It brought a flush swarming to my cheeks, remembering just how much I’d enjoyed his feedings. Luckily the darkness of the kitchen hid most of it, but he would likely still hear the quickening of my heartbeat.
Kaldur finished the bread. He had mercy on me and said, “Iforget time when I’m working. Sometimes I look up and realize it’s nightfall and I hadn’t eaten all day.”
But I didn’t want to skirt around the topic, I realized, listening to him. The old me might’ve. Because it was easier, because I’d been shy.
“How are your feedings going to work?” I asked. “If…if I’m yourkyrana.”
“Not ‘if,’” he corrected. “You are.”
“SinceI’m yourkyrana,” I amended, holding his eyes.
That seemed to please him. He leaned in even further, his wide chest pressing into the solid wood of the table’s edge. He slid his hand over the tabletop, toward my hand that was resting there.
I nearly shivered when his thumb brushed my inner wrist. Sparks prickled up my spine, like little fireworks that lit up the sky during the season of Gaara, the season of rebirth, of fertility, of spring.
“That’s for you to decide,” he finally said.
My brow furrowed, trying not to be distracted by his touch. But he was making small little sweeps of his thumb…and it felt nice to be touched.
“I meant…I meant in our contract,” I said. “How many times a day should?—”
A growl cut off the words. Soft, more of a warning than anything aggressive.
“No more contracts—I told you,” he said.
I blinked.
“I told you it would be different this time,” he added. “I meant it. Blood mates don’t have contracts between them. I was the biggest fool in the Kaalium to even try.”
“Then…when?” I asked.
He blew out a sharp breath. There was a tightness in his gaze that hadn’t been there before.
“A feeding between mates should be like…sex,” he answered. I stiffened, but his thumb never stopped in the slow, steady motion over my skin. “The feedings should come naturally.”
There was a thread of panic in my voice when I said, “I—I don’t want sex. That’s not…”
Something flashed over his expression. Something I thought looked like guilt. Or dismay.
“I know,” he said quietly, his voice soothing away the sudden rush of panic. I pulled my wrist away, and he leaned back, dragging his arms back toward himself, giving me space. “I feel like, lately, I have a lifetime of things to be sorry for when it comes to you.”
I remembered that night in his quarters, when he’d been drinking and smokinglore. I remembered the burn of the amber liquor down my throat…and then the burn of desire from the spicy scent of theloresmoke, funneling and winding its way down my throat.
I remembered how much I’d wanted him that night. The ache, the need, the desperation curling down my spine. Because, perhaps even then, I’d both recognized that he’d needed a distraction from whatever had been bothering him—likely about me, I realized now—and also because I’d felt him pulling away. And I’d been desperate to keep him close. Because I’d thought I’d been falling in love with him.
I remembered the way he’d made me come with his touch between my legs, his kiss on my breasts.
He’d tried to send me away, and I’d come back to him. And when I had…
To me, our lovemaking had been frenzied, full of need and desire, and I’d felt like I couldn’t get enough of him. I’d wanted his touch everywhere. I’d wanted his kiss everywhere. I’d wanted him to feed from me while he drove between my thighs, making me his.
To him, the sex had been “fine.”
Remembering that word, remembering the conversation I’doverheard between him and Lydrasa, made me want to shrivel up inside all over again.
On top of that, he hadn’t believed me when I’d told him I’d been untouched, that I’d been a virgin that night.
Thatwas what he’d thought of me. That I would lie about something like that. To try to manipulate him?
