A Mate for Lu - Amy Bellows Page 0,9
a good man—a loyal man. But being inside him like this makes me stupid with longing.
“What if I love you?” I whisper. Even though it doesn’t matter. I have to spend the rest of my life alone, and nothing is going to change that.
“Do you?” Lu searches my face with a desperation that breaks my heart, as if he can discern the honesty of my words from the lines on my face.
I grasp his hand and bring it to my heart. My traitorous, wretched heart. It isn’t mine to give away, but I nod anyway.
Lu presses his lips to mine with an intensity I feel deep in my soul. And God help me, I don’t pull away. “I love you too, Sam. We don’t have to tell anyone,” he says, kissing my cheek, my ear. “We can keep it a secret.”
I thread my fingers through his hair and guide his head up until he can’t kiss me anymore. “What do you mean by ‘it?’ Are you talking about a relationship?”
His cheeks flush scarlet, and he looks away from me. “Never mind.”
Does he want us to sneak around together? My mate is dead. He can already see what I did. Or at least that’s what I believe. Otherwise, I’ve been alone this whole time, and that’s unbearable to imagine.
“Lu, I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “It’s fine. I know you already have a mate. I was just being stupid.”
“You should be able to have a relationship with someone who can treat you the way you deserve.”
He takes in a shaky breath. “And how’s that?”
“Someone who can commit to you and give you a real bond.”
He sets his jaw and looks me straight in the eye. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but alphas don’t want me for much of anything, let alone a real bond. The only reason why a decent alpha like you is in my bed is because I didn’t ask anything from you but a quick fuck.”
My knot begins to shrink, even though I really wish it wouldn’t. Lu’s wrong about himself. He has so much to offer an alpha.
“If I didn’t already have a mate...”
He pushes me off of him, and my cock slides out. “If you didn’t already have a mate, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be with someone else. I don’t know what alphas want in an omega they’re willing to commit to, I just know that I don’t have it.”
I reach for his hand, but he pulls it away. “Go.”
“Lu, I didn’t mean—”
“You don’t understand. I’m not mad at you. When I asked you to come into my bed, I knew the limitations of what you could give me, and I wanted to have sex with you anyway. I just don’t want you to tell me pretty lies about what I deserve.”
I don’t know what to say to him. Lu always short-changes himself. He shouldn’t be working for pennies on Fiverr, he shouldn’t accept the $5,000 advance from HarperCollins, and he shouldn’t be settling for less than what he wants with an alpha. It’s clear by the way he reacted to my confession of love that he wants more than this, but I can’t be the one to give it to him.
It’s not like I have any room to judge him. Not after what I just did. So I should probably leave. The problem is that leaving feels wrong too. I know I cheated on my mate, but that doesn’t give me an excuse to be a jerk to Lu. That’s not right either.
“Let me help you,” I finally say. “I have a little extra money—”
“No.”
“But if you don’t even have money to buy clothes—”
Lu turns away from me. “No. Just because you feel guilty about what you did, doesn’t mean that you get to treat me like a charity case.”
“It wouldn’t be charity. After what we just did, I have a responsibility.”
Lu laughs bitterly. “Luckily for you, that’s not how it works for polar bear shifters. You can fuck me and have no responsibilities afterward. Isn’t it great?”
He doesn’t understand. Maybe polar bear shifters have casual sex, but I’m not a polar bear shifter. I wrote an article about polar bear shifter mating rituals for The New Yorker about a year ago. I’m familiar with all of the intricate differences between daytime sexual partners, sleepovers, and their three types of mates. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea of having sex with a man and walking away.
“That’s not how I look at