The next Summit is months away. I am not waiting that long, and I can't believe he wants to. “You want to wait that long tomark me? Drew, I go into heat very, very soon. You know what will happen. I don't want you to do it when I'm in heat. I want to feel it. I want to remember it. I want one thing to be what I want it to be.”
He shakes his head quickly. “No. We don't have to wait. I'll mark you whenever you want. Whenever you're ready.”
“Areyouready for that?” I ask him. “You've gone from hating my guts and wanting nothing to do with me, foryears,to telling me you'll claim me whenever I want you to do it. That's a massive change of heart.”
He reaches across and takes my hand and holds it against his chest, his thumb pressing warmly into the center of my palm as he rubs a circle against it. “I need you to understand, both of you, that I never hated you. Never. I was terrified of you because I love Parker so very much. But I didn't hate you. I didn't even dislike you. I was afraid of losing him and I couldn't bear it. I knew him. I knew I loved him. He was real to me. Please don't take that the wrong way, you are real, Genie. But he was mine, and he had been mine forever. You were a stranger to me. I knew who you were but I didn't knowyou. You were an end to everything I knew and that terrified me. And then I saw and felt his hurt when he saw you at the ceremony, then the mate bond came barreling at me and it was too much. I ran. I was scared and I ran.”
I'm noticing a theme. “Are you going to run every time you get scared of something?”
He squeezes my hand. “Not anymore.”
Parker has been uncomfortably quiet this whole time and I look away from Drew and at him. His head is still resting against the back of the couch and his eyes are closed, but I can smell the hurt. “Hey,” I say, poking his knee with my finger.
He cracks open his eyes and glances at me.
“I'm not taking him from you. I'm not changing what you and Drew have. I was never going to.”
He closes his eyes again. “You shouldn't have to share your mate, Genie. I already said that I would step away.”
“And I already told you that that isn't happening,” Drew interjects.
“No,” I say, poking him again. “You aren't going anywhere. I am very capable of sharing. I have the distinct feeling that my jealousy will not extend to you. Other females need to stay far, far away, but somehow you don't register as a threat at all. So you can just stay where you are.”
He nods and we go back to sitting together in the quiet.
The longer I sit, the more I think, and the more I think, the more sure I am of what I said earlier. I want to rip the bandage off. I may not have the emotional attachment with Drew that I always fantasized about, but that will come with time. I know how I feel during my heats, I know what goes through my head before I'm lost to the inferno of need. I will present myself to Drew and beg him to claim me. I will demand it. The only things I really remember about my heats are when they start and when they end. The entire middle is missing when I try to think about it. I have thought about being claimed, longed to be marked; to think that it could be lost to flame...
“Do it now.”
Both of their attention snaps to me.
“I mean it. Do it now.”
“It...?” Parker says, trailing off.
“Now?” Drew asks. “Tonight?”
“Yes.” I shrug. “Why not?”
“Here?” Drew asks, brows knitted together.
“Are you saying no?”
“I,” he stammers. “I mean, no. I'm not saying no. But, not to sound like stupid, don't you want it to be, you know, special?”
“Are you incapable of making it special?”
Parker laughs, but Drew blusters through a response. “Of course I can make it special. I mean, I should... I can make it special. I just thought you'd want to be... not here. Home.”
“We haven't decided where home will be yet. Here is good.”
He stares at me, eyes still comically wide. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Well,” Parker says, pushing up off the couch. “You kids have at it. I'm going to make myself scarce.”
My hand snaps out to grab his wrist. “You're staying right here.”
