Chapter 13 #2
"I've been told repeatedly that I shouldn't have been able to feel your magic the way I did that night.
The way I always do. I've never looked twice at another woman since I was with you, and I never wanted a serious relationship before.
The way I think about you is similar to the way Callum was obsessed with Kat, too. "
"You were always pretty good at predicting when my magic was going to get difficult," she admitted.
"I can feel it."
"So... let's make a bargain and find out for sure. I brought your paintings. We can make a deal for them."
"That's an idea."
"You're not interested?"
I slid my hand back up her thigh. This topic wasn't as emotionally charged for me, because I made a decision about it on my way home from her place after we were together in the hot tub.
"Livvy, there's only one thing I want from you."
Her eyes narrowed.
She thought I was going to say sex.
The sex was great, but I didn't give a fuck about it when everything else was on the line. I'd want her with or without it.
"A sealed mate bond," I said.
Her accusation morphed to surprise. "What?"
"We can date. We can fuck. We can talk, swim, and be whatever you want. But I'm not going to make a deal with you. The same connection that would've come with a bargain will appear when we make vows. I asked Darius."
She stared at me. "You want me to take a bet on you?"
"I want you to choose me. Whether we're fated or not."
I was pretty damn sure we were. Ninety-nine percent confident.
Ninety-five, at the very least.
But there was always a slim chance we weren't, and I wasn't going to lose her again if fate's invisible, intangible strings wanted her to be with some other fucker.
"That's insane," Liv said. "Verifiably insane. I would never be able to find my fated mate, Niall. I would never have peace."
"You looked pretty fucking peaceful pressed up against that bathroom stall after you came on my tongue a couple of times."
"A mate bond would be permanent."
"You'd need to be really damn sure you wouldn't change your mind about me," I agreed.
"So would you. No fucking other women. No thinking about other women. No escape from all of my insanity."
"I like your insanity, and I don't think about or fuck other women."
Her scoff said she didn't believe me.
Guess I was going to have to prove it.
"Put your shorts on," I said.
She gestured for me to turn around.
I didn't.
She rolled her eyes and put them on anyway.
I pulled her to her feet, placing her in front of me as I walked her through the apartment and into my bedroom.
She went still in the doorway when she saw the bedding on my mattress. "Is that..."
"It is."
"It can't be."
"It can."
"I threw it out, Niall. I regretted it for months. I still do. The trash had already been taken out, so I couldn't get it back."
"I pulled it out of the bin and had it cleaned after Larson made sure the spell was intact." She'd paid an exorbitant amount of money to have it enchanted permanently with our scents for our first anniversary.
That had been a few days after we had a long conversation about scents, during which I compared having her on my skin to wearing a sign around shifter women that said FUCK OFF, I'M TAKEN.
Liv walked to the bed and slipped beneath the blankets. I watched in the doorway as she lifted it to her nose and breathed in deeply.
Her eyes closed when she did.
Scents mattered to everyone. They just mattered extra to shifters, because our senses were better.
I watched her lift her head from the blankets and notice the art on the wall where most people would put a TV.
Three paintings. She'd seen two of them before. The third, I'd done after that night.
I watched her look at them.
Take them in.
The one on the left depicted our hands and forearms on our barely-gray sheets, our fingers interlocked. The black polish on her nails was chipped in a few places, and the matching color on mine was flecked with spots of the green and gray paint I'd been working with that day.
I hadn't been able to get the image out of my mind, one day, after we'd been together for a few years. I'd kept it on the wall in my studio, when we were together.
The painting on the right was of her bare legs draped across my inked thighs while we sat on our blue couch. My hands rested on her legs, and her shorts were sitting on the floor. We had been trying to watch a movie she was dying to see, with her fidget toys to keep her magic at bay.
The toys hadn't worked, so I'd slipped my hand between her thighs and fucked her with my fingers through the rest of the movie. I'd rolled her over and taken her from behind on the couch when it ended.
The painting in the middle of the trio was... different.
Not just a nice image.
Not just a nice memory, either.
Four years into our relationship, I got a call about my mother's death. I wasn't sad, I was furious. Liv hadn't understood what was going on when I was upset for two full days, and I hadn't been willing to tell her.
She finally followed me into the bathroom and asked me what I needed, on the night of the second day.
I told her I needed her to distract me. She stripped her clothes off and took my cock in her mouth until I hauled her onto the countertop and fucked her hard. When our climaxes ended, I'd lost control of my emotions, and I'd cried.
Not because of my mother's death. Because of all the fucking twisted things our father had done to us, that she hadn't protected us from.
Liv had held me. Clung to me. Her grip was iron and her eyes were soft as she listened to me recount some of the awful, brutal things Larson and I had survived.
The painting was of that day. My view in the mirror in those moments.
Her bare ass on the bathroom countertop, her back arched and her skin pulled by the desperate grip of the arms I had wrapped around her.
Her hair was tangled, falling unphotogenically over one of her shoulders and one of my biceps.
The painting was rough.
Brutal.
It was everything.
And it was the reason I'd worn her scent on my skin every day since she threw me out. The reason I hadn't forgiven myself for the night everything went to hell, either.
Larson screwed up the spell, but I fucked up with Liv. I let her think I was choosing Larson over her. I hadn't made it clear enough to her in the five years we spent together that she was my entire fucking world.
There wasn't a single cell in my body that would accept me letting her die for any reason. She should've known that, but she didn't.
We may not have had a bargain, but the woman already owned my soul. How could she not see that?
Liv finally looked away from the painting and met my eyes. Whatever she was thinking, I didn't know.
I should've gotten up the fucking courage to go after her sooner. To go to her door and tell her that she was everything to me and would always be everything to me.
But I hadn't.
"I should've believed you sooner," she said quietly.
"I never should've put you in that situation."
Liv nodded.
Then she slipped a bottle of black nail polish out of her bra and gestured for me to come closer. "This is the real peace offering."
My lips curved upward slightly, and I walked to the bed. We sat beneath the blankets that smelled like our past while she explained the deal she'd made with Jonah, and the agreement she made with Gwen.
I didn't want to kill him as much when she was sitting beside me.
But fuck, I still wanted him dead.