Page 27 of Snag (Conduit #2)

A playful, knowing smile quirks the edges of Zaya’s lush lips. Still holding my gaze, she reaches over, picks up her milkshake, and takes a large sip, easily draining a third of it. Then, like an utter brat, she tops her glass up with the remaining milkshake in the blender.

“It’s like that, is it?” My voice rasps with suppressed desire, though Zaya’s playfulness actually eases the intensity literally grabbing me by the balls.

“Most definitely.” She flashes a grin my way, settling her hip against the counter to take in the space around us. “I’m not certain when Disa renovated. Nor why.”

Right. I was talking about the kitchen. “These used to be multiple rooms,” I say, reaching for my own milkshake.

“The rest of the house hasn’t been touched.”

That’s voiced with a hint of a question, though it’s more a snag in her energy than anything uttered out loud.

Zaya doesn’t remember the house. Not well, at any rate.

My chest pinches. For her, for us. Ignoring it, I sip my shake. Despite my still-jutting erection, I lean deliberately back against the counter, stretching my legs out. Open, relaxed, easy. Steady and true, for my mate. “And the furniture isn’t …”

“Dusty and old?”

I laugh. Nothing was ever dusty in Disa’s house, though I suspect it was Ingrid’s magecraft that kept it that way. But it was as far from modern as a house with running water and electricity could get. On the North American continent, at least.

“Was it always like that?” Zaya asks quietly, still looking at the open-concept great room instead of at me. “Between us?”

Then, just in case I’ve missed her meaning — and I haven’t — she reaches to the side and, almost gently, cups my still-erect cock.

I slide closer along the counter so she doesn’t have to reach quite so far.

Understanding that despite her hand placement, Zaya isn’t coming on to me.

She’s figuring a fuck-load of things out. But still, I need to be closer to her.

“We were just kids together,” I say carefully, drawing in the subtle wild-mint-and-creamy-vanilla scent of her that has nothing to do with her shampoo or creams. I know I need to be utterly honest. Always, but especially in this moment with her hand resting lightly over my denim-bound cock.

Her trust is woven through that gesture and the question.

I’d love to just say yes, then press Zaya back over the counter and eat her out until she’s screaming my name, weak limbed and utterly satisfied. But a half-truth is not what she needs. Not what either of us needs. “So at first, no … just inseparable, enough to bother our caretakers.”

“Then …?”

“Then my cock started getting hard around you.”

She laughs quietly, taking a tiny sip of her shake. “And …”

“You wanted kisses.”

“Then cuddles?”

“Yes.” I can feel my heart beating. It’s still steady, but each beat feels deliberate, intent.

“Then …” She looks up at me, deliberately catching my ga ze. Those violet eyes that practically weep with power rake over my face, memorizing me, taking me into her. “We figured out how to make each other come?”

I laugh, pleased it doesn’t come out at all shaky. “We figured out if we kissed and cuddled … vigorously … that it felt really, really good, and I had to change my shorts.”

She laughs, utterly delighted.

That joy aches through my chest, pained in the absolute best way. “We mostly did a lot of that … until we figured out how to sneak away long enough to remove clothing and pleasure each other deliberately.”

She blinks up at me for a long moment, perhaps absorbing the picture of a past I’ve tried to present as playfully as possible.

I lean forward slowly until I’m close enough to press my forehead gently against hers. “Your milkshake is melting.”

Her gaze flicks to my lips. Her hand tightens around my cock. “It tastes good that way too.”

I wait, perfectly ready to shift in whatever direction Zaya wants to go.

I can’t imagine how fucking overwhelmed she must be, but I’m also so fucking thankful for Mack and his photographs.

The younger Zaya might have taken anything I brought to her on pure faith, any scenario I spun, any game I wanted to play.

But adult Zaya — both the fixer who roved the globe helping some people, destroying others, and collecting favors along the way, and now the Conduit …

that Zaya isn’t going to trust so easily.

Not even me.

Not without those threads that Zaya expected to see connecting her to her soul-bound mate.

I can see it in her interactions with Rath.

Other than at dinner tonight, they can’t be in the same room without sniping at each other.

Rath, to my senses, clearly regrets every fucked-up thing he says.

Those words, demands, spoken out of the unfettered fear of losing Zaya again.

All three of us already know what that feels like.

And all the while, Zaya collects each stupid demand my brother makes, building a shield from them to be used against him.

Then there’s her almost painful indifference to Reck. Not that I’m currently a fan of my eldest half-brother. My own hero worship first fizzled when he abandoned us for the Authority. Then that admiration completely died when I uncovered his role in the death of our soul-bound mate.

Her apparent death.

Zaya releases my cock, tentatively touching my face instead. “Rought …”

“I’m fine,” I croak. “Sorry. I’m here. I’m fine. I’m never leaving you again.”

“You saw me die,” she says, as if she can read my mind. Or sense my thoughts. Maybe she can. “You said you were half-dead yourself.”

“I should have fucking crawled to your grave on shattered bones and with my fucking soul shredded,” I snarl, still so fucking pissed at myself. “I should have —”

“Gages are cremated,” she says, all matter-of-fact about it. “So … I suppose you could have stalked my body, then immolated yourself alongside it.”

“That’s the plan,” I growl, catching her gaze and holding it, even though I know she’s trying to lighten the mood.

She opens her mouth as if to protest, then just shakes her head at the promise she sees, maybe even feels, etched across my face.

“Milkshakes,” she murmurs, keeping us focused on the now. “And …” She tilts her head toward the TV niche. “A movie? ”

“If you’re not too tired,” I say gruffly, not quite able to bounce back to pure levity so quickly. Even though I was the one to set the playful tone first, with the milkshake and the movie. I was the one who said I would exist in the now with her, utterly fucking contented.

“I’m not.” She takes my hand and tugs me toward the couch. “Coda finally collapsed, creeping up on forty-eight hours without sleep according to Gigi. If Bellamy is in the country, she’s shielding herself better than … expected.”

“Dire awry …” I murmur, setting my milkshake down on the coffee table and reaching for the blanket draped over the back of the sectional.

“Apparently,” Zaya says sourly, settling on the couch and curling her legs underneath her. She’s still clutching her milkshake. “She can’t get to Presh on the estate, though. And there’s a good chance that teleportation spell knocked her right out. She doesn’t wield her magic properly.”

I shake my head at her, sitting down next to her and drawing the blanket over both our laps.

“What? It might be important,” Zaya protests.

“Bellamy is a raging psycho.”

“Or … she’s a tool. Meant for fine crafting but being wielded like a blunt machete.”

I snort.

Zaya slaps me on the arm. “You know what I’m trying to say.”

A tiny missing section of our shared past, our soul connection — or maybe that’s what a minute shift in the universe feels like — settles on my chest. Because this is my Zaya … my Zaya … here with me.

I reach for her without checking myself, my reaction, and thankfully she sweetly snuggles against my chest, under my arm. Had she not, I don’t think I could have stopped myself from hauling her into my lap, kissing her until she melted into me, then fucking her hard right here and now.

“It was never like this,” I whisper to her, tucking the blanket around her legs. “Never quite as intense.”

“That’s okay, right?”

“It’s … perfect.”

In an effort to keep it easy between us, I reach for the remote, pulling up the movies I’ve already queued so Zaya can pick one.

“I was thinking …”

I glance over at Zaya, who’s holding her now-empty glass against her chest while hungrily eyeing my milkshake currently melting on the coffee table.

I laugh, grabbing my glass and offering it to her. She grins at me, not bothering to even play at protesting the exchange when I take her empty glass from her.

“You were thinking about my milkshake?”

She laughs. “No. Instead of a movie, I thought … you could tell me something I don’t know … not … not anything from the photos or how we … got separated.”

“I don’t actually know that part,” I say quietly. That conversation is the opposite of keeping it easy between us, keeping it in the now. I’ll go there with Zaya, of course, but …

“Not something that we shared previously, I mean. Not a memory of … us. Just something that …” Zaya looks at me, open but with a hint of tentativeness. “That’s … that’s something people do, right? Exchange stories from their recent past that they … think … might … help forge more intimacy?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve … never done that.”

“Me either.”

“All right.” I settle back on the couch, thinking but still trying to hold on to some of the playfulness that keeps sparking up between us. “Like, what level of intimacy are we talking about? Do you have a story queued up for me?”

“What do you want to know?” She bites her lip, then covers whatever is going on in her head with a sip of milkshake.