MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS

Chapter 164: FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

AMARIS

"I don’t like this," Nia muttered, working the clasp at the back of my dress.

"You don’t have to like it." I watched myself in the mirror. "You just have to do the clasp."

"He is volatile and unpredictable and you are his father’s wife." She tugged the clasp with more force than necessary.

"I am aware." I turned my head to look at her. "Also, for someone who is in love with a man who attends orgies as a participating member, you are being spectacularly judgmental right now."

Her hands stopped on the clasp.

Then she started laughing, loud and slightly against her will, and I started laughing too, and we stood there in my room at seven in the evening laughing at ourselves in the mirror like two people who had absolutely no business giving each other advice about anything.

"Fair," she admitted finally, wiping her eye. "That is completely fair."

She did the clasp.

I glanced at myself in the glass and thought about the fact that I had never been on a date before tonight. I had grown up in Stormshadow where men looked at me like a trophy on a shelf. I had come to Gravemoon and been legally mated to an Alpha who wanted me for my bloodline. I had been fucked by his son, and his other son, and the Alpha himself, had touched me and I had been called Luna for a week.

And I had never been on a date.

I had been married and I had made love to men and I had bled into a ceremonial bowl and none of those things had involved anyone taking me somewhere nice and asking me what I wanted to eat.

The universe had a spectacular sense of humor.

I picked up my bag and kissed Nia on the cheek and told her not to wait up, which made her make a sound of pointed disapproval that followed me down the hall.

The evening was warm and the pack grounds were quiet and I was walking toward the east side gate where Ryker had told me to meet him when I spotted them.

Cole and Freya, standing in the narrow space between the storage building and the garden wall, their heads close together, their voices low. Cole’s hand was on the wall beside her head and Freya’s arms were crossed and whatever they were saying to each other they were saying it fast.

I stopped walking.

My brain said eavesdrop immediately and the rest of me said they will absolutely catch you and then what, so I stood there for exactly four seconds making bad decisions and then made the better one and kept walking. I could not deal with it right now and there is no way I was spoiling my evening with Cole of all people.

Ryker was leaning against the gate with his hands in his pockets.

Dark fitted trousers, a long-sleeved dark shirt, sleeves pushed to the elbows, and he looked like someone who had tried to look like he had not tried, which I could tell was an effort because Ryker’s default was not care about anything and tonight he had cared. His hair was pushed back. He looked up when he heard my footsteps.

His face did gave away all the emotions he was struggling to keep hidden.

He straightened off the gate and looked at me the way you looked at something you were not sure you were allowed to have and had decided not to question too hard.

"You look like a ravishing goddess." Flat. Like a fact he was reporting.

My cheeks went warm and I hated them for it. "That’s a lot."

"It’s accurate." He reached out and took my hand and turned it over and pressed his mouth to the back of it, his eyes on my face the whole time, and the eye contact during the hand-kiss was deeply unfair and he knew it.

I pulled my hand back. "Where are we going?"

"Surprise." He fell into step beside me.

"That is exactly what a serial killer says." I matched his pace.

"If I were going to kill you I would have done it weeks ago." He glanced sideways at me. "You have been very annoying for a very long time."

"Charming. Truly." I raised an eyebrow. "You should put that on the date invitation."

"There was no date invitation." He bumped his shoulder into mine.

"There should have been." I bumped back. "With that on it."

We walked through the east gate and into the tree line and the pack house fell away behind us and I stopped thinking about Cole and Freya who were no longer there, shrugging their thoughts away and just walked beside him with our hands swinging slightly between us.

The forest was different in the evening. Quieter and cooler and the light through the trees went gold and then dimmer as we moved deeper and the path under our feet was soft with pine needles.

"Tell me something," he murmured, "that you have never told anyone."

I looked sideways at him. "That’s a big opening ask."

"We are on a date." He squeezed my hand once. "Dates involve learning things."

"I thought dates involved food." I tilted my head.

"Food is coming." He kept walking. "Something you have never told anyone."

I looked at the path ahead of us for a moment.

"You were my first kiss," I told him quietly.

He glanced at me.

"And the first man I ever made love to." I kept my eyes forward. "And tonight is my first date." I paused. "In that order. Which is a completely backwards way to do things but apparently that is my life."

He stopped walking.

I stopped too because he was holding my hand and I had no choice. He turned to face me on the path with the evening light coming through the trees above us and he looked at me very carefully.

"Would you have wanted it to be someone else," he asked quietly.

I thought about it properly. Not the quick answer but the real one.

"I would have wanted better circumstances," I told him. "Not someone else."

A familiar expression moved across his face. "Not even Rowan."

My jaw tightened slightly. "That is not a fair question."

"I know." He held my eyes. "I’m sorry. I asked it anyway because I’m still me."

"You are still very much you," I noted.

We stood there on the path and I looked at his face in the evening light and thought that he was right about that and also that right now in this specific moment it was not the liability it usually was.

"What about you," I asked. "Something you have never told anyone."

He went quiet for long enough that I thought he was going to deflect. His jaw worked slightly. His hand stayed around mine.

"I’m scared," he confessed finally.

"Of what."

"Of falling in love with you." He looked at me directly when he said it, which was the worst way to receive that information because there was nowhere to hide from it. "And of losing you. Both at the same time."

"Ryker."

"I feel like I’m drowning." He pulled me a step closer on the path, his hand at my waist now, deliberate, like everything he had done tonight. "And you are the only thing that keeps me afloat. Which is terrifying because I am a complete mess and I know that and I cannot stop."

I looked up at him.

He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to mine and his hand at my waist pulled me the rest of the way in and I felt his other hand come up to the side of my face and cup it carefully, tilting me toward him, and he did it the way he had tucked my hair back on the roof, slow, like something he was choosing instead of something he was taking.

I pressed up into it. My hands found the front of his shirt.

We stood on the path in the dim warm evening light and I held onto his shirt and he held onto my face and neither of us was in any hurry to do anything else.

We pulled apart.

He looked at me with his hand still at my jaw.

"For the record," he murmured, his voice lower than usual, "I had a very good idea for what to do after the date."

I laughed and he grinned at me, dark and pleased with himself, and for one second he looked nothing like a man who was scared of anything.

"Close your eyes," he instructed.

"What—"

"Close your eyes, Amaris." He raised an eyebrow. "I’m not going to walk you into a tree."

I closed my eyes.

He took both my hands and turned me and walked me forward, his voice low near my ear telling me left, step up here, careful, just a little further, and I went where he led me with my eyes shut and the pine needles soft under my feet and his hands warm around mine.

We stopped.

"Open your eyes," he breathed.