Only You Read Online Free PDF Page B

he?”
    “Yes. I think so? I mean, I thought so, I…” Nick shook his head, frustrated. He couldn’t get the leather tie seated. Shaky hands made him drop the thing. “Fuck!”
    “For God’s sake, stop.” Barrett crouched to pick up the tie and came up standing behind Nick. “Bend your head forward. Let me do it.” He pulled too hard, securing a bunch of Nick’s hair in a ponytail, but Nick wasn’t complaining. He twisted to the side as soon as he possibly could, craning about for a look in the mirror. “I don’t see—” he started, then stopped.
    Because he did see, now. Milky pale tea color, a ripple of pigment half the size of his fingertip. It could be a bruise. Or a bite. When Nick rubbed at it, nothing happened. Not even when he scratched at it with his thumbnail, as if he could get the mark to peel off.
    Soulmark.
    “Fuck,” he said under his breath.
    “I told you,” Barrett said. He’d gone pale with the shock. Nick couldn’t blame him. “When did this happen?”
    “I don’t know.” Nick tugged the hair tie loose—he’d give himself a hell of a headache with all the weight pulling on his scalp—and shook his hair free before starting over and making a looser ponytail. He could see Barrett didn’t believe him. “It’s the truth, I swear.”
    “Right.” The bathroom wasn’t at all large, but Barrett kept as far back as he could, arms crossed and face shuttered. “Tell me what happened this weekend. Start to finish.”
    “There isn’t much to tell.” Nick flipped open the lid to the laundry hamper and pawed through its contents. He didn’t know why, or didn’t want to know why, but standing naked in the cold bathroom had started to make his skin crawl. A pair of Barrett’s pajama pants presented themselves. Definitely Barrett’s. He didn’t know anyone else who willingly wore virulent green and blazingly yellow plaid to sleep in. Too long in the leg for Nick, but they’d do. He did up the drawstring before he broke and had to speak again. The words wouldn’t be kept back. Well. One word. “Ivan.”
    Nakedness didn’t seem to bother Barrett. “What about Ivan?”
    “It has to have been Ivan, somehow,” Nick said. He refused to touch the back of his neck, even though the rising soulmark stung and prickled, demanding to be soothed. “Did you know he was mated? That he’s had a soulmate for years?”
    “Ivan?” Barrett dropped his stony façade for half a second. Just long enough for Nick to get a peek beneath the surface and wish he hadn’t. “No, he doesn’t. He’s been single for as long as I’ve known him.”
    “He does, though.” Nick jerked the drawstring of the pajama pants in a hard knot. “I think his mate’s named Robbie. I could be wrong. I didn’t really get a chance to talk to him before he and Ivan disappeared for the night.”
    “You mean…he found his mate, last night?” Barrett asked, with the slow hesitation of someone sorting through puzzle pieces that didn’t match. “But that’s a good thing. Isn’t it?”
    “Not ‘found him’ as in ‘found him for the first time’.” Nick leaned against the sink. He twisted the spigot and started to wash his hands to give them something to do. To keep himself from worrying and scratching at the soulmark, which stung like nettle rash by then. He rolled his shoulders to try to ease the needling pressure. “That happened years ago. Not sure how many. A long time. Abram said they were ‘barely legal’ then. They split up and hadn’t seen each other since then.”
    “What?” Barrett sat slowly on the porcelain edge of the tub.
    The strangest thought, a reminder that they’d kept meaning to replace the old bath with something big enough for two, flashed through Nick’s mind. He kept it to himself.
    Barrett shook his head. “I don’t get it. If they were soulmates, they couldn’t live apart. It’d drive them crazy. It’d hurt .” He paused. “Wouldn’t it?”
    “Yeah, well.” Nick