Crucible of Fate

know anything about Yuri.”
    “But I know you.”
    “No, you don’t, not really, and that was the problem.”
    “Domin—”
    “Tell me,” I said as I faced him, “have you ever really been in love?”
    “That’s the most—”
    “No.” I put my hand up to stop him. “Really, Koren, think about it.”
    “Yes.” He studied my face before his dark-olive gaze finally settled on my mouth. “With you.”
    “Koren.”
    “I missed you.”
    But when I read the intent in him to kiss me, I took a quick step back.
    “I—”
    “You live with Jin and Logan.”
    He narrowed his eyes. “Yeah? And?”
    “Don’t you want someone to look at you the way Jin looks at Logan and vice versa?”
    “Jin is Logan’s true-mate, you don’t just go out and—”
     “Please. All that is, is love.”
    “It’s not. They have a perfect bonding. No one gets that unless they are a semel and a reah.”
    “That’s crap. The chemical, biological pull on your body does not create love. It makes need, but that’s not what Jin and Logan have. They love each other.”
    “They love each other because of the bond. If Jin was not Logan’s reah, he’d be mated to Simone right now, plain and simple.”
    “You’re so wrong,” I said. “Bond or no bond, Logan would have seen Jin and wanted him.”
    He shook his head. “You’re being ridiculously sentimental. Logan was straight before he found out about his mate. If Jin wasn’t his reah, he’d have had no chance with Logan.”
    I would not argue and headed out.
    He called after me as I crossed the floor. “That’s it? You don’t stand and fight for what you want? The semel-aten doesn’t know how to do that anymore?”
    “You have nothing I want,” I threw out. “So why would we fight?”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    I stopped at the door and glanced back. “Why are you going through these motions? It’s not like you actually want to win.”
    “But I do,” he professed. “And I will.”
    I crossed my arms. “What happened? What scared you so bad that you came running halfway around the world to see me?”
    “What?”
    Oh, very defensive. I tipped my head. “Let me guess, some nice lady panther wants to have your cubs?”
    He pointed at me. “Tell me you don’t remember us in bed and what that was like.”
    I did remember. I had loved it, having him under me, but even more, I remembered how volatile it had all been, and now I had a new definition of what could go on under the covers.
    Now I ate in bed with Yuri stretched out beside me. We debated laws and decisions I had made, but… we also had long, drawn-out, intense conversations about why he liked reality shows and I didn’t, about why he thought watching Grey’s Anatomy would rot my brain and why I was refusing to watch the series Firefly , which he owned on DVD along with some movie that went with it. I was upset when my shows from the History Channel got erased in favor of some miniseries on the Syfy channel, and he said that satellite TV only had room for so much stuff.
    I had called him on it, and he had gotten lost in seeing how indignant I got. “You’re full of crap!”
    “You’re so cute when you’re pissed off,” Yuri said, pushing out his bottom lip. “Come here, baby.”
    My huff had sent him into hysterics.
    The point was, us in bed was not something I had ever experienced with anyone else.
    We talked, we played, we wrestled, we made plans for vacations to cold places, we argued. He chatted on the phone with his mother, Rosetta, who was so proud of him and happy and who always wanted to say good-bye to me. He started teaching me Russian, important things like moi lyubov , which meant “my darling,” and I grumbled that if I could only use that with him, how was that helping? But the heavy-lidded eyes, so love-soaked, made my stomach flutter, so that, too, was a gift. We laughed so much, out of bed but in it, too, and basically, I had a whole different appreciation of the place I slept these days that had nothing whatsoever to do with sex.
    “Domin?”
    “Sorry,” I said, realizing I was grinning like an idiot, before I walked out the door.
    “Domin!”
    I groaned as I stopped, and he came quickly around me, close, into my personal space.
    “For whatever reason, you’re not seeing me right now, so I’m going to hang out until you do, all right?”
    Standing there I realized again, for the thousandth time, that truly: Koren Church was a stunning man. He was also