The Barbarian's Owned(33)
That should have made Rae feel relieved. She wasn’t potentially knocked up—this was the Ythirian version of matrimony, which Rae could end just by going home.
Yet it didn’t feel better one bit. Instead, her anger swelled. Maybe it should have been directed at an overbearing Ythirian culture, but instead, she fastened it squarely on a different target: Garr.
***
“You should have told me!” Rae marched straight for Garr when he appeared with more sweet cake and fruit for breakfast. She jabbed a finger at his face, less than six inches from his nose.
“You didn’t tell me that sex was a mate-for-life deal with Ythirians, you incredible, arrogant jackass!” She instantly regretted the finger point: the only time Reese had ever gotten physical with her had been in a screaming argument.
After she did this finger point at him, he’d pushed her into a wall and pinned her there. It had been their last argument before the break-up.
Garr considered her finger with hard eyes, both angry and offended. His arms stayed at his sides, and his voice was entirely in check. “Calm down.”
Nothing made Rae angrier than being told to calm down. “No!” Taking a breath, though, she managed to lower her finger, which trembled from outrage. “Sylla told me that you mated me for life last night. Is she lying?”
“She’s not.” Garr shrugged. “You’re not bound to me, though.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When a male releases into a female, in Ythirian culture, it means that he is bound to her. He promises to have no other. If the female has not been properly claimed in a challenge—or if she has found another suitor to challenge the male—she can still escape this bond. It is the man who is bound to her; she’s not bound to him until she acquiesces to him.”
Rae crossed her arms over her chest. “And I didn’t acquiesce last night?” She felt like she’d “acquiesced” around the second orgasm, when she’d bitten his ear and begged for more.
“You don’t understand our rituals.” He was amused, and that infuriated her. “The female accepts her role when she submits. As when I washed your hair, or released inside you, our rituals are physical acts.”
“So… what’s the gesture of submission?” Better to know so that she wouldn’t accidently marry herself off to the lummox.
Garr slipped into her personal space, hands to her hips. “She goes to all fours and offers herself to him. She asks him to claim her. And when he does, she is his forever.”
She should have been too angry to be turned on. Somehow, the explanation made her both at once: horny and righteously ticked off. That was a sexual position Rae had always felt too self-conscious to try—it was wholly submissive, presenting herself as though bowing for a man. She’d never done it with Reese.
He’d wanted it, but it had felt wrong, because she’d sensed he wanted it for the wrong reasons. Maybe that was because all Reese had ever wanted was to control her, and giving herself to him in such a vulnerable pose put too much power in his hands.
“So you aren’t bound to me yet,” Garr concluded. “I am merely bound to you.”
That still wasn’t right. “This isn’t a silly game, Garr. You can’t have anyone but me now.”
“I would like no other.”
“But, I mean—come on! You’re putting this all on me. This can’t just be a wild fling with a human woman anymore.”
“Why would I want that? Anything less than all of you is not enough.” He stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I fear nothing, because we are destined to be together.”
That was it. The total, confident sureness that Kaython had hooked them up. “I’m not going to be emotionally blackmailed,” Rae informed in her coolest voice. “I’m leaving at the end of the week. Just like you promised I could.”
She anticipated anger—or for him to renege on their deal. Those were the things she had dealt with in past relationships, after all. Instead, Garr did something worse. He chuckled and headed for the door. “Eat. We’ll hike to the waterfall.”
“You’re not listening!”
“I listened,” he said on his way out the door. “But you’re going to be my mate. I don’t want another, I’ve made my decision, and I will wait for you to change your mind.”
If he hadn’t left, she might have thrown a chair.
***
Rae jogged to catch up with Garr after breakfast and they hiked in silence, the trek less than a mile. He carried an otoya bag that clinked with climbing gear.
Rae had been bouldering and rock climbing while at dig sites, but really wasn’t looking forward to the exertion after a night of vigorous lovemaking. The soreness had faded to a dull ache, and her energy bounced back from breakfast, but she’d have rather spent the day indoors and away from Garr.