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"No," he answered automatically. Then he realized that wasn't true. "Maybe? Look, it's just weird. I'm not even talking about getting sucked off by a guy. I mean the fact that my wife knows about it and doesn't seem to care. I can't stop thinking about whether I'm in trouble or if she just doesn't give a shit."
Grabbing the front of the cart, Nikki began to slowly guide him down the closest aisle. "She doesn't care, but not for the reasons you think. It's not because she doesn't care about you. Trust me, if you'd seen her give that succubus a piece of her mind, you wouldn't have any doubts. She likes you, Thane. It's just freaking her out a little."
"Because of Mei," he mumbled. "Yeah, we talked."
"Because she was with Mei for a very, very long time, and she hasn't been without her long enough to find her balance," Nikki explained. "I mean, that's the only reason why I'm not flirting with your wife. Well, wasn't. Before I met you, I mean. Most of us don't really consider relationships with mortals as real, since we know we'll have to dump them in about a decade so we don't get caught not aging."
"Makes sense," he agreed. "It's also why I keep trying to figure out where I stand with her. I already know she's not going to get older. I also know you won't. As a man, I can't say I'm opposed to being seen with some cute twenty-something-year-old woman on my arm. As a hunter, I'm also well aware of the fact that this is an impossible relationship." He paused to grab a can of pre-fab pasta. Then a second. "The problem is that she's already gotten under my skin."
"And you're under hers," Nikki agreed. "But here's the thing you need to know about Dahlia. She's an icon to most of us. Cain? He's a nightmare. The man may look all calm and professional, but the stories about him aren't. He's torn through entire churches of your kind - "
"So did Dahlia," Thane countered.
"Fair point," Nikki admitted. "But Cain is ruthless. His whole educated man thing? It's all an act. He really is everything they say about him. He prefers to hunt instead of seduce. The reason you've never seen him feed? Because he doesn't leave anything left to see. He's more animal than man in some ways, and I'm not talking about race here. Trust me, I've heard those slurs myself. No, it's because your Church made sure he embraced that side of himself so he could survive. Dahlia?" She scoffed. "She just wants to settle down and relax. She's a valkyrie, though, which means she will fight for the peace she dreams of, and she will fight hard."
"It's the sexiest part about her," Thane admitted.
"I know, right?" Nikki asked.
He just laughed. "Are you lusting after my wife?"
She gave him a devious look and grabbed a few more cans off the shelf. "Oh yeah. C'mon, you know she's beautiful. She's also smart, determined, and not ashamed of what she is. I thought she was amazing when I first met her, but the more I got to know her, I realized that she's also so caring. Sure, she tries to lock that part away, but it's still there. It makes her vulnerable in some ways."
"Only if you consider perfection to be vulnerable," he countered. "Because yes, she hurts. Yes, she loved Mei." Leaning his head back, he groaned. "I wish you could've seen them together. Those two? They had the kind of love that everyone dreams of."
"And she's giving you the chance to have that," Nikki told him. "She's scared, Thane, but she's letting you in. She's already fighting for you. I think knowing that you helped Roarke like that was a big thing to her, and not in the way you're worried about. To her, you just proved that you can accept what she is and you won't want to change her. Instead, you'll change yourself."
"Oh," he breathed, pushing the cart forward because movement made his mind settle faster. "It's a man's dream, you know," he said as he turned down the next aisle. "She wants me to mess around with whoever I want, doesn't get pissed about it, and is down with the kinky shit? I mean, it sounds great."
"But?" Nikki asked.
"For my whole life, I've been told that marriage is a commitment, you can't love more than one person, and if you start playing around like this, everything will fall apart. She's my wife -mine- and that means no one else is supposed to touch her. It's all bullshit, but it's still there, and I'm trying real hard to ignore it."
"Sex isn't love," Nikki said, following him loyally through the store. "Love also isn't pie."
That last caught him off guard. "Huh?"
"It's limitless. You don't lose out because someone else gets some," she explained. "Everyone loves dozens of people. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, family, and so on. Children! People love a lot. The difference is that sex is supposed to be owned by the man. No one else touches your girl so when you knock her up, you know you're not wasting your money on someone else's DNA, right? So your line will inherit your stuff. And yet, throughout history, men have been putting their dicks wherever they want, not caring about the kids they leave behind, while jealously guarding their wife's pussy. How does that fit with the concept of unlimited love? Do women just have less to give?"
"No, and coming from you, that makes me see it differently," he admitted. "I'm guessing you lived in those times."
"And was owned by a man who arranged my marriage to another to explain the child he put in me, yeah." She hooked her arm through his and pointed to a section she wanted to see. "For Dahlia, it had to be even harder. She came from a time when women had rights, then she lost them centuries later, and now she's getting them back. You, though, make it easy. You aren't perfect, but you at least try. You also respect her, and we can all see that."
"I just don't want to mess up what we're starting," he admitted. "I like her, Nikki. A lot. I also like this. Back home, I didn't have friends like this. I didn't have..." His words trailed off as he rounded the corner.
Because there, looking through the frozen pizzas, was a man with a tattoo of a Celtic cross on his arm. Without even slowing down, Thane reached over to pull Nikki up against his side, leaving his arm wrapped around her waist like she was his girlfriend. The leather cuff suddenly felt like too little protection. Shocked, Nikki tensed, but when he caught her eye, she just leaned into him.
"So I still have a lot of stuff, and beer was the most important," he said, pretending like that was what they'd been talking about the whole time.
"At least you got something healthy," Nikki said, stretching her legs as they passed the man and headed down the next aisle. Then, when they were far enough away, she looked up at him and asked, "Thane?"
"Hunter," he breathed. "Where there's one, there will be more, and what the fuck are they doing in Des Moines?"
"Fuck," she muttered. "We need to go."
"Yeah, I'll just leave the cart - "
"No," she hissed. "Check out, act normal. They can't tell, right? And I can't feel them because your ward is so close, so I won't react."
