Page 136 of Stream Heat
He looked me dead in the eye. “The others marked you in moments of crisis or intensity. Instinct. Need. Mine will be deliberate. Conscious. An actual, mutual choice.”
That landed in my gut and didn’t budge. “That fits. It feels… right.”
“There’s one other thing,” he said. “A bond like this, it isn’t chemical. Not just biology. It’s more mental, more spiritual. You’ll know, when it happens, because every part of you will be wide awake. No haze to hide behind.”
He wasn’t warning me, not really. But he was making sure I understood that this was going to require every ounce of honesty I owned. No escape hatches.
I didn’t flinch. “When?”
“Now, if you were ready.” Malik’s voice hadn’t just been calm, it’d been a certainty that pushed everything else inside me down. The restless, jittering nerves finally settled because he’d already decided that I was ready or I was about to be, and that was how it was going to go. “This room was designed for presence. For mindfulness. For being fully aware in each moment.”
I glanced around, noting that the meditation space was new to me. The soft morning light, the crisp, clean lines, the lack ofanything to distract the eye, they shouted focus, clarity. Nothing to hide behind, no excuse.
“I’m ready,” I said. And the thing was, I actually meant it. The words just fell out, heavy but right.
Malik nodded once. He stepped in close, grabbed my hands, his were warm, steady, and in that instant it was as if he’d tethered me to right then. “First, we breathe together.” His thumbs rubbed slow circles into my palms, grounding and hypnotic. “Synchronizing our rhythms. Becoming fully present with each other.”
I inhaled with him using the same pattern as before, four counts in, held for two, six counts out. Over and over, my lungs filled and emptied in cadence with his. With every breath, I lost a little of the scatter and static and began to notice more, the brush of his skin on mine, the energy winding between us, subtle but unmistakable.
“Good,” he murmured, his eyes locked on me, dark and brilliant and impossible to look away from. “Now, tell me why you want this bond. Not what you think it means. Why you, Kara Quinn, want to be connected to me, specifically.”
That landed with force. No chance to hide, no shield to put up. The question cut past everything. It was about me, not a designation, not the pack structure, not a crisis. Just me. Weeks earlier, I would have flinched and run. But now, with four bonds burning steady in my veins and Malik’s quiet assurance wrapped around me, the answer came before I could stop it.
“Because you see me. Not what I did, not what I’d lived through, not what I might turn into later. Me, right now.” I swallowed, and it felt like swallowing a stone. “You see the real me, and you find value there. Not because you wanted something, or needed something, you just… see me. No expectations. No weight. Just acceptance.”
His expression shifted, losing some of its control, reverence, maybe, in the way his mouth softened and his eyes went infinite. “And that’s what you need? What you want?”
“Yeah.” It was barely a sound. But it landed, all right. “More than I knew. More than I ever thought, until right now.”
He let go of my hands and framed my face instead. His palms were broad and gentle, the kind of touch one didn’t want to shake off. “Then that’s what my bond will give you. Not just in heat, or meltdown, or when the world’s blowing up around us. But in between, the ordinary, nothing-special days. The present that usually gets drowned out by regret and anxiety.”
His scent filled the space, sandalwood and linen. I caught new notes that hadn’t been there before. It didn’t have the hot-metal edge of Ash, the wildfire of Theo, the contained intensity of Jace, or the wood-and-earth foundation of Reid. This was different. Deliberate calm. The quiet force of being seen.
“How do we do this?” My voice was a secret, barely there.
“With complete awareness.” His thumbs skated along my cheeks, the touch feather-light and infinite. “I am going to kiss you, Kara, not as a means to an end, but for itself. I want you to feel everything, the pressure, the heat, the connection. Nothing else matters. Just. This.”
I nodded. I got it. Not passion, not desperation, not surrender. Presence.
When his lips touched mine, it was nothing like anything that had come before. Not because it was hotter, or softer, or more experienced. But because I was nowhere else. I wasn’t thinking about what came after, or what had come before, or where it was heading. All I knew was the texture of his mouth, the intent, this moment.
He kissed me like there had been no before or after. Each press and slide, every tiny shift, was the whole point. I matched him, breath for breath, a repeat of earlier, but deeper.
When we parted, I was changed. No other word for it. More awake in my own skin, more aware of the sparks running between us. The bonds inside me vibrated, already knotted with anticipation and a promise on the cusp of being sealed.
“Now,” Malik said, his palms moving down to hover at my shoulders in a careful hold, “we kept going. Every touch, every sensation, should be felt fully. Nothing skipped. No rush.”
What came after wasn’t like anything I’d had with the other Alphas. Not better, not worse. Just… nothing the same. Reid had brought possession, the shield of belonging. Theo had been a firestorm, chaos in human skin. Jace had quieted every part of me, and Ash had rebuilt me with his precision. Malik? Malik was the slow pulse of the present.
Even the way he undressed me was an act of possession. Not a strip, not a scramble, but the unhurried tug and slip of fabric, each layer revealing new skin to the air and to him. His fingers skimmed the path he uncovered, trailing lazy arcs and spirals down my back, drawing my awareness to every place he touched.
“Stay with me.” His voice was close, low, his breath ghosting my ear as his scent wrapped around me, warm spice and deep wood, steadying, claiming. “Don’t climb into your head. Don’t skip ahead. Just feel this. Just me.”
I tried. But my mind wanted to leap forward, to anticipate. Malik felt it each time I drifted, I could tell in the subtle narrowing of his eyes, and brought me back with the press of his palm, the faint scrape of his nails down my side, or simply the quiet command of his scent tightening around me.
Piece by piece, he bared me, never losing that deliberate pace. By the time we were both naked, cross-legged on the cushions facing each other, my body was a live wire. Not desperate, not yet, but hyper-aware. Every nerve tuned to him.
“This,” he said, his hands resting warm on my thighs, eyes locked on mine, “is what I can give you. Not just here. Inall things. Awareness. The ability to live every second without losing it to the noise.”
