Page 105 of Brandy Snap: Part Two
Kai wiped all those kinds of logical thoughts away as he smiled up at me, and I carried on playing with his hair.
We were lying in our pile of pillows and blankets on the bed again. Kai stretched out on his back, using his palm as a pillow, while I lay alongside him, propped up on one elbow, looking over him.
The first time I’d seen him with his hair down was on a screen during my heat. I’d spent so long staring, mesmerised by him because he was so beautiful. And it was the same again.
He was a perfect balance of feminine and masculine that was so completely him, and he knew how gorgeous he was.
“I’m going to get ideas if you keep looking at me like that,” he hummed as I twisted loose strands around my fingers.
“Like what?” I asked with a purr.
“Like you’re contemplating something oh so serious.” He smirked as he poked the furrow of my brow. “What’s going on in that mind of yours?”
I tried not to let my nerves show. I’d noticed whenever I let my doubts creep in, he’d react strongly to it, whether he realised it or not.
Being connected to him was amazing, but there really was no way to hide when we lay together so closely.
I couldn’t tell him that I wasn’t sure if what I felt for him was real. I didn’t know if I was feeding off of his feelings, if it was my omega instincts, or maybe it was literally the bite. Sometimes it felt like I was inside his body, especially when we were making love. As if my consciousness had somehow transferred inside him, and I could feel every tiny twitch and movement like I was controlling him.
Yesterday he’d left for an hour to get us food, and by the time he returned, I was shaking and whining as if I couldn’t live without him.
And that didn’t feel like me. At least not the old me.
“I don’t know where we go from here. Everything’s changed so much already,” I said, though it barely covered the thoughts I’d had when I was lucid enough to speak.
He smiled lazily as he teased his finger up and down my collarbone, happily tracing the lines of my body like a meditation.
“All we have to do is this stupid dinner tomorrow, then the Selection Ceremony, and then you’re ours forever.”
He was as caught up in the haze as I was. Maybe that was why we had lost our sense of where each of us started and ended.
“Don’t we have to leave the nest for that?” I asked, lifting his hair to press a kiss against the strands.
“Ugh, yeah, true. I guess there’s that…” He rolled his eyes as he sighed dramatically.
Though I loved his possessiveness, I hadn’t seen Sin and Caspian since I arrived. And feeling their presence through Kai wasn’t enough to make any kind of decision. The last time I’d seen them, my heart was breaking as my nest was torn from me.
Sin might have offered me comfort, and my connection to Caspian had changed, but it didn’t mean I could jump right into mating with them. I wanted to get to know them as people, the same as I was doing with Kai.
Though it didn’t stop me sinking my teeth into Kai every chance I had, as well as desperately reaching for Sin and Caspian to find them because I wanted them with us so badly.
Kai kept stroking me as my thoughts raced. Across my collarbones, down my arms, slipping over my waist. I moved and curved with him, quietly showing him where it felt best. Even though it was a single finger, each touch felt electric.
I released his hair so I could do the same, circling the smooth lines of his chest with a relaxed smile.
He found the V of my hip. And I thought I knew where he was going next.
But nerves burst in me as he hovered over my scar. I sucked in my stomach, flinching away from his touch.
He felt the way my heart plummeted, saw how my gaze shot away from his as I bit my lip to stop myself from gasping.
I batted his hand away, a shudder going through me as shame flared up.
I reacted too violently, and the hurt on his face stabbed through me.
“Brandy… What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up.
Even though the scar was so obvious, I’d hoped they’d never ask about it. Especially not after how they reacted when they first saw it, and the sheer fury he and Caspian threw at me when they thought I was a Knottinghill host with children. It ached too much to even think about.
