Heart of Stone - Book 2: Hearts Collide

She nodded before he pressed his lips to hers, softly and unrushed.

How was he going to do this? How was he going to gain enough control to allow themselves to indulge in their most primal and intimate desires? Even now, as he caressed her lips, a stirring within had him dipping his tongue and tangling it with hers, delving deeply into her essence as he held her against him. Pulling away, he pressed his forehead to hers again, breathing harder as his pants began to feel too tight.

Goddess, he couldn’t even kiss her without becoming aroused. He couldn’t stay mad with her because he understood how she felt. He understood better than she did, and somehow, he needed to communicate that with her.

“The matebond is intensifying our urges in an effort to seal and join our souls,” he said, wracking his brain as he struggled to explain it to her. “What we are feeling is natural, but that doesn’t make it any easier for us. This is why it’s so important that I learn to control it because it’s only going to get more intense.”

She swallowed. “So, the only solution you guys came up with is practicing control and drawing my blood?”

He nodded, looking away from her. “None of us know what the consequences would be if we exchanged bodily fluids—”

Aubree wrinkled her nose. “Bodily fluids?”

He caught her gaze then and raised an eyebrow. “Do you need me to elaborate?”

“Um...” she trailed off in uncertainty.

Sighing, he released her arms and ran his fingers through his hair. “Kissing hasn’t posed a problem, which is a good sign. You haven’t changed or gotten sick that way. But if I bite you, my saliva mixing with your blood might cause a different reaction, one that has, in the past, led to documented monstrous results.”

And I can’t let that happen. He pursed his lips, his eyes roaming over her body as she continued to pull the torn fabric of her shirt around her.

“You see,” he said, as he went to his dresser and pulled out one of his T-shirts, “when we mark each other, we are both ingesting each other’s blood, and we bathe each other’s mark with our tongue, thus adding saliva to the mix. And there has been no documented results of mixing human blood with lycan blood.” He lowered his voice. “Or at least, no documented results available to the common lycan.”

Aubree’s brows pulled together. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he said with a sigh, as he returned to her and held out his shirt for her to put on. “Lycans go back thousands of years. We—and I mean Hector, Rosemary, Gunner, and I—find it hard to believe that there hasn’t been one documented case of a blood transfer between lycans and other species. Like humans, we are curious about the world we live in. It’s impossible to believe that not once has anyone in our past been curious enough to experiment with other species.”

She’d been listening so intently at him, that she hadn’t even noticed the shirt he held out to her. Heaving another sigh, he reached for her hand and put his clean shirt in it. “Please put this on. You have no idea how distracting you are right now.”

Her eyes widened before a cheeky little grin spread across her face, but he shushed her so he could finish. “I need you to pay attention right now.”

Still grinning, she pulled away from him and turned her back before slipping off her ripped shirt and sliding the new one over her shoulders.

He tried to steer his gaze away, but... Goddess, that ass and figure of hers...

“You were saying?” she said when she turned around, his shirt large enough to cover that delicious fanny.

Coughing, he cleared his throat as he tried to push the image to the back of his mind and regain his initial train of thought. “So, ah...” he stumbled, running his hand through his hair as his face heated up. “We know that a lycan’s bite causes a human to turn into a monster, but was that the bite of a lycan in human form or wolf form? It has never been specified which form the lycan was in when biting a human. Would the results differ?”

“What exactly are you trying to say?” she asked. “That there may be more to this whole biting thing, or what?”

Taking her hand, he led to her the edge of the bed and sat down. She took a seat next to him as he laced their fingers together between them. His thoughts were running around in circles. He gave his head a gentle shake, not sure if he was explaining himself adequately enough.

“What if there’s more between humans and lycans than we know?” he asked as he looked up from their hands and into her eyes. “What if there existed human and lycan mates before? What if we’re not the first case? What happened to the others?”

He’d never questioned their history before. Never questioned the rules regarding human and lycan interactions. Never questioned the Council. Now, with Aubree in his life, everything he believed, everything he had been taught, didn’t add up.

The Goddess, in her benevolent wisdom, couldn’t have made his soulmate a human by mistake, could she? She couldn’t have reincarnated Adelaide’s soul into a human body for the sake of tormenting him for all the mistakes he’d made in the past? For the human lives he had taken?

“What if the Goddess made you human for a reason?” he mused.

Her brows knotted together. “Are you saying I should be worshiping your deity?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Your soul is lycan, but your body is human.”

“What if I’m not the reincarnation of Adelaide?” she asked.

“You are,” he said as he reached up to brush a lock of her hair behind her ear. “I’m sure of it.”

“How? How can you be so sure?”

Leaning toward her, he pressed his forehead to hers, smiling at the contact and feeling the connection with her. “Because I feel it. The connection is too strong—as if our souls had been connected before. Normally, we don’t feel each other’s emotions until after we’ve sealed the matebond, but we feel them already. And you feel a connection with everyone in the pack, something you shouldn’t unless your soul has connected with them before.”

He pulled back and gazed into her eyes as he cupped her cheek in his palm. “You are the reincarnation of Adelaide. I’m certain of it.”

An inkling of fear slipped through his touch as her scent shifted and she swallowed. “If we do seal the matebond, what will happen to me? Will Adelaide come back and push me out?”

He frowned. “I don’t know, but I don’t think so. The soul is an intangible body of energy. I’m not the best person to talk to about this matter. Seeing as I can’t reach Amora, the one who would know more about the world than anyone else I know, Gunner would be the best one to talk to about that.”

He stroked her cheek with his thumb, hoping to ease some of the fear in her heart. “Don’t worry. You know, I won’t do anything to risk losing you.”

“Even if it means getting Adelaide back?”

His heart clenched in pain. Were they really going back to this?

“Sorry, that was unfair,” she murmured, as she tore her gaze from his, but he didn’t want her to run away from this.

“Hey,” he coaxed, “look at me.”

She bit her bottom lip before she would look up at him.

He held her gaze, trying to use his eyes to communicate to her how much she meant to him. “You’re scared. I understand that. It worries me too because this is beyond my knowledge. Your happiness and well-being are my top priorities. I won’t risk losing you. How many times do I have to reiterate this? I want you.”

He pressed his lips softly to hers and when he drew away, she gazed up at him with her heart hammering in his ears.

“When you tell me that you love me, maybe then I will be able to believe you,” she whispered.

He opened his mouth, but she pressed her finger against his lips. “And not now, because you’ll only be saying it to appease me.”

Smirking, he snatched her hand before she could pull away and kissed her knuckles. “Very well, Röslein. Seems you need more convincing. I accept the challenge.”