Page 55 of Mate

Maybe tonight is different. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, to bend the rules of reality.

“I would have told you that . . . that you don’t have to do what you’re about to do.

” My heart thumps slowly, loudly. Feverish.

“If you help me through my Heat, it’ll be at great cost to you.

If the Assembly ever found out, it would be a disaster.

So I would have told you: thank you, I appreciate the offer, but I cannot ask this of you. ”

“You don’t— ”

“Need to ask. Yup, that’s what you would have said. And I would have pushed back a little— told you that I’m willing to deal with this on my own, because I wouldn’t want you to regret it afterward.”

“You can’t— ”

“But you would have seen through it. So I would have asked you whether you arranged for someone to cover your absence in the next few days. And you’d have said . . . Amanda?”

He nods, displeased in that endearing way of his.

“And that’s when I would have told you how .

. .” I take a deep, shaky breath. “I would have told you how vulnerable I’ve been feeling in the past year.

Stripped of my life. My identity. My agency.

My health. And now, of the most personal thing of all.

A few hours from now, I’ll be out of my mind.

I will be a creature made of need , beyond thought.

And you will take care of me exemplarily, like always.

You will . . . You will kiss me, and touch me, and fuck me, because it’s what I require, and those will be the memories I carry for the rest of my life: you, satisfying my needs.

And I would have tried to make you understand that I .

. . I want more . I would like some real memories of us.

Not because we’ve been cornered into it by biology and circumstances, but because being together is what we both want .

So, while I’m still in control, I would have asked you to . . . to kiss me, and . . .”

Koen doesn’t come to me. He leans forward and pulls me into him with a tug at my wrist. I offer no resistance and stumble into his arms. “Yeah?”

I nod. He hunches forward. Cups my head and uses his thumb to tilt my jaw upward, lips brushing against mine. Then he makes me wait.

And wait.

We stay there, on the brink of everything. I feel him everywhere. His scent. The steady warmth of his skin. His fingers, traveling to curve around my rib cage. “Let me make something very clear, Serena. I’m never going to regret any of this, okay?”

Our mouths are touching. I feel as though we’re made of the same stuff. Me and him, set apart from the remaining matter of the universe. “I think . . . this is going to hurt, Koen.”

“After, yeah. But not yet.”

“Not yet.”

Our first kiss is about as romantic as our first meeting, the first night we spent together, or my first visit to the ocean with him.

It’s a pattern for us: unmemorable (at best) or questionable (at worst) firsts.

This once, though, it might be my fault.

The impatience. The lack of harmony. I should have thought this through better, but it ends up being a scrape of teeth against the corner of his mouth, the delicious drag of his stubble, a lot of sharing air and breathing in between us.

My upper lip slides against his lower, because that’s as high as I can reach.

He doesn’t kiss me back, but there is a faint groan in his chest, just loud enough for me to hear.

“Serena,” he sighs, and makes it better.

Flips us so that I’m sitting on the desk, him between my legs, and then it’s the rough swipe of his tongue against my lips, loud breaths, the heat of our open mouths.

Fingers pulling at my scalp, new angles, tongues stroking.

He tastes like a distilled version of his scent.

I laugh against the seam of his mouth, giddy, and he grunts, “What?”

“Just— ” He doesn’t let me finish. Deepens the kiss. Slides a hand under my top and the pleasure startles me. I grip his forearms. When he sucks the gland on my neck I exhale roughly, and say, “Just, for someone who hasn’t made out with anyone in over twenty years, you’re not as bad as you— Oof .”

He tosses me on the nest. Air whooshes out of my lungs. I’m belly-down, spread-legged. Laughing without oxygen. “It was a compli— ”

My shorts and underwear are forcefully pulled down. The mattress dips between my legs.

“I was joking!”

“So am I,” he says, dead serious, pressing an open-mouthed kiss at the base of my spine.

I quiver. Take in a big gulp of air, but my throat won’t comply.

“I saw these the first day we met. Been thinking about them.” He lifts the hem of my top and just stares.

I squirm as he presses his thumbs to each side of my spine.

“Dimples. Very cute. Wholesome, really. Ready to be defiled.” He leans in, and his tongue traces the cleft of the right one. “C’mon, Serena.”

“W- what?”

“I thought you were joking. Joke some more.”

I would write him a whole comedy special, if his hands weren’t squeezing my ass, making my brain ring like some kind of . . .

“Phone.” I drag myself up on my elbows.

He hums like he heard me but keeps staring down. His fingers tighten on me, acquisitive, like he can’t help taking . I turn and find him heavy lidded, his breath shallow. His biceps are tense, prepared, anticipating. His fingers stroke between the globes of my ass.

“Koen,” I gasp, “it’s your— ”

“Fuck my phone,” he says, distracted, bending to lick the other dimple, and—

“It could be Nele, or they could have found Irene, or— ”

He groans against my right asscheek. Then bites into it like it’s a piece of fruit.

“Koen!”

“Sorry,” he says. Before doing it again.

“Koen!”

“I said sorry.” He presses a kiss against the small of my back. I roll around just as he leaves the room, catching his small smile.

The caller is Lowe, wondering whether Koen’s toaster oven exploded and took him out.

“All good. Serena tackled me,” I hear him say.

And, after a pause, “Told you, she beat me up. Slapped the phone out of my hand. What is there to understand?” I bury my laughter into a pillow.

And there, in a nest that smells like Koen, listening to talk of pack jurisdictions and Human authorities, I fall into a calm, deep sleep.