16
MIKA
My Thursday nightswere nothing if not predictable. I made spicy vegetable ramen and listened to autobiographical audiobooks until bedtime.
The text notification was overloud in my ear, halting the recounting of Mahatma Gandhi's early years. The happy chime I'd assigned to Gabe sent a tingle up my spine, and my meerkat form woke up from his nap at the sound.
"Mind if I come over?"
My fingers flew across the keyboard, sending back"Please do,"with a smiley-face emoji. Afterward, as I glanced around my apartment, I cringed at last night's pizza box still sitting on the counter because it was too big to fit in my garbage, and the candy wrappers strewn across the coffee table. I'd splurged on Easter candy to the point that the table looked like it belonged in my grandmother's sitting room. She loved antiquing, so I had a set of three lidded carnival glass candy dishes now filled with jellybeans, butter candies, and cinnamon disks.
I sliced up the box with my retractable knife, scooped up all the empty wrappers, and took the trash out to the dumpster just as a red Honda pulled up to the curb. Even before he had fully exited the car, I knew it was Gabe. He seemed to sense me, too,glancing up at the balcony from which I'd tossed the garbage bag into the dumpster below.
We waved, and my chest felt lighter than it had since I'd taken him home Monday morning. I'd tried to deny it for two days, but now that he had returned, the truth slammed into me. If it had been a shark shifter, it would have knocked me off the balcony.
One month in, and I couldn't live without my mate. I didn't want to spend another night away from him. "Move in with me," I said when we met outside my apartment door.
He chuckled. "You've seen my bookcases. Pretty sure you don't have room."
"Keep your apartment for storage," I said, hoping it made as much sense to him as it did to me. "Pack some clothes and toiletries and stay. I'll drive you to work each morning."
"I'll make you late every day." He shook his head.
"Then I'll pack a bag and come stay with you."
He blinked. "You've seen my bed."
We'd tried to fool around on his couch last Friday night, but a cushion gave way, depositing us on the wiry pullout frame. After he bandaged my bleeding knee with his first aid kit, his furniture had successfully deterred us from fooling around.
"You have a point," I said, ushering him into my apartment. I flipped the lock before shoving him up against the door, my lips crashing into his, our bodies desperate to merge despite the clothes between us. I managed to kick off my shoes and coax him out of his while pinning him against the wall beside the umbrella stand.
"You have a very nice bed," he said against my lips before nipping and kissing down my neck. "The location, though …"
"You could take the Chevy on the days I work from home." I picked him up, and he wrapped his legs around me for the short trip to the bedroom.
"I never learned how to drive," he lamented when I dropped him on the springy mattress. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the floor.
"I'll pay for your rideshares."
That seemed simple enough, but Gabe shook his head again. "It's too much. I couldn't afford to pay you back."
I tackled him, shoving him up toward the headboard and flattening him beneath me. My kisses turned to love bites along his jaw and down his chest. "I want more time with you." To prove my point, I held him down and kissed, licked, and nipped at his nipples, making him squirm until he begged.
"Mark and claim me, please."
The words stopped me cold, and I sat back on my heels.
"I mean it, Mika. I can't stay here with you, and we'd be miserable at my place, but I want to be with you so much it hurts. I want you to mark me and put your baby in me. Then, you'll be with me, even when you're not by my side."
If anyone else had told me they wanted to carry my baby, I would have run away screaming. Now, hearing my mate, my Gabe, say he wanted to wear my mark so everyone knew he was mine, and carry my baby so a piece of me was always with him? That was the most precious thing to me in the whole world.
"Say it again."
"Mark me and make me pregnant, alpha," he said in his bossy teacher tone.
"We're wearing too many clothes," I reminded him.
It didn't take long to strip out of my t-shirt and shorts, but I stopped, dumbstruck by his gorgeous body lying in the middle of my bed. I'd seen him naked several times now, and each was special. Today would be the last time the angle of his neck and shoulder would be smooth and pristine.
