mate growled at her. “You don’t have to be so smug about it.”
She laughed and flipped over onto her back so she could look up at his slightly sulky face. “I was talking about me.”
A raised eyebrow.
“Never will I be a notch on Kenji Tanaka’s bedpost,” she said, paraphrasing the words she’d flung at him the night of Hawke’s mating celebration. “Yet here I am, butt naked and with your hand oh-so-close to doing sinfully bad things to me again.”
That hand moved in slow circles low on her navel, wolf eyes watching her with unhidden satisfaction—and raw happiness. “So, how do we do this?” A kiss on her dimple.
The caress made her go all mushy inside. Especially when he did it a second time around.
“We can’t amalgamate our two dens and Hawke needs us where we are,” he added with another mushy-making dimple kiss.
She’d never stop smiling if he kept doing that. “Yes.” SnowDancer couldn’t afford to put the two of them in the same den, not with the widespread nature of their territory. “We can rotate—I spend two days in your den, then we each have three days on our own, after which you come to my den for two days. Our seniors are capable of handling anything for forty-eight hours at a time.”
Kenji nodded slowly. “Yes, and that way, we’d each have five-day stretches in our dens.”
“Yep.” That continuity was important for the health of the pack and for those who looked to them for leadership. “A two-day break won’t bother anyone, and we’ll be able to spend four days a week together.”
It’d be hard, she thought, but doable. Neither one of them would be comfortable away from their dens and responsibilities for long periods, but being separated from her mate for longer than a few days was not happening.
Kenji brushed her hair off her face. “You sure, Garnet?”
She knew he was no longer talking about the mechanics of their relationship. Cupping his gorgeous, beloved face, nuzzling at him, she said, “Yes. I’m sure.” Her mind suddenly recalled something she’d learned back during their first go-around. “Dai suki, Kenji.” In Japanese culture, the words “I love you” were rarely spoken, so the fact that Kenji had said them to her just broke her in two.
This, what she’d said, it was technically far less potent: I really like you. But technicalities weren’t everything in a language. Her words were as much a declaration of love as his roughly spoken aishiteru. It was all in the tone and when Kenji’s eyes lit up, she knew she’d got the tone exactly right.
Brain fuzzy from the kiss he laid on her, she didn’t understand all of his response, but she didn’t need to: the bond was wide open on his end, and she knew his heart, it beat only for her. To her, their bond tasted of the wickedness and wildness and laughter that had always been Kenji and that told her he’d be all right.
He’d been bruised but not damaged on a fundamental level.
“We’re going to have an extraordinary life together”—she gripped his hair hard, pulled—“and if you ever try to hide anything from me again, I will claw you to shreds.”
Kenji’s grin held pure delight. “All these years, we had fun, though, right?” Laughter in the wild green. “We managed to grow up together despite my best efforts to keep my distance.”
Garnet thought of the countless times she’d called him up for a comm conference when she could’ve as easily shot him a quick e-mail and realized they’d never been out of contact for much longer than a week. He’d never chided her for those calls, either, had made many a spurious call of his own.
Then there were the postcards he’d sent her each time he had to go to an international destination to deal with a business matter. Taunting and flirtatious and designed to make her see red, those postcards had compelled her to respond. She’d once had a weed bouquet delivered to him. Another time, she’d changed his accommodation reservation so that he ended up having to stay overnight in a nudist colony.
Never had they actually talked about any of those tricks or postcards, the game played under the surface of their ordinary lives.
“Hell of a lot of fun.” Smiling on that agreement, she ran her fingers through the heavy dampness of his hair. “Want to know a secret?”
“Always.”
“I like the things you do to your hair. I only acted like I didn’t to mess with you.”
His cheeks