Jackie didn’t look reassured.
“Baby, I’m serious. They’re going to love you.”
“I guess.” Jackie sounded even less reassured than he’d looked.
“Didn’t I tell you I’d protect you?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t worry about it. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Jackie sighed. Deeply. “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve been a shifter all your life. I haven’t. I’ve never belonged to a pride or really had anything to do with shifters beyond what Drummond did to me. I think I have a right to be worried.”
Boone had to give him that.
“How about if you need to leave, you just tell me and I’ll drive you home.”
Jackie’s eyes rounded. “You’d do that? You’d leave the party and take me home?”
“Of course I would.” Boone frowned. He wasn’t sure if it was because Jackie had never experienced a shifter mating before or because of the assholes he might have dated in the past, but he had no confidence in what it meant to be mated. “You’re my mate, Jackie. I’d do anything for you except compromise your safety.”
Jackie’s cheeks flushed before he glanced away. “I know you keep saying that, but…”
“But what, baby?”
“My own mother didn’t want me. How can I expect you to want me?”
Boone pressed his lips together instead of shouting out his anger. His brothers would laugh themselves silly if they knew just how patient he had learned to be over the last week. His usual practice was simply to bite. He couldn’t do that with his mate. Jackie needed careful handling or he’d freak and run.
“I’m sorry,” Jackie whispered in a little voice. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”
“I’m not mad at you, Jackie. I’m mad at the circumstances.”
“Since I caused the circumstances, isn’t that pretty much the same thing?”
A small chuckle escaped Boone. Jackie sure was going to make his life interesting. He pulled into the driveway of the pride compound and parked his truck. He could see a small crowd gathering on the porch and knew they were all anxious to meet Jackie.
He just had something to settle with the man before then. He wanted them on the same page before they stepped out of the truck. If they couldn’t settle it, he’d turn the truck around, take Jackie home, and fuck his brains out until they did.
Boone kept a hold of Jackie’s hand as he turned to face the man. He needed that connection to his mate. He felt as if he was walking along the edge of a cliff with Jackie. One false move and he’d fall over that edge.
“I can talk about being mated and what it means until I’m blue in the face,” he said. “I don’t think you will accept it until you’ve fully experienced it. All I ask is that you give us a chance, a real chance. If you have to run because you’re scared, run to me.”
Something glittered in Jackie’s eyes before he leaned in and pressed a kiss against Boone’s lips. “I promise.”
“Thank you, baby.”
Boone couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he hopped out of the truck and went around to the passenger side. It might have seemed odd to open Jackie’s door for him, but the smile that greeted him when he held out his hand to his mate told him he’d made the right choice.
Jackie was every bit a man. The ache still in his ass from the pounding he’d received the night before proved that. But there was a gentler side to him that enjoyed silky underwear and painted nails.
Boone enjoyed it all.
“Ready, mate?” Boone asked as he tucked Jackie’s arm through his. He could feel Jackie shaking as they turned toward the crowd gathered on the porch and started toward them. “They’re all pussycats, baby. Just pussycats.”
His brothers would kill him if they heard that.
They stopped at the bottom of the steps. Boone grinned big as he looked up at his brother and alpha. “Alpha Hugh Marshall, I’d like to formally introduce you to my mate, Jackson James Lee.”
