Chapter Twenty-One
Coming down from heat, it turns out, feels a lot like a hangover.
I could feel when it started to fade, but I rode the high as long as I could, trying to stay in the dream we constructed around ourselves for the past week. One where there was no outside world. No Cassandra, no Mac, no Dr. Kanata. No past to corrupt our future.
I wake half on top of Connor, my leg flung over him and my face nestled in the crook of his neck. There’s a wet spot where my pussy straddles the muscle of his thigh.
I’m only allowed a few moments of peace before my brain ruins everything. Events come back to me in snatches, clarifying beyond the blur of naked flesh and endless pleasure.
Near the end, I begged him over and over again to bite me.
Did he , though? Or had I just convinced myself of it? Did my delusion run that deep? The last few days are dreamlike and insubstantial in my memory. I was mindless by the end, just a mewling fuck puppet made of cum and orgasms.
I raise my hand to touch my mating gland, and it’s sore like a bruise, with the indentations of teeth marks all around it. But shouldn’t I feel… different?
I try to slide away from Connor, and he grunts and pulls me back against him. His arm is like one of those roller-coaster lap bars.
"What need?” he grumbles, half awake. “I get."
"To pee."
“Hurry back,” he says into my hair and releases me.
I slide out of bed, and my entire body aches as I hobble to the bathroom.
I flip the light switch and freeze.
My neck’s red and purple with bruising. Unmistakable bite marks surround my mating gland, deep and overlapping, but the gland itself is untouched.
He never tore the skin. Never touched me where I needed it most.
I start to shake as the implications kick in.
I bit him.
I mated Connor, and he didn't mate me back.
I claw at my neck, as if making myself bleed might somehow count. A broken sob tears from my throat.
Connor snores softly from the next room.
A one-sided bond would fade with time, but what did it mean for us? He had the presence of mind to deny me mid-heat. Mid-rut. Mid- knot , when every core of his being should have been demanding he claim me. That was how little he wanted me. If he didn’t want me then, he never would.
The realization feels like being stabbed.
I try to rationalize the pain away. To scramble out of the pit I’m rapidly falling into. I let myself care. Let my guard down and was vulnerable with him again. How stupid of me.
It was simple—he didn’t want me. Not for anything long-term.
He knew we belonged to each other, but nothing had changed.
We shared a heat, but we hadn't figured out anything .
Things happened way too fast, with him showing up at my door like that.
Hell, was Cassandra still at his house? Would he leave me and go back home to her now that my heat was through?
My breathing comes hard and fast, and there’s a stabbing pain in my chest.
I twist the bathroom lock and pull myself into the shower. Connor won’t like it, but I need his scent off me now . I feel like I’m covered in him.
I sit on the floor of the tub and turn the cold water to full blast, letting it spray across my back. I need the frigid water to shake me awake from my nightmare. I draw my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them, then bury my head between my knees.
I'm so tired of crying. So tired of wanting something I can never have.
The universe has made it abundantly clear that Connor's not meant to be mine. I'd have to hold this heat in my memory—crystallize it, encase it in amber—because we would never share another. Sometimes things that seem meant to be on the surface just aren’t , and there’s nothing I can do to change it.
Twenty minutes later, I’m shivering like a wet cat, my hair and skin soaked through, when Connor knocks.
“Lana? You in there?”
He waits a moment, then knocks again. More urgent this time. “Lana? Are you okay?”
I don’t respond.
The doorknob jiggles. “Let me in.”
He'll kick the door in next.
Part of me wants to let him do it. For him to destroy something physical of mine, like he’s been ripping my heart apart for years.
"I'm fine, Connor. You can leave now."
Based on the savage growl that erupts through the thin wood, things were not fine .
I rise on shaky legs from the bath and spray myself down with the anti-pheromone spray I keep in my medicine cabinet. It isn’t strong enough to disguise something like a mate scent, but it masks some of the aftermath of our shared heat.
I wrap a towel tightly around myself and open the door. I refuse to meet Connor’s eyes.
But he’s still naked, still perfect. His body looks similar to mine—muscles even more cut than usual from dehydration. Bruises, teeth, and nail marks map his skin. The dried blood at his neck draws my eyes, demanding my attention.
My eyes slide to the floor.
Connor steps further into the room, forcing me to retreat to the rim of the tub. Then he’s on me, head to my neck and inhaling deep against my skin.
“You washed our scent off,” he growls. “Why?” He’s already lapping at my glands again, re-scenting me.
“I—I needed to clear my head.”
“I don't like it.”
He smells divine. A blending of sweat and sex and our bodies. Two scent profiles wound so tight they’re inextricable.
He rubs at his chest like it hurts. “What’s wrong? You feel…different.”
Is he feeling me through the bond? He wouldn't like that. None of the feelings I have to give right now are very nice.
He cups my face in both his big hands and curses. "You’re freezing. Come back to bed. You need rest.”
He’s right. I’m tired enough to sleep for the next week. But that isn’t an option.
“My heat’s over. You can go.”
“You’re shaking like a fuckin’ leaf, Birdy.” He starts rubbing the towel over me, drying me off.
“It’s okay, Connor. You can stop pretending. I appreciate your help, but it’s over now.”
"What the fuck are you on about? You’re my mate ,” he growls. “Nothing’s over. We’re just bloody gettin’ started."
I swallow through the overwhelming tightness in my throat. “Cassandra will be wondering where you are. I'm sorry I bit you. The effect should fade in a few weeks...it's best we keep our distance until then.”
The hole in my chest is ripping back open. That tether between us that’s always reaching for him, begging him to reach back. It was long-withered, and now it’s pulsing with blood, bright and painful. A numb body part trying to wake back up.
“Cassandra? You think I’m worried about Cassandra? She's only in town for the holidays. I wasn’t expecting her.”
How did she know where he was staying, then?
“I can’t do this, Connor. Me and you…we were wrong from the start.”
“ Me and you never had a proper chance! You ran then. You won't run from me now.”
“You didn’t bite me. You didn’t mate me back. That told me everything I needed to know.”
Connor snarls, his jaw ticking. “That’s what this is about? Do you know how hard it was for me not to sink my teeth into your flesh when I was buried inside you? When you were begging for it?
“I didn’t bite you because I wanted to give you a real choice—not one clouded by your heat. I didn’t want to force a mating bond if you weren’t sure you were ready. We had all of five minutes to process this before my tongue was up your cunt."
I shiver at the reminder. His scent is stinking up the bathroom, made thicker by the steam hanging in the air.
I put my hand on his chest to push him away, but he only cedes a few inches.
“Then why did you let me mate you? This thing between us has been one-sided since the beginning. You think I want more of that?”
“It was never one-sided. You just kept me in the dark. You never gave me a chance.”
One of his hands comes to rest on my collarbone, and his thumb caresses my jaw. He looks like he wants to choke me and kiss me at the same time.
“I let you bite me because I’m selfish. Because I want to be bound to you, and I realized this might be my only chance to experience that.”
I shake my head. “You don't want this, Connor. You never did.”
His voice drops an octave. “Don't tell me what I want. I told you?—“
“You told me a pretty story. But that’s not real life. The heat, the bite, it’s affecting your judgment...”
“How long?” he snarls.
His entire body is tense. There’s something rolling off him in waves. Not violence, but close.
“What?”
“How long do I need to stay away from you before you’ll stop making excuses and give us a fucking chance?”
“Till the bond fades? I don’t know?—”
A stiff jerk of his head. “Not happening. That could take months.”
"I’ve already waited too long for you. I’m tired of being hurt.”
His face falls.
I knot my fingers in the towel fabric. “I need you to leave.” I need him to go so I can fall apart without him seeing.
He pulls me to him and kisses me savagely, nipping at my lips and plundering my mouth with his tongue. I can’t help but respond, kissing him back but keeping my hands to myself.
When the familiar heat of his erection brushes my thigh and lifts the edge of the towel, he curses and lets me go.
“This isn’t over.”
He stalks throughout the house to wherever he left his clothes. I sit on the lip of the tub and wait until well after I’ve heard the door slam and the roar of an engine.
When I return to my bedroom, I just stare.
Everything’s a mess. The smell of Connor and sex hangs heavy in the air. I have a metric fuck ton of laundry to do—my entire wardrobe is strewn across the room or part of the nest. Was my mattress even good anymore? I didn’t have one of those expensive heat-proof mattresses.
I want to hide under my covers and forget the world, but I can’t even do that, because my bed and blankets are soaked with the scent of heat sex. I’d have to bleach my entire apartment, to kill our scent.
I strip the bed and stuff the linens in the washer with way too much detergent. The rest of my clothes and anything with Connor’s scent on it I stuff into garbage bags and sit on my back porch.
I spray some anti-pheromone spray directly into my mattress until it’s wet, but it makes little difference. I’ll need something industrial-grade to overpower a week’s worth of heat sex.
I want Connor’s shirt. The one from the mating ceremony. I’ve played this game long enough to know that later, when things return to normal, I’ll be desperate for something with his scent—something of his. I can triple-bag it until then.
I tear my house apart looking for it until I’m certain it’s gone. He took it.