“Then what’s going on?”
His face heated. “I haven’t touched another female, except to feed, since Terese died.”
Her sharp inhale humiliated him even more.
“That’s . . . wow. Twenty years.”
“Thanks for doing the math.”
There was a long pause. Finally, she said quietly,
“You really loved her, didn’t you?”
Tilting his head back, he squeezed his eyes shut and searched his brain for an answer to that. But the dark recesses of his mind offered only silence.
“Yeah.” But he hadn’t loved her enough to keep her safe or keep her alive.
“I’m sorry.” She sank down on the edge of the mattress. “How long were you mated before . . .”
“Before she killed herself,” he finished bitterly.
“Five years. But it wasn’t a love match.”
“How did you meet?”
“Jesus, is this an interview for Vampire Times, or what?” When Nicole crossed her arms over her chest and gave him an expectant stare, he sighed. “It wasn’t a meet as much as it was a battle.” He threw on his shirt.
“She was from DreamDevour, a clan in California.
They were taking her to mate with ShadowSpawn’s leader. We ran into them on the edge of our territory, and a fight broke out. At the time, ShadowSpawn had far fewer numbers, and we were at war with them.
They’d just killed the mate of one of our warriors, and Hunter figured what better revenge than to take one of theirs, especially a high-ranking female who was supposed to go to their leader.”
“And you stepped up to the plate?”
“It was my idea. We’d captured her during the battle with DreamDevour, and Hunter wanted to hold her indefinitely, force both clans to bargain for the best deal. My idea was to mate her to someone in the clan and make an ally out of DreamDevour while sticking it to ShadowSpawn. Hunter figured that since it was my idea, I got to take the bullet for the team.”
“And Terese was willing to mate with you?”
He snorted. “She had no desire to be mated to anyone from ShadowSpawn, let alone the male she was promised to.” The bastard was a sadistic, brutal son of a bitch who reportedly whipped one of his daughters nearly to death. “But I terrified her, too. At first, anyway.”
He’d never forgive himself for that. He’d been angry at the turn of events that had given him a mate he didn’t want, and while he never took it out on her, he hadn’t given her any reason not to be afraid.
“Obviously, she came around.”
“We both did.” He paced the length of the room, wishing he was outside, where he could open up and run for miles before the postfeed cramping started up.
“She was really timid, like a fawn that lost its mother. I had to learn to tone it down around her. I think that between her trying to please me and me trying to keep her calm and safe, we grew close.” Close, but like friends, not lovers. He turned to Nicole. “You said you loved her. You must have spent a lot of time with her.”
“I did.” Nicole smiled fondly. “If it’s any consolation, she was treated well.”
Treated so well that she killed herself. He resisted the urge to point that out again. Nicole had a child’s view of Terese’s life, and Riker had done enough to destroy
her world already.
“Riker . . .” Nicole rubbed her thighs, and he wondered if she’d be folding origami birds if there was more paper nearby. “I still don’t understand why this happened between us. And then didn’t happen.”
He didn’t really understand, either. But for the last twenty years, he’d been unable to bring himself to sleep with any female. Terese’s death had left him empty inside. Cold. There was far more to it than grief, but he’d never been able to dig deep enough into himself to figure it out, mainly because it had never mattered to him before.
Or maybe because he didn’t want to face the ugly truth.
He hadn’t loved Terese the way he should have, and she’d paid the price for his neglect.
“Let’s just forget about it, Nicole.”
“Really?” she said softly. “Are you really going to forget about it? Because the way I see it, we just did something that brought a whole lot of crap to the surface, and unless you deal with it—”
“Don’t pull some psych shit on me.” He shot a de— liberate glance at her throat. “How much did therapy help you?”
She swallowed.
“Exactly.”
“Don’t be an ass.” She tucked her legs under her on the bed. “You know what helped? Crazily enough, being here has helped me more than twenty years of therapy.”