Chapter 24
twenty-four
DARE
The Goodbye Loneliness party ended, appropriately, with Liv and Niall's mating ceremony.
I was itching to get my mate back home.
It was late, and the sun had already set, but I swung by a little Thai food place to get Rae some mango sticky rice just to make her night a little better.
"Thanks for dealing with my family," I said, holding her feet in my lap while she ate. She was feeding me too, but I didn't ask her to share. She would if she wanted to.
"I like your family," she admitted. "I have an unrelated question."
“You know you can ask me anything.”
"Do you remember when we were texting, pretty soon after we made that bargain?"
"Of course."
"You said something along the lines of you being willing to go to a sex club together."
I went still. "I did."
"It could be fun to go through with that." Rae was looking down at her sticky rice, unable to meet my gaze. "Since I'm, you know. Inexperienced."
"You're plenty experienced now."
"Right. But only with you."
I let out a slow breath.
The alternative was catching on fucking fire for the first time in centuries. My flames couldn't hurt Rae, but the car wouldn't make it out in good shape.
"You want to go to a sex club and fuck someone other than me?" my voice strained.
I didn't want anyone else near her. Let alone touching her or making her moan.
"Maybe."
My fists caught fire.
Rae glanced up at the flames while I held my hands away from the steering wheel so I didn't melt the damn thing. "The idea makes you that hot?"
I managed to choke out an agreement.
She looked back at her rice.
"Tomorrow?" I gritted out. "So I have time to cool off?"
"Sure. Can we go to the club with the mated vampires?"
So she could realize what she was missing?
The fire spread up my arms, but I managed to agree to that.
Rae ended up driving home, looking seriously amused.
Did she really think I was looking forward to letting someone else touch her?
I was fucked.
When we made it back to our place, she dragged me into the shower, and I lost myself in her body until my flames finally went out.
She was mine.
There was no changing that.
I still ended up grabbing my phone and looking up that stupid forum website that Rae was obsessed with, after she'd fallen asleep in my arms.
I searched:
What is it like to share your mate with someone else physically?
The post it pulled up was called:
My experience with a mate bond and swinging.
When I opened it, I wanted to fucking puke.
Sharing-Is-Not-Caring:
My mate and I had been together for a few months before we realized we wanted to experiment.
I suggested visiting a sex club together.
She was loudly against it at first, but things were falling apart, so she eventually agreed.
It caused us both pain through the mate bond for a while, but she's managed to get over that, and is now living with the guy we swung with.
I'm trying to come to terms with this massive change, and still feeling pain every time he touches her. So take this as a warning, I guess. And offer advice if you have any. What was swinging with a mate bond like for you?
RedCheeks:
Hell. Just hell. We figured out other ways to spice things up.
VerifiablyInsane101:
I'm sorry you had this experience! We actually both love it. WAY happier together in every way now that we have more variety in our life.
MiseryNeedsCompany:
Wrecked my life too.
Wet-Pillowcase:
It changed everything for us. I miss how things used to be.
UncertainlySad:
0/10 do not recommend
Horny-Trouble:
Rough for us at first, but it can be fucking hot to watch your mate with someone else, we both like it now
I read more.
And more.
And fucking more.
My eyes felt like they were going to start bleeding when I finally threw my phone across the room and dragged Rae closer.
I knew it worked for some people, but I didn't fucking want it. Not for myself. Not for us. I didn't think I had it in me to share my soulmate.
We were finally finding a stride and figuring things out. I'd thought the sex was good. Great. Fucking spectacular.
Maybe I was reading her wrong.
I tried to sleep, but couldn't.
Ended up easing away from Rae an hour later, shoving my feet in my shoes, grabbing my phone off the floor, and jogging out my car.
After a fucking long midnight drive, I knocked loudly on Grayson and Merrily's apartment door before using my magic to melt the lock and doorknob until it was broken enough to shove my way through it.
Grayson was on his feet in the kitchen, his shadows gathered around his fists and his eyes narrowed at the door when I stepped through.
We made awkward eye contact for a solid twenty seconds before he sighed and rubbed his eyes. "What do you want? It's the middle of the night."
"I need to talk to Mer."
"Can fae royals do nothing on their own?" he grumbled.
"Not really." I strode toward the bedroom.
"On the couch." Grayson pointed at it. "You're not climbing in bed alone with my female. Rae would kill you for it if I didn't."
I stopped, even though my mate was apparently a lot less possessive than I'd imagined.
Unless she thought I was going to let someone touch her without letting anyone else touch me. Which... was probably what I'd said in my fucking texts.
And how the situation would go down, if we did go to a sex club.
Goddamn it.
I dropped onto their couch.
"I'll try not to listen in while I attempt to fix my fucking door," Grayson drawled.
Merrily came padding out of their room with a blanket and Grayson's shadows wrapped around her a few minutes later. She yawned widely, but sat down on the other side of the couch and tilted her head heavily against the cushions. "What happened, Dare?"
"I fucked up."
"What did you do?"
I clenched my jaw. "I told Rae I'd take her to a sex club so she could experience being with someone else."
Grayson dropped something. A tool of some kind. It fell with a loud clang.
Merrily groaned. "Oh my god. And she wants to?"
"Apparently."
"Why would you even offer that? You could never handle it.”
"I don't know. We'd just barely started talking, and I was desperate. I don't even remember what I said."
"Find the texts."
Mer held a hand over her eyes while she squeezed them shut. I scrolled aggressively through my extremely long text thread with Rae. When I finally found the right messages, I read them again.
Twice.
Yeah, I was definitely fucked.
Rae
You don't get to be possessive, you were the first person I was ever with, and you've been with plenty
I should get to experiment
Me
You can experiment with me
If you really want to try new things, I'll take you to a sex club, and you can experiment with someone else while I watch
Rae
You would NOT watch me with someone else
Me
If you really felt like being mated to me was unfair to you, I'd try
Wouldn't risk you developing feelings for them, though, so I'd sure as fuck be there with you
Rae
We're not having this conversation
I silently handed it to Mer.
She groaned again, louder, when she finished reading them. "Oh my god."
Grayson padded across the room and tore the phone from Mer's hand, reading the texts himself.
"You're not supposed to be involved," I pointed out.
"You're already mated. I'm fucking involved." Grayson tossed the phone back to me. "She hates people she doesn't know. I can't see her actually being interested in that."
"What the fuck do I do now?"
"You have a conversation where you tell her that you're not comfortable with it anymore." Merrily gestured toward my phone. "Unless you are?"
“No. I’ll kill anyone who touches her."
"Like the majority of mated immortals," Grayson pointed out. "Even if she's serious, she'd understand if you told her you couldn't go through with it."
"She thinks I'm into the idea. I fucking caught on fire, and she thought it was because I was turned on."
Mer gave me a skeptical look. "You have a mate bond. If you were out of control enough to catch fire, she felt your rage."
"You think she was pretending to think I was turned on?"
Mer shrugged. "I'm just saying, she knew exactly what you were feeling."
"Why would she be playing games with this?" I asked.
Mer looked at Grayson.
Grayson sighed. "Rae isn't good at saying what she feels. You aren't good at hearing her, if the fight was any evidence. She's probably trying to make a point."
"What point?"
"If you knew that, she probably wouldn't be suggesting you guys go to a sex club together," Mer said. "Unless she's interested in being knotted, which I would get, because it's..." She saw the look on my face and trailed off. "Overrated?"
"You're a fucking terrible liar," I grumbled. "She doesn't have a vampire form, so it's not about that." We'd talked about trying a vibrator with a knot on it, because they were smaller than actual demons' knots, and she was up for that.
She hadn't seemed interested at all in actually being knotted.
She'd always just seemed interested in me.
"I'm sure your magic makes up for whatever she might be missing out on," Mer added quickly. "If the sex is good, just ask her why she wants to go.”
I didn't want to ask her, but I could stomach that a hell of a lot easier than I could stomach watching her come apart on some other fucker's cock.
They sent me on my way twenty minutes later without any real help, but with a handful of mini cupcakes that Grayson had made in an attempt to mimic Mer's favorite bakery's recipe.
At least they had their shit together.
The drive home was hellish.
Rae was still asleep when I slid into bed again. She rolled toward me when I did, wrapping her body around mine and hugging me tightly.
I inhaled the scent of her, and groaned when she sank those sexy little fangs into my throat, still mostly asleep.
I pulled her back to my chest when she’d taken her fill. The possessiveness that welled up inside me as I held her took my fucking breath away.
"Rae?" I asked, my voice muffled by her hair.
"Yeah?" she mumbled, already falling back asleep.
"Are you... satisfied? Sexually? I, uh, realized I never asked, but—"
"I'm satisfied."
The relief I wanted didn't come. "Then why do you want to go to a club?"
"Can you be satisfied and still want to experiment?"
I didn't.
But I guess I'd already done that before. The experimenting.
"I don't know," I finally said. "But I feel like you're trying to tell me something with the request."
She sighed. "You said you don't care if I'm all-in. That means it won't bother you if I hook up with someone else."
I saw red again.
So much fucking red that I had to roll off the bed and jog into the shower as my entire fucking body burst into flames.
She didn't follow me in, and I sat beneath the water as I stabbed my fingers against my phone's screen to type out a text.
Me
You were right.
I told her she doesn't have to be all-in on our relationship, I think she wants me to admit otherwise
Mer
Then admit otherwise
Why would you tell her she doesn't have to be all-in?!
You're mates!
Me
I never wanted to take her freedom
Mer
If you're not willing to admit the truth, you'd better be ready to watch her fuck someone else in front of you
Me
I don't think she'll go through with it just to make a point
Mer
Are you really willing to take a bet on that?
No.
I wasn't.
Which meant I needed a plan to counter hers. Immediately.