“Humor me.”
“No.” She tries to duck under my arm, but I step to that side to block her. “What is wrong with you? You’re the one who told me that you don’t remember me. That whoever I thought you were doesn’t exist anymore. That I’m just another staff member. So, why do you care who sends me flowers?”
“I’m just wondering.” The words taste like poison. “The mate bond seemed so important to you before. You cried over it. Begged me to remember. But now, you’ve decided to go out with another man?”
The rage that floods her face is magnificent and terrible. “Are you for real? What exactly did you expect me to do, Kain? Be miserable forever? Pine after a man who can’t feel the bond, who doesn’t remember me, who looks at me like I’m a stranger?”
“I never said—”
“Never said?! You made it very clear that you’re not that guy anymore. That the person I loved is dead. So, why would you besurprised that I’m going out with someone else? I’m trying to move on. I’m trying to build a life that doesn’t revolve around mourning someone who’s standing right in front of me but may as well be a ghost!”
Each word is a knife to the chest, accurate and devastating.
“So, you’re going to date him? Let him court you like you’re available?”
“I am available!” She shoves me in the chest, but I don’t budge. “My fated mate doesn’t want me. The bond is dead on your end, remember? So yes, I’m going to let David take me out. I’m going to learn to care about him. I’m going to let him kiss me, touch me, and maybe—just maybe—I’ll let him erase every memory you ever left on my skin until I can’t even remember what it felt like to love you!”
Something in me snaps.
Before rational thought can intervene, before I can remember all the reasons this is wrong, I crash my mouth against hers.
The kiss is wild, desperate, everything I’ve been holding back for weeks unleashed in a single moment. Anne makes a sound—surprise, anger, need, I can’t tell, but I know she’s furious. She bites my lip hard, but then she’s kissing me back just as fiercely, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer even as she should be pushing me away.
I can feel her wolf singing to mine. I can feel the rightness of this, the way our bodies fit together like they were designed for each other. I can taste the sweetness of her mouth and the salt of the tears I didn’t realize she was crying.
My hands find her waist, pulling her flush against me, and she arches into the contact with a soft gasp that nearly destroys what little control I have left. This is Anne. My Anne. The girl I’ve loved since we were teenagers, the woman I’ve dreamedabout every night for ten years, the mate I’ve been pretending doesn’t matter while dying inside from the denial.
And she’s kissing me like she has been waiting just as long.
Enduring all the torture was worth it for this.
I pull away from her, breathless, desperate for air. My entire body feels like it protests the loss of contact. My wolf whines softly within me, craving nothing more than to keep tasting her.
Anne is flushed, her lips swollen, her eyes wide and dark with stunned confusion. She looks at me like she is still caught up in the kiss, like the world has not quite settled back into place.
She’s so beautiful, it hurts to look at her.
“Kain…” Her voice is breathless, wrecked.
“I bet David could never make you feel like this.” The words escape before I can stop them, rough and possessive and completely at odds with everything I’ve been telling her.
Her expression shifts from desire to fury so fast, it gives me whiplash. “You—”
But I’m already walking away, my blood thrumming.
Chapter Ten
Anne
I stand frozen in the parking lot, my back still pressed against the car, fingers touching my lips like I can somehow capture the feeling there before it fades completely.
What the hell just happened?
The question echoes in my skull, along with my wolf’s happy howls, but I have no answer. No explanation that makes sense.
Kain kissed me.
He kissed me like he was starving, like a man possessed. Like a man who remembers exactly who I am and what we once were to each other. But then he just…walked away. Threw an infuriating comment at me about David and left me standing here trying to remember how to breathe.
