Page 50 of Blade

I wasn’t sure how to count the time I’d spent as a prisoner in my own body, so I was going to ignore it for the time being.

“You always knew you would have a man for a mate?” Henley shifted over to sit on the closed toilet lid and made no effort to pretend to hide his intent gaze. “I’ve met a few magically inclined people who talked about mates and I just can’t imagine knowing you’ve got someone waiting for you.”

Closing my eyes, I stepped under the spray and tried to let it wash the last seventy years down the drain. “It felt normal to me, but I can imagine how confusing it must be to someone who’s never seen it.”

“I’ve heard about it from enough different people to understand it’s normal in your society.” He paused before he got to the but that I knew wanted to escape. “What did you want your mate to be like?”

“A man.” His sigh made me smile as I stepped out of the spray and opened my eyes. “My first thoughts about my future mate were very…let’s call them typical for being a teenager.”

His snicker said he understood my point. “And when you got older and started thinking with the big head…well…bigger head?”

It was my turn to roll my eyes as I reached for the clearly new bar of soap that had been left out for me. “Obviously I wanted him to be sassy, reckless, and impulsive.”

“Hey. I thought through trying to capture you very carefully.” He tried to huff but I could see his pout out of the corner of my eye. “It just didn’t go as planned.”

Before I could tease him, he held up his hand. “Not talking about that part.”

Not yet…but we would.

“I agreed to that limit.” But I had research to do now that I had hands and could use the small computer he called a tablet without help. “I was just going to tease you about how you ended up in the net.”

Not the part about how aroused he’d been.

His huff was adorable but the way he was studying every inch of me alternated between sexy and odd. He didn’t seem to realize that, though. “That was a comedy of errors and I’m not sure how it happened.”

Probably because he was easily distracted.

My mate was smart in fascinating ways but his mind jumped from topic to topic like a rabbit.

“I was impressed with how well you put the trap together once I realized what had happened.” Between the fog and thesimplistic way my brain had been working, I hadn’t thought of that right away, but it’d come to me eventually. “I was thinking about that when I had you show me everything.”

“You make that sound so easy. Everything. You can’t just lump literally every item in my trailer under the heading of everything.” His tone said grumbling but his eyes were saying something else entirely. “You’re very headstrong. You know that?”

Yes.

And at that moment all of it was focused on my mate and his very curious gaze.

CHAPTER 17

HENLEY

Didhe know how distracting he was or was it an accident?

How could washing his pits be sexy?

“I prefer to think of it as being focused.” The smirk on his face said he was thoroughly enjoying himself, but since I liked that better than how overwhelmed he’d been, I sighed to make him do it again. “And lately I’ve been very focused on getting to know my mate.”

Yeah, by being a pain in the ass.

“You can’t turn me inside out like you did the trailer.” Everything. We’d spent an entire day going through every object in the trailer so he could see it, scent it, and growl until I explained what it did. “That’s not how relationships work.”

Wait.

“This is a relationship, right?” I was hoping I’d read the situation correctly. “Mates are supposed to be magic relationships, but I met one couple who were both asexual and they were confusing.”

Was my thankfully anatomically correct Ken doll regular sexual?

What was the word for that?