Silence that Sizzles (12 page)

When she felt his teeth dig into her skin, she arched her back. Everything was going so fast, but it felt so right. She didn’t even notice when they dug in; if anything, the sensation pushed her over the edge, and her climax overtook her. It was like pain and pleasure mingled in one.

A few minutes later, their breathing finally started to settle. Kyle started to brush her hair away from her face, and his expression was one of wonderment. Kelly smiled at him. Then his fingers found the slightly bruised area where he had bit her.

Kelly winced at the touch. “I usually don’t like it that rough, but this time, I’ll forgive you.”

Kyle didn’t appear to be in a joking mood. He gently pulled her into a sitting position. “That’s not just a love bite.”

Kelly’s mind started to race. She had heard of different rumblings about the significance of biting in shifter relationships, and specifically how shifters mated. She realized then what Kyle had done. “Did you just mark me as your mate?”

A look of panic crossed Kyle’s face. Then it resettled into one that seemed much more relaxed. His mask was firmly back in place. “It’s the beginning of the mating process. That’s all. We should probably talk about this.”

“You think?” Kelly didn’t know what to do. She knew that she had strong feelings for Kyle. She knew that she wanted to have the time to explore those feelings and get to know him better. Nothing in that had pointed to this kind of commitment. At least, not yet.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t control myself. The bear wanted you.”

“I don’t understand why you talk about you and your bear like you’re two different people. They’re both you.” It was a philosophical argument the two of them had had before in Afghanistan.

“I don’t know how to explain it to you other than it’s like there are two consciousness inside of me. And both me and the bear wanted you. This is what I’ve tried to talk to you about. I’ve denied the feelings for far too long. The bear believes you are our mate. And because of that, he saw no issue in marking you as such.”

“So you are going to try to blame this on your bear? There is also the part where I haven’t agreed to be your mate, Kyle.” Kelly was flustered. This was throwing her entire world off-kilter. She had watched the world of the shifters behind the safety net of her work and her research. Now it was in her face. She was part of it. She had been marked as a shifter’s mate.

The funny thing was that idea didn’t make her as dismayed or upset she thought it might. The reason she was upset most of all was the fact that Kyle hadn’t asked her permission first. Instead, he had pushed upon her. He hadn’t even given her the opportunity to say yes. It was just like when he had locked her in his office at the club.

Kelly was confused, and she needed time to think. “I don’t think that I should stay with you tonight.”

Kyle’s look of shock was almost comical. “What are you talking about? You need me to protect you.”

“I think I’d like to stay at Sophie’s tonight.”

“No way in hell,” Kyle growled. “Especially not now.”

“I realize that we have some things to talk about, but what you did was wrong. We needed to talk about this before it happened. There are so many other things that we need to talk about too. You’ve been avoiding all of it. It’s like you want to make it go away. It’s not going to. There are things that you need to tell me before this relationship can continue to move forward, and before I would consider being your mate. I have to know what I’m getting into.” That was all the truth. Kelly knew that if he pushed her, though, she would cave. They were blustery strong words, but there was an intensity about Kyle that drew her like a moth to the flame. She had to keep her logical brain about things. She couldn’t let him push her over the edge until she was ready.

“Then I’ll stay on the couch tonight.”

“No, I want to stay with Sophie.” There was a part that ripped at her even as she said the words. She could see the pain on Kyle’s face before he covered it. Then he took out his phone. He dialed a number and put the phone to his ear. “Hey, would it be okay if Kelly stays with you tonight? I have an early morning appointment, and I want her to be able to sleep in.”

Kelly watched his slow nod. Then he put the sliding glass between them and the driver down. “Take us back to the venue, please. We’re picking up one and dropping off one.”

They didn’t say anything else as the limo turned around.

Kelly sat in a pair of Sophie’s surprisingly comfortable silk pajamas and stared forlornly at the fireplace across the room. She had a glass of wine in her hands and could hear Sophie puttering around in the kitchen behind her. She felt bad for having made Sophie leave the party early. Despite Sophie’s protests to the contrary, Kelly thought that she had been having a good time.

“So do you want to talk about it yet?” Sophie dropped onto the couch next to her. She pulled a blanket up onto their laps to cover both of them. Kelly didn’t even know that she felt cold until she was cuddled underneath the blanket. It felt like some kind of girl slumber party. She had missed all of that when she was a kid. Her nose had always been buried in books. The whole girl bonding thing was still a bit awkward for her.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I feel like everything is a mess.”

Sophie shrugged. “So why don’t you start at the beginning? I’m guessing that this sudden desire for girl time has something to do with that mark on your shoulder.” She waggled her finger at the crook of Kelly’s neck.

Kelly wondered if it was that obvious. She grimaced as she touched it. The spot was still tender. “I thought it was gone. I couldn’t see it in the mirror in the bathroom.”

“Shifters can see it. Humans can’t,” Sophie said. She took a sip of the drink in her hand and motioned for Kelly to do the same. “I know that you’re freaked out about all of this. It would probably help for you to talk about it. I’m not gonna judge you or say anything bad. I’m like a neutral third party. I’m like Switzerland.”

Kelly chuckled. Sophie was far from Switzerland in the story, and they both knew it. She didn’t have any illusions that Sophie was anything but firmly on Kyle’s side, but she appreciated the gesture nonetheless. She realized that she could use Sophie to learn a little bit more about the world that she had somehow stepped into without realizing it.

For the first time in her life, she felt it was important to think about how this all impacted her as a woman and not a researcher. She felt a swirl of emotions that she just didn’t understand, and she needed help. And not Kyle’s kind of burst in the room and take over kind of help. She needed a girlfriend. Sophie seemed to be willing to fit the bill for the moment.

“So things got a little bit heated in the limo after we left,” she admitted shyly. She wasn’t really comfortable talking about her sex life with anyone. “And just when it, you know, happened, he bit me. I didn’t really notice or understand what happened until it was too late.”

“I take it he didn’t ask you if you were cool with a little mating bite before he did that,” Sophie surmised.

Kelly slowly shook her head. “He didn’t. And now I feel like I’m trapped. I like Kyle, but I don’t like that he would do something like that without consulting me. It’s a big deal for both of us.”

Sophie reached out and touched her arm with a look of sympathy on her face. “I don’t know if it helps at all, but in our world, when you find your mate there isn’t really a question of asking. You both feel it, and you both want it. It’s like an attraction that you just can’t get away from. A little nibble here, a little nibble there, and then it’s done. There isn’t a lot of need to talk about it. It’s all about raw emotion and how you feel towards that person. The realization that you just can’t live without them.”

It didn’t help to hear that at all.  “I understand that’s what it’s like for shifters, but I’m not a shifter.”

Sophie leaned back against the sofa. “You said you like Kyle. Is that really as far as it goes? Like is a pretty weak way to describe what I saw happening between you two at the gala.”

“It’s like you’re asking me if I’m in love with him, and things don’t work like that in my world,” Kelly said testily. “I have feelings for him, yes. But I don’t feel the overwhelming urge to bite him.”

A sly grin spread across Sophie’s face. She ran her finger around the edge of her glass. “Are you really that sure about that?”

Kelly was about to disagree wholeheartedly, but she remembered a flash of something in the limo right after he bit her. It had been from some primal place inside of her, and there had been a desire to do…something. But she refused to believe it was the same thing. “I guess if I was forced to define how I felt about Kyle, I would say that I feel confused. I’m attracted to him, no doubt about it. But this idea of fated mates is just a little bit too much to swallow. Especially with what I do for a living. I deal in facts and research.”

“I’m not trying to take anything away from what you do for a living, Doc, but I think that rigidity of thinking is starting to cloud your judgment a little bit. When you meet the person that you want to be with for the rest of your life, it’s not about facts. It’s not about research and figures. It’s about how you feel inside. That person lights you on fire. You can’t imagine breathing or existing anymore without that person in your life. Are you telling me you don’t feel any of those things for Kyle?”

That kind of talk scared the shit out of Kelly. Her world was supposed to be perfectly orderly and tidy. There was no room in it for decisions based on raw emotions, and questioning that shook the entire foundation of what she believed about herself. But there was something about Kyle that drew her to him. It was unmistakable. The emotional part of herself had been gaining an upper hand when it came to dealing with Kyle. “I do feel something for him. I don’t know that I want to label it right now. I know that I like being with him. I know that he makes me feel safe. I don’t know that I’m ready to chuck my whole life and career out the window to be with him, though. That’s not who I am.”

“It’s okay to be independent, and you’re not giving up your life or your career. This isn’t the Stone Age. You’re just in a relationship with someone who’s different from you. You shouldn’t be so hard on him. Instead, think about this from his side. He has a primal need for you that goes all the way back to the start of our species. It’s an instinct that is almost impossible to ignore. The fact that he’s done so for so long tells you how much he actually does respect you and where you come from.”

Kelly didn’t follow this line of logic at all. “What are you talking about that he’s done so for this long?”

“If I know Kyle, he knew way back when he met you that you were the one for him. And he respected the fact that you were human and didn’t know anything about our world. He let you learn about him. He let you get closer to him. And then, he was probably going to let you know how he felt. But from what you told me earlier, your assignment ended without any notice, and you left him without saying goodbye. That would’ve hurt him a whole lot. For a guy like Kyle, I think it would have been difficult for him to get over at all.”

This idea shook Kelly to her core. Kyle had known she was his mate back then? She had felt an attraction to him. She knew in her bones that there was something about him that made her want to know more. Of all of the soldiers who’d been falling over themselves asking her for a date, she had really just wanted to spend time with the silent man who hung out in the background. The one who intrigued and mystified her. She had been drawn to him back then too. Was that what Sophie meant when she said that there was an attraction that couldn’t be denied? She didn’t know. She did know that she did feel something for Kyle. That much was certain. But she wasn’t going to turn her back on her potential future until she had more time to think it through.

“I didn’t know that he even liked me back then,” Kelly admitted. “He would come to his appointments, and he was always the perfect gentleman. He never looked twice at me or appeared interested in me at all. He never asked me out on a date, and I’m pretty sure all of the other soldiers asked me out at least a hundred times. It was pretty lonely out there.”

Sophie had a sympathetic expression on her face again. “He was probably intimidated by you. Not to mention, you don’t need me to tell you that Kyle has some things in his past that he’s been trying to deal with for a long time.”

Kelly perked up at Sophie’s mention of this. Perhaps she could finally start getting some answers about what it was that drove Kyle the way that it did. “I know that something happened to him when he was a teenager. That much I’ve been able to discern from the notes in his psychological profile and the conversations I had with him back then. But he wouldn’t tell me what happened.”

Sophie’s expression darkened. “Look, I don’t know what happened either. And even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. You and I both know that you need to hear that from Kyle. But I will say this. Eric and Tony were involved in whatever happened then too. And it had to be something so dark and horrible that they don’t ever want to talk about it again. It’s impacted all of them in some way and haunts them all in different ways.”

Kelly didn’t know what to do with this information. She remembered the visit to Dr. Clarkson, and Kyle’s refusal to tell her what his medication was for. “If I’m going to consider being with Kyle, I need him to be honest with me and let me in on what’s going on in his head. If whatever happened in his past has affected him so profoundly, he needs to tell me what it is, otherwise, no matter how much I want to trust him, I can’t. He’s borderline self-destructive. I can see it inside of him. He’s a bomb waiting to explode.”

Sophie nodded. “I get it. I do. But all I’m asking is for you to give the guy a chance. I know that you’re scared. I would be too. The mark on your neck doesn’t mean that you have to stay. He probably didn’t tell you that because he doesn’t want you to leave. But, for us, it just indicates his intent to make you his mate. In order to seal the deal, you have to take the second step.”

“What’s the second step?”

Sophie laughed. “What you think? You have to bite him back.”

Kelly absorbed this information. She wasn’t sure that she could do something like that. And she said so.

“Hey, I get it. Why do you think I haven’t bit anybody yet?” Sophie’s words were said with a teasing tone, but Kelly sensed there was something else underneath them.

“So you haven’t met your mate yet?”

“That’s hardly my problem. I’ve met too many men who could be my mate,” Sophie said. “Once I scratch beneath the surface, I’ve found them all lacking. None of them can handle me.”

“None of them? I find that surprising.” Kelly imagined that Sophie had suitors knocking at her door constantly.

“Let me put it this way. If I were to meet a man who completely understood that I had ambitions and goals in my life and he was more than willing to support me doing them, I’d be all over it. Unfortunately, with shifters, it’s just different. There is always an alpha in the relationship. At this point in my life, I’m not willing to give my independence over to someone else who can control me like that.”

Sophie had just vocalized the crux of Kelly’s problem. She knew exactly how Sophie felt. The wrinkle in this logic, though, was that she did want Kyle.

Sophie got up. She started to tuck the blanket around Kelly in a maternal kind of way that felt nice. “Get some sleep. I have a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a long day for you. Think about what I said. Give the guy a chance to prove that he’s the one for you. I honestly don’t think you’re going to find one better.”

And with those parting words, Sophie left the room. Kelly stared into the fireplace at the dying embers. Sophie’s last words resonated with her in a place deep down inside. Because there was a part of her that knew that Sophie was right. She didn’t think that she ever would find anyone better for her than Kyle. There wasn’t anything scarier than that.