He collapsed with his full weight on top of her, his face buried in her neck. “Mate,” he said again as one hand stroked her hair. “Mate.”
CHAPTER TEN
Solar scrubbed a hand over his face as he fought to drag breath in and out of his lungs. He was pretty sure he was dead now. Or he'd just been born. Or had a religious experience or some shit.
All he knew was that his life as he knew it was over. He pinched his eyes closed for a moment against the new, semi-uncomfortable feeling of all of his priorities tumbling, shifting, rearranging. Zara had always been pretty close to the top. But now the rest of his priorities couldn't even see her, they sat so far back.
"You're the mountaintop," he mumbled into her hair that had tumbled all across the bed, across his chest.
"What?" She lifted her head and looked at him dazedly. He could see confusion, shock, satisfaction, and sex all play in her eyes. She slid even higher on his priorities list.
He chuckled at the look on her face. "I think you're a little stunned, woman."
She blushed, flopped back down, hiding her face in the pillow. Well, he couldn't have that.
He reached down and tipped her face up to him. "It's okay if you're overwhelmed, Z."
She nodded and nestled her face into his hand a little bit. It warmed him, fiercely.
"It's just that absolutely everything in my life just changed."
"Not everything."
She shifted to her side and his eyes joyfully skated over her curvy figure. It felt so good to finally be able to look. "What HASN’T changed?"
He lifted her fingers to his lips and looked her right in the eye. She was looking right back, he noticed. Something she never used to do. It felt good. Gratifying. The way it was supposed to be.
"My feelings for you haven't changed."
She scoffed and tossed her hair over shoulder. "Solar, your feelings have completely changed! A total 180. Before this morning you could barely stand to be around me. And now we're..." She motioned back and forth between them to indicate all the things they'd just done and all the things they were gonna do again.
He looked her dead in the eye. It was suddenly extremely important to him that there was zero confusion on this point.
"Zara. The," he motioned his hand back and forth just the way she had, "is basically the only thing I've been able to think about for a year and a half."
Her mouth dropped open. "What?"
"I'm serious.” He scrubbed a hand over his face again. “Ever since we rescued you four years ago, you've always been uncomfortably important to me. Enough that it confused me and I kept my distance. But I never really understood it. Until about a year and a half ago when you suddenly woke up with this body and it finally dawned on me that you were about to become a woman."
Zara bit her bottom lip and reached out to fiddle with a piece of her hair. "You- you wanted to mate with me?"
"Woman," he said. "I wanted to destroy you."
Her mouth dropped open again. "I never knew."
"I know. I worked my ass off to keep it from you. I didn't want you or anyone to know."
She turned to him. Feelings warmed her eyes and she reached out to stroke a hand down his chin. "You suffered." It wasn't a question. She was telling him what she saw in his eyes.
He shrugged. "People suffer all the time. It's life. I handled it. I thought I could handle it."
"So why did you come to me?" She was asking because she was curious, he knew. But he could also tell that confusion was there. She needed reassurance. She was scrambling to understand what had just happened.
But in order to explain that he had to know what just happened.
"It's hard to explain, Z. It happened so fast. I was out by the river and I caught your fertility scent on the wind. And it was like," he flopped back onto the bed, searching for the words. She propped herself up to see his face. "Every feeling I'd ever suppressed for you. Every frustration. Every missed moment. It all came roaring back at once. And there was no stopping it. Everything else stopped existing. All there was, in my whole world, was you."
He watched her face as the sincerity of his words broke over her. There was confusion, joy, fear, surprise. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth and he found himself getting hard again. Even after she’d just completely dismantled him.
“And now?” she asked and he instantly narrowed his eyes in confusion.
“What are you asking me, woman?” He ran his hand down her side and observed her. Even in the harsh afternoon light, she was painfully beautiful. Her large gray eyes filling her face. Her small features looking so delicate. But he knew better. He knew she had a fierceness within her. He had bite marks all over his body to prove it.