She stared at me. "You want me to take abeton you?"
"I want you tochooseme. Whether we're fated or not."
I was pretty damn sure we were. Ninety-nine percent confident.
Ninety-five, at the very least.
But there was always a slim chance we weren't, and I wasn't going to lose her again if fate's invisible, intangible strings wanted her to be with some other fucker.
"That's insane," Liv said. "Verifiably insane. I would never be able to find my fated mate, Niall. I would never have peace."
"You looked pretty fucking peaceful pressed up against that bathroom stall after you came on my tongue a couple of times."
"A mate bond would bepermanent."
"You'd need to be really damn sure you wouldn't change your mind about me," I agreed.
"So would you. No fucking other women. Nothinkingabout other women. No escape from all of my insanity."
"I like your insanity, and I don't think about or fuck other women."
Her scoff said she didn't believe me.
Guess I was going to have to prove it.
"Put your shorts on," I said.
She gestured for me to turn around.
I didn't.
She rolled her eyes and put them on anyway.
I pulled her to her feet, placing her in front of me as I walked her through the apartment and into my bedroom.
She went still in the doorway when she saw the bedding on my mattress. "Is that..."
"It is."
"It can't be."
"It can."
"I threw it out, Niall. I regretted it for months. I still do. The trash had already been taken out, so I couldn't get it back."
"I pulled it out of the bin and had it cleaned after Larson made sure the spell was intact." She'd paid an exorbitant amount of money to have it enchanted permanently with our scents for our first anniversary.
That had been a few days after we had a long conversation about scents, during which I compared having her on my skin to wearing a sign around shifter women that said FUCK OFF, I'M TAKEN.
Liv walked to the bed and slipped beneath the blankets. I watched in the doorway as she lifted it to her nose and breathed in deeply.
Her eyes closed when she did.
Scents mattered to everyone. They just mattered extra to shifters, because our senses were better.
I watched her lift her head from the blankets and notice the art on the wall where most people would put a TV.
Three paintings. She'd seen two of them before. The third, I'd done after that night.
