Page 63 of Mating of Convenience
“Why does she want to get my initials tattooed?” I asked, throwing my hands up for good measure. “And why the hell does it have to be a butterfly?”
“What, you’d rather it was a turtle? Or a penguin?” Raph was openly laughing now. Fine supportive husband he was.
“I don’t want her to get a tattoo at all!” I was this close to stomping my feet on the ground.
My mate kept laughing. “Don’t worry. She’s not getting a tattoo any time soon. Even if she had the money, she lacks parental consent, and even if she somehow got that too, I doubt anyone would put ink on her. I wouldn’t.”
“What?” I asked in mock surprise. “There’s someone out there youdon’twant to ink?”
“I never said that I don’t want to. But I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, why not?” I challenged.
My mate’s eyes darkened. “Because you’re my husband and I love you, and if anyone gets to carry your name on their skin, it should be me.”
“Really? You would get my name tattooed?” I had to mull that thought over in my head for a moment. “I’m not sure I like that idea.”
“No?” Raph’s gaze intensified on me. “I thought you’d like it if I carried your mark. Doesn’t that appeal to the alpha in you or something?”
“Not if it wasn’t me who put that mark there.”
“Oh, I see.” My mate gave me a sexy little smile. “You want to mark me yourself.”
Now that he put it likethat… “That’s definitely what I want.” Heat blazed through me, imagining all the different ways I could mark my omega.
It was amazing, really, that after all the sex we’d had over the past weeks, I still felt excited about undressing him again. I inhaled his scent--so close to me and so thick in the air--and felt as if I was a teenager all over again, smelling an omega in heat for the first time in my life. Closing my eyes, I drew Raphael’s scent deeper into my lungs.
Was I imagining it or was there something more intense about it tonight?
“Angel…” I opened my eyes again. “Did you pop scent enhancers or something?” Was that what he’d been doing? His way of celebrating?
Raph grinned and shook his head. “Not exactly. But something like that.”
Something like that?I inhaled again and my head spun as desire slammed into me. I wanted to think more about what Raph had done, but it was so hard to think when I was inhaling more of his scent with every breath that I took.
“Angel, what did you…?“
While I spoke, Raph stood from his chair and rounded the table to sit in my lap. “See if you can figure it out,” he said before pressing a kiss on my lips.
His proximity, the feeling of his lips on mine… none of this was making it easier for me to form a clear thought, but I got the feeling it wasn’t really his intention to let me do that either. Not if the way he ran his fingers under my shirt was anything to go by. For a second there, I forgot why I was trying to think at all.
“Raph,” I breathed in the space between one kiss and the next. My mate was relentless tonight, interrupting our make-out session for only a second to pull my shirt over my head. I helpfully raised my arms. The less fabric there was between us the better. I tried to speak again once my torso was naked, but Raph had no interest inlettingme speak. Even as his mouth left mine, he made it hard for me to form words in other ways. His tongue licked the side of my neck, his fingers skated over my nipples and his ass ground into the building hardness in my groin until I could do nothing but buck my hips and wish we’d already lost our pants.
Honestly, we should just be naked all the time while we were home. It would make things so much easier.
“Nate…” Raph spoke my name on an exhale, hot breath puffing against the juncture of my neck. It wasn’t just his breath that was hot, though. When I let my fingers run into the nape of his neck to tangle in the fine hair, he was hot there too. Burning up, actually. So much so that it gave me pause.
“Angel?” I’d stopped thinking for a minute there, while Raph was attacking me with his mouth, but now that I worried something might be wrong with my mate, my mind was frantically trying to make up for lost time. Especially when Raph didn’t respond to me. He wasn’t moving anymore either. “Raph?” I tried again, gently tilting his chin up to look at him. His eyes were open, but his gaze was unfocused.
Shit.
He’d taken something. Butwhat?
“Raphael?” I asked more insistently, but there was no point. He obviously wasn’t hearing me. I had to… Shit, I had to get him to the hospital. And even though I knew he wasn’t listening, I kept talking to him anyway, if only to distract myself from the rising panic pressing on my chest. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I’ll figure it out, okay? It’s going to be fine. I’ll just…”
Carefully, I slipped out from under my mate and positioned him on the chair instead. I stroked his hair with one hand while getting my phone out of my pocket with the other. For a second, I wondered how much an ambulance was going to cost us, but then Raph closed his eyes and fell over in the chair and I stopped caring.
Iwasnot going to let anything happen to him.
