I ground my teeth together. “You have to ask if you want me to stay here. You can’t just cart me off to your home and expect me to be okay with it.”
I would have said yes.
He still needed to ask, though.
“I never wanted a mate, Poppy. I’ve been abstinent from sex for over a hundred years because I didn’t want one. While I may not be entirely thrilled with this development right now, I won’t run from it. Now that I have a mate, you aren’t going anywhere. Especially when there’s evil lurking after you. I protect what is mine.”
My mouth bobbed. I didn’t know where to begin with all the information Godric had just spewed. In the end, I shook my head, and muttered, “How old are you?”
“Almost two hundred.” His lips grazed my ear.
I blinked and set aside the fact he had been alive before the war had torn the world apart. “You weren’t abstinent for the first hundred years of your life, were you? That means you didn’t mind if you found a mate back then. What made you change your mind a hundred years ago?”
His lips curved against the edge of my ear. “I do like that I have a cunning mate.” He inhaled deeply, smelling my hair. “The last six mate pairings weren’t right. As in, there was something wrong with the magic. That had never happened before. The magic was off. It was tainted with darkness.”
“Oh.” I pressed my body closer to him as a chilly breeze ruffled my hair. “Is this…pairing…between us wrong?”
“I don’t scent any darkness around you.” He inhaled deeply again, and his voice lowered to pure intimacy. “I only smell a woman I’d love to fuck.”
My throat went dry. “Do many women smell like that to you?”
His lips twitched as he wrapped his arms around my waist from behind and held me tight against his body. He set his chin on top of my head, staring at the water. “Is that jealousy I hear?”
Maybe a little.
“Not at all.” I cleared my throat. “Answer my question, please.”
His chest rumbled against my back. “I can honestly tell you that no woman has ever smelled as appealing as you do. You broke my abstinence, pet. I didn’t give a fuck about the consequences. I wanted to bend you over and screw you right there on the bar.”
My lower gut fanned with sensual flame. This mate business frightened me, but I offered, “You smell good too.”
His chest started to shake in silent humor.
“What? You do.” Dammit, it was a compliment.
“Tell me what your little human nose smells.”
“Wildness and spice with a hint of cherries.”
He bellowed with his laughter, my body shaking with his inside his protective hold. “That is precious, pet.”
“Don’t laugh at me,” I groused. “I don’t have a lion sniffer. But you still smell good.”
“It’s kind of cute, really.” He was returning to himself now, no longer the man holding everything in and shutting out the people around him. “Cherries, you said?”
I turned my head under his chin and sniffed his shoulder. “Yeah, it’s still there. Nice and sweet. Is it your shampoo or soap?”
He muttered, “I would never use anything that made me smell like a cherry.”
“Then it’s just you.”
He snorted. “Or you have a fucked up nose.”
“Are you offended you smell sweet?”
He sniffed, not commenting.
I grinned. “Don’t worry, big man. I like it.”
