Page 89 of Slashed Bonds

He doesn’t look at me.

“You’re not in the mood to fuck.”

I stare at him.

I’m fighting the pout.

I can feel it assembling on my face, the same one from the locker room, and I’d like it noted that I never pouted once in five years and I’ve done it twice tonight and both times were his fault.

Before I can build a defense, he keeps going.

“I know Mommy’s hungry for me.”

He lifts his eyes then. Meets mine.

Crevasse blue, and there’s heat in it, and there’s something under the heat that’s steadier and harder to look at.

“I also know when you’re doing things because you feel a sense of obligation. Duty.” A beat. “Your scent gives it away. It did in the Underground, too.”

I hold my tongue.

Because he’s right.

I know he’s right, and there’s a specific flavor of nakedness in being told what your own body’s been saying behind your back for two years.

“The difference,” he says, slower now, “is that with me, you let it go. A bit. Your scent opens up. You feel something like relief when you’re with me.” His voice drops. “I like that…”

He stops.

I watch him hear himself.

Watch the shape of his mouth change, a small, odd twist, a man who’s said a true thing out loud and would like it back.

“That shouldn’t change,” he says, rougher, “because you’re on our team now.”

I don’t let him off.

“You don’t think you’ll regret having me?”

I say it plain. I don’t drop my eyes.

He holds mine for a long second.

Then he looks away again, toward the closed closet door, and his jaw does something.

“I have two regrets in my life.”

That’s all.

I wait for the rest and it doesn’t come.

He’s not going to tell me what they are. I can see the skeletons in the set of his shoulders, and I can see him decide, right there, that they stay in the closet with the teal string.

Fair. I’ve got a closet of my own.

“But I feel it,” he says, “in the depths of whatever I’ve got for a soul. You won’t be the third.”

I stare at him.