Page 6 of Matched and Mated

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Pinky swear.”

We hooked our small fingers and shook on our new oath. Thank goodness she knew when I sent out the SOS that alcohol would be required. This was exactly what I needed. A big bottle of wine and a chance to cry, scream and get drunk. We’d been friends back on Earth. I’d followed her to Trion when she mated Roark. Natalie had insisted I accompany her and Noah. Since Roark was a councilor, he’d been able to approve the transfer on the spot. I’d been on the planet with Natalie for two years and could now make Cookies and Cream ice cream from the S-gen machine. I drove Natalie’s staff crazy, but I loved to bake and had mastered the art of poofing flour, eggs, butter and the fixings for chocolate chip cookies or snickerdoodles—there was a reason I was Noah’s favorite Auntie—but I didn’t have the same inside track for the good alcohol. The real booze. The liquid gold she was pouring liberally into the glasses, thank god.

I needed a vat of it. An IV right to my heart.

Even though it was my quarters we were in, she turned and handed me a very full glass as if she were the hostess. While there weren’t grapes on Trion, there was another kind of oddly named fruit that was fermented. I wasn’t a connoisseur by any means, picking up the smoky notes and all that, but my taste buds knew a good wine when it hit them and this stuff packed a punch.

Natalie took her own glass, full to nearly the top, and plopped down on my sofa. “Okay. Spill.”

As I dropped down onto the sofa in my living area beside her, we both knew she wasn’t talking about the wine.

Sighing, I bent my knees and tucked my legs up beneath me. It had been over a month since I’d last seen Brax and I missed him. Terribly. “It’s Brax.”

“Of course it is.” Natalie looked at me with nothing but sympathy in her blue eyes. “Did you talk to him today? What did he say to you? That jerk, I’ll strangle him if he wasn’t good to you.”

“What? When? I thought he was out on a mission.” What the hell was she talking about? Brax was here? In the city?

And he hadn’t called me?

Oblivious to my pain, Natalie kept talking. “He was here, last night, giving his report. I assumed he told you he was leaving again tomorrow, and that’s why you were upset.” Her raised brows and matter-of-fact voice made me feel like I’d just swallowed an entire bucket of ice. Brax had been… was here, in the city? He was alive and well and hadn’t seen me in weeks.

I shook my head and took a gulp of wine. “No, that’s not why.”

Maybe it would have been, if he’d contacted me.

But he hadn’t called. Not once. No messages. No comms. Nothing. I’d been in total communications blackout for the last five weeks trying to focus on my little students, worried sick, imagining him dead and rotting in the sand, lost in the middle of the desert. I’d imagined scorpions climbing in and out of his eye sockets—and they didn’t even have scorpions on Trion. I’d been going crazy with worry, thinking I’d made a mistake the last time I saw him, thinking I’d misread his words. Waiting for him to get home so I could ask him once and for all to be mine. And he’d been here? Home? In the city and NOT calling me?

“Shit.” I didn’t normally cuss, at least not out loud, but this was too much for my brain to process and keep control of my mouth at the same time.

The last time I was with Brax, I’d fallen asleep in his arms, too blissed out on sex swing induced orgasms to do anything else. When I woke up, he, too, was asleep. He’d said our time was short, that he’d leave again in the morning.

The idea of watching him walk away—again—had been too much. I hadn’t been able to be there when he left. Again.

And after what he’d said, when he’d been fucking me as I’d been tied to that swing—you will look beautiful one day, Miranda, when your mate adorns you properly—I knew I couldn’t stay. Couldn’t say goodbye. I had come to realize that he had no intention of ever being my mate. He spoke openly of another male taking on that role even while he’d been buried balls deep inside me.

He intended me for another. Not for him.

And so I’d left, sneaked out in the middle of the night. For the first time in all the months we’d had sex, I’d done the walk of shame. Felt that our friends with benefits arrangement was… cheap.

I took a big gulp of wine. Then another.

“Okaaaay.” Natalie dragged out the word. “Then what’s up?”

“I think you were right,” I said finally.

Her mouth dropped open and she stared, wide-eyed. “What time is it?”

“What?” I asked, frowning. “Eight-thirty? Why?”

“Because you never say I’m right. I want to get this on record.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed, took a gulp of the wine. “Whatever. I’m done.”

“Done? With what?”

“Friends with benefits.”

Understanding crossed her face. “Why? The sex isn’t good anymore?”

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