Page 6 of Legally Mated
Chapter5
We relaxedon the bed and eventually I dozed a little, with Laine a warm solidity at my back. He’d wrapped his arm around my waist, his hand resting casually over my lowerbelly.
“You know,” he said suddenly. “You never did say where this scar came from.” His fingers moved and traced the thin pink line that stretched from one hip to the other. “Is that why you have to take those pills too? Something to do with that? It looks wellhealed.”
My breath froze in my chest, then eased out in a silent sigh of relief. “Yeah, something like that.” No one knew about that mark, except him now and my parents since I was born, and it was a blessing that he hadn’t realized what it was. I’d certainly worked hard enough to keep it hidden—lights off, no communal showers, no casual nudity around the house. But still… Dammit to the Barrens, I knew I should have made him turn off the lights, or turned them offmyself.
“No nerve damage? You’re really sensitivethere.”
Lysoon, I was a fool. “Sometimes the skin around scar tissue gets supersensitive.”
His hand stilled and the silence stretched out like my nerves. Luckily, before I could break and confess my sins, he said, “Does it bother you? I kind of thought youlikedit.”
I did. Nothing like stroking a fellow’s omega line to send his libido through the roof. “It doesn’t bother me,” I said mildly. “It’s just veryintense.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He left off tormenting my omega line to lace his fingers through mine and squeeze. “You don’t have to hide it from me. It’s definitely not the ugliest scar I’veeverseen.”
“Yeah? And you’ve seenalot?”
“Criminal lawyer, remember?” He kissed the side of my neck. “Seriously, though. You don’t have to hide things from me. We’ve been dating for twoyearsnow.”
“Is that what this is?Dating?”
“What else woulditbe?”
“Sex?” I shook my head and pulled his hand up to my mouth to kiss the knuckles. “Never mind. You promised me icecream.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, and I had that sense again of a hunter stalking his prey. “I have chocolate in the freezer here, but why don’t wegoout?”
“I locked the door.” I didn’t want to go out, not tonight, not face the stares that seemed to just bounce off his tough hide. Not that he never stood up for me, and he was scary enough when he got his lawyer-face on that we were mostly unmolested. And they knew us at the icecreamshop.
Ah, Barrens. Might as well be shot for a sheep as for a lamb.Maybe it would be better tonight. “Dammit, you’ve talked meintoit.”
He snorted and got up. “Ididn’t doanything.”
He was right about that too. I loved the icecreamshop.
* * *
Laine founda parking spot not too far from the ice cream shop, down a little side street lined with old houses. He was looking forward to this—it felt to him like there’d been some change in their relationship tonight. Garrick’s decision to go against the pack’s—or more rightly, Holland’s—decree that he shouldn’t spend any more nights at Laine’s seemed to Laine like Garrick’s first real choice favoring something more permanent between them. Up until then, Garrick had been doing his best to slide in between the spaces of the pack’s beliefs and his own desires. He’d done an amazing job of it, at least until Laine had pushed him into bringing the reporter to Green Moon. Would Garrick have agreed so readily if they hadn’t just newly becomelovers?
Though he wondered if he’d made the right choice, pretending not to recognize the omega line for what it was. At least, that’s what he assumed it was—it was in the right place, with the right orientation. Seeing it had snapped together at least a dozen disparate clues in his brain and it was only the snowball-on-a-hill inertia of his intentions that had kept him moving forward and let him hide his discovery long enough to thinkaboutit.
The result of that thinking? Garrick hadn’t felt comfortable enough to take the opening Laine had offered him, so Laine would keep Garrick’s secret. Despite the twinging sadness it gave him to know that after two years in his bed, Garrick had never trusted him enough to share this part ofhimself.
It would have to be hard to conceal something of this weight for so long, though, and a frightening thought to consider revealing it. Knowing how omegas were treated in the packs, he could see why Garrick preferred to live in that isolating secrecy. It did make Garrick’s success in law school easier to understand; the degree of self-control needed for that lifelong deception was both awe-inspiring andfrightening.
It felt…sacrilegious…to tear away that veil, but it also felt dishonest to hide hisknowledge.
A hell of a dilemma. He’d think about itlater.
Garrick was in a much better mood now—lighter, more playful. “I don’t know whether to try something new or go for the chocolate and peanut butter again,” he mused as they walked along the sidewalk. The tabs on his collar shone like insults, and Laine dearly wanted to just rip them off and throw them in the gutter where they belonged. Had humanity learned nothing in the years since the SecondWorldWar?
Apparentlynot.
But they were known here at this shop and the young woman behind the counter smiled when she saw them come in. Laine supposed that Garrick’s clear delight in the products of the tiny shop was enough to win over any retailer. They got in line, Garrick’s tabs seemingly unnoticed by the people in front of them. Maybe it was just Laine who found them such anaffront.
No, he knew better. He’d seen it, in large ways and small. Some people were open in their distrust, theirprejudice—call a spade a spade here.Others were just a little slower to notice Garrick, a little less polite, a little lessaccommodating.
