Page 142 of The Price of Ice

“Mmmm...” His boyfriend turned his head just enough to squint at him one-eyed. He looked like he could barely keep it open and his curls were a disaster, one of them squashed against his brow with sweat.

He was stunning.

“Do you...” Kallen licked his lips, but kept his gaze on him. “This is crazy, but I can hear your heart.”

As if to confirm it, right then the calm rhythm stuttered before starting to speed up. Kallen instinctively dragged Levy closer. “It’s okay,” he promised.

Impossibly, that was all it took for Levy to relax again. “Let me sit up.”

Kallen did, regretfully, but in a way it was good because even though they weren’t touching, he could stillfeel him. And it wasn’t just that he could have tapped out to his heartbeat, because he could also tell Levy was waking up.

His eyes fell to the marks of teeth on Levy’s chest he didn’t remember leaving, but came back up as a glass of water was thrust into his field of vision.

“It is a little crazy,” Levy admitted thoughtfully, but he was smiling softly too. Nervous, but happy.

Kallen didn’t understand, but he sipped at his water anyway. He was curious, but he wasn’t worried.

“You feel it?”

Levy nodded. “Of course, it goes both ways.”

“Whatgoes both ways?” Kallen asked, dragging the sheets up over himself. Now that they weren’t touching it was starting to feel a little chilly.

For the first time, Levy hesitated. “Well, the bond?”

The word was enough to shake Kallen out of his contemplative haze, making him straighten in alarm, but Levy was already reaching out to take his hand. “It’s okay! It fades. It’s not...” He gestured at Kallen’s neck. “I didn’t bite you, it’s not like that.”

Kallen gave him a little nod and squeezed his hand, but he had to look away for a moment. He’d spent his life terrified of being bound by an alpha, trapped into submission he couldn’t shake. But this wasn’t what he’d feared. In fact, he realised, he felt a little sad at the idea of losing it. And he was losing it, likehe’d stepped too far away when he’d panicked. He met Levy’s eyes, soft and attentive and a little sad too. “Does it have to?”

“What?”

Kallen swallowed. “Does it have to fade?”

Levy’s face brightened even as he shook his head and took Kallen’s glass from his hand to put it down on the bedside table. “No,” he said, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth, just a peck like he couldn’t quite resist. His heart was still going a little fast, Kallen noticed, and he could notice because somehow they’d got synchronised again. This time, it wasn’t nerves, or at least not just nerves.Anticipation.“I mean, you gotta work at it if you want to hold onto it. Do things together. Sex is the obvious one, but it could be anything where you are both feeling the same thing.”

“So this is the stuff from fairy tales? Looking into your true love’s eyes and knowing how they feel?”

He’d never got around to believing in all the romantic bullshit before he’d got slapped silly by reality, but now it somehow seemed feasible. If Levy was real, and lure, then why not the kind of bonds that weren’t made by an alpha inserting his saliva into an omega’s adrenal glands so the omega’s body would imprint on that particular alpha and no other could touch him?

“I never thought of it like that,” Levy admitted. “Don’t go biting any poisoned apples trusting I can kiss you better, please,” he added, a joke that didn’t quite land. “Sorry. I guess... It’s normal for me.”

His stomach plummeted and his eyes fell to where Levy still held onto him. “Oh. So you have done it before...?”

“What? No!” Levy touched his chin with his free hand, but Kallen resisted and he let it go, resting it against Kallen’s collarbone instead. “That’s not what I meant. My granny was from Peliar, they don’t do biting over there. She wouldn’t do it no matter how much my grandpa’s family pushed for it. They allthought it made couples live longer, and maybe they were right, I mean, she’s gone, but...”

Kallen put his free hand on top of Levy’s on his own chest. He’d lost track of his boyfriend’s heartbeat again, but he didn’t want him to think he was alone with this. “Lots of reasons for that.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

It wasn’t easy to look up, feeling as wide open as he did, but he trusted Levy. “It felt nice. Close.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded.

“Okay, that’s... so we could—” Levy cut himself off.

“We could,” Kallen confirmed. “Like, I don’t know how, but we can try.”

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