Page 124 of Ulune's Daughter

Any pensiveness packing might have created vanishes when Rhodes knocks on my back door as I’m emerging from the bathroom. He’s at least a half-hour early. I couldn’t care less. I can’t wait to see him.

I run to the back door and throw it open. We collide with an “oof.”

Then I’m in his arms. He tosses a duffle bag to the side and kicks the back door shut behind him as he carries me through the house. He has my top and bra off in the time I’ve pulled off his sweater and unbuttoned his shirt. Who wears a button-down to a dirty weekend, anyway?

I’m about to object to his choice of clothing when his mouth finds mine. He licks into my mouth, then drags his teeth over my lower lip, finding the sore spots from where I impaled myself on Lawson’s fangs. He scrapes until I taste copper and sucks the taste from my tongue, before tossing me onto the bed and following me down.

Chapter38

Old Crow

LUCA

My twin is fucking my mate.

My boyfriend is fucking my mate.

I’m fucking my hand.

I finish with a couple of lackluster pumps that speckle my abs with heat. The orgasm’s barely worth the grunt I give it as I finish. I don’t have Mr. Alpha Cait’s spines, just a frill under my corona to stimulate my mate; it doesn’t even rise. I wipe up with a towel since Mom impressed on us early the importance of not leaving our “boy messes” for the house staff to clean up. Then—spitefully I admit—I toss the towel across the room to land in Law’s bed. Which still smells of our mate.

With a twist of my fingers, I summon a breeze that scoops up one of Law’s pillows and wafts it across to my bed. I tuck it under my cheek, fill my nose with Kellan’s warm, wonderful scent, and curl into a ball around it.

I don’t have to spend tonight alone. Knowing that I have a fated mate, Rho’s never asked me for fidelity. I’m not even with Kellan and probably won’t be for months. There are plenty of willing she-Cait drinking and dancing in honor of the departed not a hundred feet from where I am. Or he-Cait, if I was feeling like swinging that way tonight.

But I haven’t wanted anyone other than Kellan and Rhodes since meeting them. They’ve got my dick on lock. My heart, too. Rhodes thinks he was suffering while Kellan was icing him out? Law thinks he’s had it tough loafing around in his fur while she was lost in Faery? They should try wearing my fucking skin. I haven’t been able to give my mate physical comfort. I can’t kiss her or hug her better. I’m not welcome in her house. She won’t confide in me because of this ridiculous line she’s drawn between teacher and student. I’m the one who figured out what was happening to her, but she won’t even talk to me about it. All I’ve been able to do is watch as she grows colder and more distant. Even though I believe she’s becoming something more, I don’t want to lose what she is already.

And the thing that really stings? The liars get to fuck up and keep fucking up andstillget to fuck her, while I get punished for telling the truth.

I don’t expect the world to be fair. I know it isn’t. But, yeah, a little fucking karma wouldn’t go amiss.

I could deliver the karmic bitch-slap myself. I could let it slip that my “older” brother is all of two minutes older and still a student. I could mention my boyfriend, Rhodes, during a TA session. I could be sneakier about it and arrange for their transcripts to get mixed up with her department memos.

I’ve thought about it. A lot.

But I love both fuckwits. And I don’t want to hurt Kellan like that. Even though I know she will be hurt when she discovers their deception. I don’t want to make it worse. And maybe it will be karma’s last laugh. When it all comes out, maybe I’m the last man standing. Maybe I’m the one our mate turns to for kisses and hugs to heal her broken heart. Maybe I finally reap the reward for my honesty.

Or maybe I just keep fucking my hand.

The door opens and Law comes in, smelling of the bonfires. And also, strangely, of marshmallow and chocolate.

“What have you been doing?” I ask him.

“Teaching Aine to make S’mores,” he grunts, shucking off his suit and tucking it into the hamper in the closet for the house staff to dry clean.

“S’mores?”

“Marshmallow, chocolate, and graham crackers. You toast the marshmallow over the fire?—”

“I know what a S’more is, bro. I just have no idea why you’re spending All Hallow’s Eve toasting marshmallows with our baby sister.”

Law climbs into his bed. He sniffs, grunts, and lobs the sticky towel back at me. I kick it to the side of my bed.

“Kellan taught me how to make S’mores the night of the equinox ... made me feel closer to her to share it with Aine.”

I swallow a snort at how whipped he is. “She’ll be here for breakfast.”

“Which means you won’t be here for breakfast.” He twists around several times in his bed. “Did you steal one of my pillows?”

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