Page 43 of Mate
“Alpha,” he murmurs from above my head. “We heal quickly.”
And yet just last night, he was whole. That very spot beneath his ribs was unbroken and smooth. Except, what do I know? I didn’t get to touch him. I touched myself while no one took care of him . So unfair, I could scream. “What happened?”
“Vampyre.”
“I thought they were all . . .”
“Dead?”
I nod.
“We kept a couple for questioning. One’s restraints were a bit loose.”
“And then?”
“Then he wasn’t alive anymore. No big deal.” He disappears into his room, and I shiver, picturing blood the same color as Misery’s. I busy myself warming up dinner, setting the table with the few plates he owns, rinsing the—
Koen comes up behind me, hands bracketing my sides. I jolt. The glass slips from my hand, straight into the sink, but doesn’t break. His body barely touches mine; it’s such an inappropriately intimate, jarringly mundane gesture, my heart cracks.
And then it breaks into a million pieces when his nose nuzzles the crown of my head. His voice is as rough as coffee grounds. “Why does it feel like you’re playing house again, killer?”
Because I am. “Playing” being the key word. “I’m sorry.” My mouth is dry. “I didn’t mean to— ”
“C’mon. I didn’t say stop.”
I kill the faucet and turn in his arms. He showered off the blood and put on jeans and a flannel, which hangs open over his bare chest. The look we exchange is worth a million unspoken words but could be condensed to fewer than ten.
It’s wrong. Let’s do it anyway, though.
I reach up. Fasten the buttons of his shirt.
Each one feels like a choice, like whittling the rest of the world away to carve out this night just for us.
Excising a moment in time. It’s just me and him.
And the face he makes a couple of minutes later, when he puts the first bite of dinner in his mouth. “Fuck me .”
I beam . “You are such a better audience than Misery.” I don’t care if Vampyres don’t eat. I’ll take her refusal of my cooking personally till the day I die.
“Holy fuck.” He continues shoveling pasta with meat sauce in his mouth, and I consider taking a picture of it and scrapbooking it. I’ve written an award-winning exposé on the largest embezzlement scandals in The City and covered one of the most abstruse monopoly trials ever recorded, but . . .
Okay, I’m still prouder of those. But it’s satisfying, watching him inhale something I made. Why do I care about some dude’s opinion?
Because he’s not some dude.
“At the Collateral mansion we weren’t allowed to prepare our food, so cooking feels like an insurrectionary action that doesn’t require me to put on clothes and go outside.”
He says “Please, insurge away” over another mouthful, and I decide to just let myself enjoy this.
I ask him if he can cook. He says not well, but I tell him that I don’t believe him, not after the piano stunt, and he shakes his head, which I’ve learned is his way of laughing when he doesn’t want to give me the satisfaction of having amused him.
“I can’t believe you let me teach you the C major chord. Why are you that good, by the way?”
“My dad taught music.”
“And you lied to me, because . . .”
“You didn’t ask if I could play. You asked if I played. And before this week, I hadn’t. Not in years.”
“God, I hate you.”
“Sure.”
He side-eyes me when I make him lift me onto the counter to watch him wash the dishes. “I do have some furniture.” He points at the two chairs he brought in from the porch.
“I like it better here,” I say, tapping the stone countertop.
“Can you Humans just not sit normally?”
“Can you Weres just not mind your business?”
He splashes me with soap suds, and I grin as I cover my face.
After, I make tea. He makes me add several spoonfuls of sugar, and we drink it on the back porch, sitting on the steps, long after the sun has set. From the same mug. His lips touch the same water molecules as mine.
“I can’t believe you take your coffee black but sweeten your tea,” I say.
“I don’t drink black coffee.”
“What? Since when?”
“Since I started drinking it, during the High Middle Ages.”
“But . . . I’ve been giving you black coffee.”
“And I have been hating it.”
I frown. “Are you sure you don’t take it black? Like a real man ?”
His eyebrow lifts. “I wasn’t aware of the proven correlation between virility and coffee intake.”
“Oh, there isn’t one. But you’re supposed to be warped by toxic masculinity and not know that. And I’m supposed to be the one who enlightens you.”
His stare feels like a kiss. More than any kiss I’ve experienced ever did. “You’re really a nuisance, aren’t you?”
I grin so hard, my cheeks hurt. “What do you even do when I’m not here?”
“It’s a good question. When you’re not around, the entire pack just sits around and thumb-twiddles— ”
“Oh, come on.” I elbow his biceps. “You know what I mean. What’s your corporate mission? What’s an Alpha’s routine? You wake up and the first thing you do is . . . ?”
“Chase that squirrel we discussed.”
“Koen. Don’t force me to break into your diary.”
He shrugs. Takes another sip, as if thinking about it.
“It changes. For the most part, a well-functioning pack is a well-oiled machine. Everyone has their skillset, and everyone has their job. There’s lots of delegating, but as the Alpha, the buck stops with you.
Which means that when something isn’t going great, when there is a decision to be made, that’s where I need to be. ”
I look at him. His strong nose. The set of his eyes. How is it possible that I find him even more handsome than I did the first time I met him? “Do you ever consider . . . you know?”
“I don’t know, no.”
I scoot closer. Conspiratorial. “Do you ever consider going full dictator? I’m talking thirty-foot bronze Koen statue. Koen stamps. Koen as every child’s middle name. Senior prom theme: Koen. Mandatory Koen parades with Koen floats every week .”
“You done?”
I sigh. “Those who have the means never have the vision. Want some?”
I found monster cookies in his cupboard— another Ana souvenir.
They’re a bit stale but still good. I eat most of one, then talk him into a bite by holding what’s left to his face and pouting.
His mouth brushes my fingertips, and the memory of it imprints against the pad of my thumb.
The scrape of his teeth. An impression of heat.
I pull away. Listen as he lists all the places he wants to show me, here in his territory, and clench my fist to hoard the warmth of his touch.
It’s getting late, and the ocean breeze has me shivering, but I don’t want to go inside.
I’m afraid that it’ll be over, two doors and a hallway between us, so I lift my closed fists. “Choose one.”
“No.”
“Pleeeease.” He picks the right. “I’m excited to inform you that we’ll be solving a crossword puzzle together.”
He groans. “What was the other one?”
“You give me a tour of your shop.”
“Why do I always pick the less fun one?” He sighs, but we move to the couch and start a new puzzle. His ability to solve it hasn’t improved, which delights me.
“This must be so embarrassing for you.” I pat his back.
“What shall I do without this valuable life skill?”
I press my toes into the hard muscle of his thigh.
Lay my head on his shoulder. Scribble, on twelve down, Rosicrucianism .
I think about having this, but times twenty.
Times one hundred. Times tens of thousands.
When two people fall in love, how many nights do they spend together, doing absolutely nothing, before they’ve had their fill?
How many silences and crosswords and mugs of tea do they share?
What can Koen and I do, to get as many as—
“Don’t,” he murmurs into my hair, not even bothering to pretend to read the clues. Yanking me back to our agreement.
A moment out of time.
No before. No after. Just during.
“Don’t . . . show you up with my amazing vocabulary and language expertise?”
“Precisely.” He inhales deeply from the hollow at the curve of my neck, arms looping around me. He does it again as I pull new words out of the page. Litigation . Boulevard . Deck. Yorkshire. He touches me, and yet he doesn’t. As close as possible, without breaking the one rule we abide by.
It’s nice.
I would give anything for a million more nights of this. Or one.
But I’m getting sleepy.
And he is, too.
And then the fever starts.