“Don’t know yet. Something new. I’ll have to flesh it out in the studio.”
Her body tenses and her fingers curl into a ball on my sternum. “About that. We should talk.”
Now it is my muscles that stiffen. “You are the only woman I have been with, but I have seen enough of the world to know ‘we should talk’ is rarely a good thing.”
Lifting her head, she settles her chin on my chest and looks up to meet my eyes. “In all the years you were away, there was no one else, not even casually?”
“Only you. That is how it is when a troll finds their true mate. Our body responds only to them.”
“Did you ever…try?”
“Never,” I say, stroking her soft, flaxen hair. “I have only ever wanted you.”
The fist on my chest opens and she cups my cheek, her thumb caressing the nearest tusk. “And I’ve only ever wanted you. There hasn’t been anyone else. If you hadn’t come back, there never would have been. I guess I’ve been holding a torchfor you, even when it sometimes felt more like an angry-mob torch.”
Laughter rumbling in my chest, I press my lips to her crown and breathe her in, her scent filling me with peace and simultaneously making my cock hard again, despite having rutted with her mere minutes ago. Another thing that hasn’t changed. The urge to bury myself inside her cunt again will keep for later. Holding her close is what I need right now. What we both need.
“I had no right to be angry at you when I’m the one who broke us,” she says, tracing the tattoos on my forearm with her fingertips. “I did it to survive the grief of losing everything all at once. Framing it in my mind as if you were the one who left me allowed me to feel angry, which was easier. It wasn’t fair, I know.”
“The fault isn’t entirely yours. I knew something was wrong before you decided not to go to Los Angeles with me. At the time, I thought the sensation tugging at my insides like an undertow must be guilt for asking you to uproot your life to accommodate pursuing my dream. Then you told me you’d changed your mind about leaving. I thought that explained the feeling I’d had. I’d never pressure you, and I believed lingering in town would’ve been a form of pressure. It felt wrong to leave, but I did, assuming we would be together soon, somewhere, somehow.”
She shifts in my arms and looks up at me with sad eyes. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
The question of what might have happened if I’d come back sooner sits on the tip of my tongue. Any answer would be a guess, and asking wouldn’t change the past. Only cause pain in the present. “We have the rest of our lives together. No more holding back, secrets, or assumptions to get in the way.”
“Just logistics. But I’m okay sharing you with the world. Knowing you’ll come home to me when your schedule permitsis enough,” she says, using my chest to push herself up, then straddle my hips.
The things I want to say dissolve as slides her wet cunt along my rigid cock. “You’re not too sore?” I say when she rises and reaches between us to position my leaking tip at her entrance.
Sunlight streaming through the windows makes her hair shimmer like waves of gold as she shakes her head. “My body got its memory back, and it remembers always wanting more.”
“Perfect timing,” I say, gripping her hips and kneading the warm flesh as I guide her down. “Because I plan to give you everything, my mate.”
Chapter Thirteen
CATE
“When will Grüsh be back?” Hope asks, looking over at me as we walk the beach’s boardwalk on what could be any regular Tuesday morning.
Except it isn’t. It’s the first morning I’ve woken alone in two weeks. And I hated it. Going to sleep without him last night was even worse. I tossed and turned for hours, finally kicking the bedding off and stomping to the living room, where I read a few chapters of romance book I’ve been looking forward to, none of which I absorbed, before schlepping my miserable self back to the empty bed that seemed far bigger than it ever did in the previous six years.
“I don’t know when he’ll be back because he doesn’t know. The band’s summer tour is lighter than a full tour, so hopefully he’ll be able to squeeze in a couple of quick visits when they’re on the east coast or maybe the Midwest. If not, I guess it’ll be in the fall, after the summer shows have wrapped and before he goes into the studio to work on the next album.”
“You can’t honestly believe he’d stay away that long.”
I shrug, but it’s manufactured indifference. “A couple months is nothing compared to six years.”
Hope stops and faces me while gently rocking the stroller wagon where Cagrü sleeps peacefully. “And Grüsh leaving town now is nothing like when he left six years ago.”
“I know.”
“So do I, because you shared the entire story with me. Which is why I’m not going to let you default to self-protective mode. It’s okay to be upset about him leaving, or impatient for him to come back, or wanting him to rearrange his career so you have more time together.”
“I would never ask or expect him to do that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. But you’re allowed to wish it. Missing him and wanting him close doesn’t make you needy or any less independent.”
The snorted laugh that pushes past my lips startles the baby awake. His little green fingers curl into tiny fists that punch the air as he squirms and smacks his lips. I’ve spent enough time with him in the first two weeks of his life to know he’s working up to an eruption.
