Page 104 of Love Bites

“Thank you,” Lou said, her expression grateful. “I’m sure he makes it good for you—but thank you for taking care of him. He needed that desperately.”

“He takes care of me too,” I admitted. “We’ve never really acknowledged being mates in the real way, but I think we might be moving toward that. I’m not sure. I know his feelings for me are growing, but he hasn’t said anything about it. And I’m just… it’s a lot.”

“What do you mean, in a real way?” Kara asked. Her voice was curious.

My face flushed warmer. “He forced me to mate with him, remember? I’m over it now, I know it was his best option. But when we sealed the bond, we agreed that nothing was going to change. We were going to keep hating each other, and feed from each other just because the bond demanded it. We never talked about being anything more than that.”

“You haven’t hated each other for a long time now,” Lou pointed out.

“Longer than I want to admit.”

“Then what’s not real about your bond?” Kara asked me.

“I don’t know. We had rules against the normal mate stuff, like holding hands and snuggling and having vulnerable conversations. We snuggled for the first time last night.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kara grumbled.

I sighed. “It seemed like a good way to stop myself from developing feelings for him at the time.”

“And what about now?” Lou asked.

“I don’t know.”

It was the truth.

I’d just kneeled beneath his desk and given him a blowjob during a boring financial meeting—which was absolutely insane—but I still didn’t know if I could tell him that I loved him.

Or if he was sure enough about his emotions to admit that he loved me too.

What if I opened up to him, and he told me he didn’t feel the same way?

Or what if he wanted me to keep hating him?

There were a million things that could go wrong if I admitted the truth, and so very few ways it could go right.

I needed to be sure before I opened up, didn’t I?

“How does he feel about you?” Kara asked, finally injecting me. “You have to know, don’t you?”

I nodded. “He loves me. But some emotions are buried deep. I don’t know ifheknows that he loves me. If I tell him I think Ifeel the same way, and he hasn’t realized his feelings yet, it could ruin everything. It’s a risk. And I don’t usually take risks.”

I wasn’t like Izzy—I couldn’t mate with a stranger just to get out of Vamp Manor. I’d done it because there was no other way to protect myself and my sisters. And even though I knew now that Damian wouldn’t have really given us to Curtis, I hadn’t known that at the time.

If I had, I might’ve refused him.

And who knew what would’ve happened from there.

“He never hated you,” Lou said. “He was just trying to cope with the mate bond, and made a mess of it. I tore into him for forcing you to bond with him.”

“I’m starting to believe that.” I ran a hand through the top of my hair, making a mess of the golden waves. Damian had already done the same, so it wasn’t like they could get much worse. “I think I just need more time to work through my feelings.”

“He’s your mate, honey. You’ve got all the time in the world.” Kara put a Band-Aid over the injection site, even though we both knew it was unnecessary. “You’re all set.”

“Thank you.” I gave her a quick hug, and hugged Lou too before heading out to meet Damian.

After lunch, I was meeting up with my sisters.

We’d help Izzy pack… and then we’d go for a swim, just in case it was a while before we saw her again. We could hope like hell that her mate wouldn’t keep her from us, but with how much she wanted to get away, I was worried about how often we’d see her.

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