Page 52 of It's You
She leaned her cheek on his shoulder and wept as he rubbed her back gently, his other hand hovering protectively over his lap.
“That f-felt so good, and I kicked you in the b-balls and r-ruined it,” she sputtered through more tears. “I should just go h-home.”
He leaned back and put his hands on her face, turning it up to see his, searching her watery eyes.
“Darcy. Listen to me. There is no scenario—none—in which I can imagine not wanting you beside me. Not right now. Not ever.” He rubbed the tears away with the pad of his thumb.
She swallowed, her heart fluttering at the earnestness of his words, at once captivated and frightened by them, by the faith he seemed to have in them, the absoluteness of his regard for her. She rested her head on his chest, and he resumed rubbing her back. Could she trust him? History proved otherwise.
“But youleftme,” she argued quietly. “Where did you go when you left me?”
“I got in my car that night as soon as the play was over, and I drove north. I went straight to the pack elders in our Bloodlands north of Quebec.”
“Bloodlands?”
“It’s what we call our native land, our homeland. I asked about the binding. How it was possible that I should be bound to you when tradition states I should be bound to one of my own. I knew it had happened. But I didn’t trust it. I didn’t understand it. I’d never heard of one of us becoming bound to one of you.”
“Should I be offended?”
“Why?”
“You talk aboutuslike we’re a whole other race or something.”
“It just had never happened before…that I knew of.”
“No Métis ever married a?—”
“Stop interrupting.”
She furrowed her brows, snuggling closer to him.
“But to answer your question…Sure, you can ignore the binding, but you can’t choose for yourself, and you can’t change it once it happens. It’s for life. And if you ignore it, you, um…You miss out on, um…some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like eyespeak and, um…you called it soul flight and going inside. Like the connection I have with you, Darcy. Like last night when you…”
Darcy jerked her head back to look at him, eyes wide.
When you climaxed. You’ve never experienced that with anyone else before, have you?
No. Wait, Jack…Have you? Have you ever had an orgasm?
She cringed against the bald delivery of her rushed thoughts, but held his eyes bravely.
Maybe on my own…but, no. Not with a woman.
Never?
He shook his head, his cheeks coloring pink under his thick, black stubble.
Can you…with me?
He glanced down at his abused lap and made an annoyed face before catching her eyes again.
I think so. But we’ll have to wait just a little longer to find out.
Darcy’s heart pounded as she leaned her head back down on his chest and felt his hand stroking her back. His belief in this binding was so firmly founded that he didn’t believe he could climax with another woman other than her? Again, she was simultaneously enchanted and terrified by the absoluteness of his beliefs, but if she hadn’t had enough reasons to want him, now her bodyachedto fuse with his, to find out if she could give him something that no other woman had ever been able to. It was heady, this power she had over him, whether it was actual orin his head. It made her heart beat faster and her belly leap with excitement.
