“Not at all.” I frowned at the question, taken a little off guard considering we’d never broached the issue before. There was something amiss. He was prying, though for what, I couldn’t yet decipher. I hadn’t sensed any disappointment in him, and my priority was to always leave him satisfied, but maybe I’d grown complacent? “Do you?”

“No, no,” he rushed to say, and I believed him, but there was definitely a detail he was skirting around. “I love everything we do. I just want to please you.”

“Must I repeat my earlier statement?”

“Yes, yes, I please you,” he mocked, and I could sense the accompanying eyeroll. “I know, but surely there’s something you want? Anything at all?”

I hummed in thought, and a smirk tugged at my lips. “Perhaps I could collar you, order you to your hands and knees, then parade you through the streets on a leash.”

Luca stilled, and comically slowly, he rose to face me again. “Are you serious?”

I grinned at him. “No, I am only teasing you.”

He released the breath he’d obviously been holding. “Thank fuck. I mean, as Alex always tells me, no kink-shaming, but yeah, I definitely don’t think I’d have the nerve for that kinda thing. Except maybe the collar. That’d be pretty hot. But not in public.”

The thought of him writhing beneath me, crying out my name with a leather strip buckled around his neck, was actually quite appealing. “I’ll keep that in mind, sweetheart.”

There was a short lull in the conversation, and I would have thought my mate had fallen asleep again if I couldn’t hear him aggressively chewing his lip. He had a particular thought on his mind. It could’ve been unrelated—he often would bounce from subject to subject with little warning—but I suspected whatever was flitting around up there was the entire reason for this topic. Though he was hesitating, to avoid bluntness, no doubt.

I waited. Patience was a must whenever Luca had a curiosity. Eventually, he shifted, crossing his arms over my chest and resting his chin on top, staring straight into my soul. I couldn’t have predicted what would leave his mouth next, but it was my turn to go still when he said, “Do you actually want to see me pregnant?”

Naturally, it took a moment for me to gather a response. “Of all the questions you have asked me, sweet boy, I’m afraid you’ve rendered me quite perplexed with this one.”

He shrugged, but judging by the uptick in his heart rate, he was anything but unbothered. “Just wondering what your thought process was behind the breeding thing.”