried around the colony, the one that said I was too busy to care about bed hopping games and that I don’t need anyone.
It was a lie. I think I knew it back then, but it was too painful to examine.
Now I am forced to look at the reality that not even an alien in rut wants me. I am not pretty by his standards. And he isn’t pretty by mine. His eyes are too big. Everything about him is too big. But my looks didn’t seem to bother him.
Yeah, because all he wanted to do was fuck a woman.
And I am the most available one. If I had let him fuck me, then we would already be mates…except he’d planned to give me up to his tribe when we got there. If we got there. So there would’ve been no fucking. We could never have been mates.
I think I might want to fuck him. He’s not the first man I’ve wanted, but he is the only one I’ve gotten so close to. His is the first dick I’ve touched.
Orik steps up to walk beside me. He touches my arm.I know you are thinking about him from the heat and turmoil of your thoughts.
I blush, not realizing he’d be able to glean so much without words.
If you want him, you will have to make that clear. You will have to choose him.
I shake my head.He doesn’t want me. He made that clear.
I should’ve asked by the river, but I was so scared that he’d turn me down. We both had reasons for not wanting it to be real.
Had it become real anyway?
“We’re in range of the ship,” Edilk calls out.
A lump forms in my throat, so I can’t ask if Sunif is there. A part of me wants him to be there, waiting. The rest of me is scared to see him again because I will have to choose him. If I don’t, then we are done. There will be no other chances.
No more talking about what might be.
Or what could be.
“No one will blame you if you do not choose him,” Orik says. “His past—”
“Is just that.”
“It made him who he is,” Orik finishes.
I nod. It did. He carries the scars and pain from his lost mate, the woman he should never have been with, and from being banished. As well as hiding all of that from the men who became his brothers.
