Chapter 17 Kaian #3
“No shit,” Quinn grits out. “Kai, mates are about being compatible in all ways to the nth degree. Mates aren’t always fated, but when they are…Weres know it instantly. And whatever Fate wants, they get, through whatever means necessary.”
He doesn’t sound any happier about it than Kaian. “You’re saying I don’t have a choice?” A sizzle of fear makes his stomach jump. He’s been on his own too long with the threat of being someone’s servant to like the idea that Fate has nailed his feet to the ground.
Quinn laughs out loud this time. “Hell yes, you do. It’s not easy, but you can walk away.”
Soren hangs his head. He looks tired, almost defeated. His hands are clenched on his thighs. “You gotta stop. Don’t fucking panic. Makes me want to—”
“What? You can’t just blurt out that I’m in some fated relationship with werewolves and expect me to take it without freaking—”
“Were,” Quinn interrupts.
“Where what?”
“We’re not werewolves. It’s just Were. We’re like humans…mostly,” Quinn sighs, and gives Kaian the lightest push backward into the chair. “Stop looking like you’re going to run so he can calm down. I’ll give you the lowdown, and then you can walk—slowly—away if you want.”
Soren growls again at the mention that Kaian might leave.
He didn’t owe them anything, but he did owe it to himself.
If he were going to choose without the coin, he would like to have all the information.
How much more fantastical could it get, anyway?
Something tickles in the back of his head that maybe he shouldn’t have said that, even if it wasn’t out loud.
“Can I ask questions?”
“Yeah, just let me get through it first. Questions after, okay?”
“Fine. Let’s hear it.”
Quinn hands Soren his can of Coke and runs a hand over his closely shorn head, soothing. Soren leans into his palm with a sigh.
“Okay. Weres are like humans in a lot of ways. There’s all kinds of history shit, and now that you know about us, you can find it on the internet or in a library if you really want to know.”
That answered one question anyway—about how humans could remain in the dark with the internet at the touch of everyone’s fingertips.
Quinn bites his lip and slips his hand down Soren’s arm. It’s mesmerizing, the slow sweep unconsciously sensual. It seems to refocus Soren’s attention on him rather than on Kaian.
What he says next makes Kaian realize it hadn’t been unconscious at all. His fingers snap closed gently around Soren’s wrist, restraining him. The scent of flowers gets stronger, and Kaian wonders if there’s a window open to the balcony he can see beyond the bed.
“There are differences, though. Like you said earlier. We’re stronger, faster, and we can smell all kinds of things.”
“Like what? You said before you could smell if I lied? What else?” Kaian doesn’t like the idea that Weres know what he’s thinking or feeling before he does.
“Fear, joy—arousal. Our sense of smell is more attuned to someone if we’re mates. We learn early on to smell most emotions, and differentiate people we know by scent.”
They could smell how much he wanted them? Jesus, how embarrassing.
“Scent? Like body odor?” Ew. No matter how transient Kaian became, he always tried to bathe as often as possible. He’d always had a sensitive nose.
“Not in the way you mean. Every Were has a personal scent. Soren’s is—”
That same mental tickle produces the word like it had at the bar, before Soren can say it. “Heliotrope.”
He breathes deeply, remembering the scent of cherries and smoke that had filled the air when he’d opened the door, and when Soren had him pressed to the sheets. “You smell like cherries and cigar smoke.”
“And you smell like coconut and incense,” Soren whispers. He tries to shake Quinn’s hand off his wrist, but when Quinn won’t let go, he shivers and presses his nose into Quinn’s shoulder instead. “Your magic smells like patchouli.”
“Oh. So humans smell like stuff, too?”
“No.”
“But you said—”
“I said you smell like coconuts. It’s part of how we know you’re ours.”
“Part? How can you be so sure?”
Soren must have been humoring Quinn, because he throws off his hand and is kneeling between Kaian’s knees.
Throwing a hand up, Kaian’s palm lands on Soren’s bare chest with a gasp. Pleasure courses up Kaian’s arm, straight to his heart, and down into his cock. He’s rock hard in an instant, and he moans at a surge of pleasure so intense, he thinks he might come.
Touch is something he has been denied for so long; this single touch fills him to bursting.
“Oh, god. Please.”
“That, Angel-baby, is how we know,” Soren’s fingers press into his thighs through his jeans. “Look at how pretty he is, Blaze. So soft. So much light.”
Kaian wants to look over at Quinn, but Soren is so close. He wants the taste of him on his tongue. Wants them both in Quinn’s cherry-smoke bed where he can make it smell like him.
“He’s perfect,” Soren whispers, leaning to run his nose over Kaian’s jaw. “Ours.”
The trance shatters as a splash of water cascades over Soren’s head and into Kaian’s face like baptism.
“Fuck. I wasn’t going to bite him.” It sounds plaintive rather than accusing.
Kaian is about to sound off about being bitten for the second time when the hair on his neck stands straight up. The Plain snaps and surges as every reliable life-saving sense of self-preservation is screaming at him to run.