Dimitri rolled his eyes and got up. “You’re not really making much of a case for yourself. I’ll heat something up. But I told you the deal: you text me when you’re leaving, I’ll have dinner ready. You didn’t text. I’m not going to sit here with the food getting cold until nine, Brook.”
On that last bit, he actually sounded…peevish? Oh, Christ.
“Dimitri, are we having our first real mate fight?”
“We’re not fighting. I’m telling you how it is.” He turned and headed for the kitchen, leaving me gaping after him without any retort whatsoever.
Kind of hard to argue with someone who not only made your food, but also outweighed you by enough to squish you into the floor.
Getting some dinner knocked me out of my strop a little bit, but not enough to want to discuss the mating reception. Surely I could pawn my mother off with some excuse. But would Dimitri be offended if I didn’t even ask? Had he been expecting me to?
I toyed with the last few bites of mashed potatoes on my plate, staring down at the patterns my fork made.
“Okay, you need to do something about your attitude,” Dimitri said, startling me into glancing up.
“My attitude’s fine.” He just looked at me without saying a word. “Okay, my attitude sucked earlier, and I’m sorry. I’m tense. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
“I can take it.” He shrugged. “Apology accepted. But you need to relax. Maybe you need to get laid.”
The fork dropped out of my nerveless fingers, clattering on the plate. “Get what?”
“Laid, Brook. Sex. You know, you have an orgasm, you release some tension, you feel better.”
“But I can’t sleep with anyone but you, so getting laid won’t help me,” I said without thinking, and then winced when his expression darkened, his eyes glowing faintly. Shit. That had been really rude. True, of course, because I didn’t like getting fucked. But still rude.
“Won’t help you how, exactly?” he asked, his tone low and dangerous. “Because you got off just fine when we fucked before.”
“No, I didn’t—I mean, there was some—that was a fluke!” My heart beat so fast it vibrated in my fingertips. “The formation of the mating bond made me—it was unexpected.”
Dimitri’s eyes brightened, the glow keeping me fixed in place like prey. “We weren’t mating the second time. So two flukes, you mean. Twice is a coincidence, is that what you’re saying?”
Ithadbeen a coincidence, obviously, and I couldn’t believe he’d be such a dick about it. “It was a fluke,” I repeated. “I’m not into getting knotted. It was something about the circumstances. Or something like that. Anyway, it’s not stress relief for me.”
The very slight lifting of the corners of Dimitri’s mouth, and the gleam of fang it showed me, raised all my hackles. How dare he laugh at me!
“Okay. I knotted you, and you got off on it. I knotted you again, and you got off on it. Again. That’s no fluke. But I’m not going to argue with you about it.”
He wasn’t going to—what did he think he was doing? He didn’t believe me, and Ihatedit when people didn’t believe me. Besides, it wasn’t like he had any moral high ground!
“And what about you? You’re straight, right? No interest in men at all. But this is the second time you’ve wanted to fuck me when you didn’t need to.”
His smile widened into a grin, and my heart sank.
“Unlike you, I can admit it when I enjoyed something. Yeah, it got me off. A tight hole will do that. Fucking you is kind of adjacent to what I usually enjoy.” He leaned forward, obviously about to go for the jugular. “What’s your excuse?”
“I don’t have—I don’t need—” I stammered into silence, face hot and scalp prickling with frustration. “I don’t need an excuse, because it was a fluke!”
“Uh-huh. But we don’t need to fuck.” He got up, collecting both of our plates and heading for the sink. “I’m fine jerking off. You’re the one who’s so tense you’re about to snap. Again.”
I stared at his broad back as he started rinsing the dishes, almost surprised smoke wasn’t rising from his shirt from the force of my glare.
So tense I was about to snap? I needed to get laid? Where the hell did he get off? If he fucked me again, there was no way I’d come. And his ego needed puncturing. Did he think he was God’s gift to anyone who spread their legs for him, or something? It’d be so goddamn satisfying to lie back, all bored and limp, and let him go to town on me without me getting anything out of it. Show him that his knot wasn’t all that, after all.
“Fine. We’ll fuck,” I said tightly. “And then after I don’t enjoy it, you’ll admit I was right.”
Dimitri went still for a second, so briefly I almost thought I’d imagined it, and then went right back to washing the dishes.
“Go upstairs and get ready, then,” he said. “I’ll be there in a minute. I need to earn my kept-mate keep.”
