I feel him shift to his side. “I get hot when I sleep so one layer is plenty.” A beat of silence passes, and I know he’s thinking about whether or not he should go get an extra blanket. “Do you want one? I can find something for you.”
“No, Jamie. I don’t need to be a burrito every night.”
He rolls to his back again, satisfied with my answer. This overprotective nature of his might end up feeling a bit grating ifit becomes too constant, but I can admit it feels nice to be looked after.
I’m on my back as well, but I can tell from the corner of my eye as I adjust to the darkness that he’s watching me. I wonder if he’s thought about my lips the way I’ve been thinking about his all day.
I keep fidgeting absentmindedly, then after adjusting my sleep shorts for the fourth time, I finally stop moving, but I’m far from settled.
His voice softly fills the quiet. “If you do decide you want to be a burrito, just let me know.”
His desire to take care of me smothers any flame of annoyance I might have like a blanket over a fire. Because that’s what Jamie is: my security blanket. Only right now, rather than feeling comforted by his presence, everything from his smell to the sound of his breathing threatens to smother me. But in a good way—aholy-shit-please-just-step-on-mekinda way, like Joanna would say.
Each second that passes in the darkness takes a lifetime, and my anxious mind thrives off of it. My racing thoughts hop from one scenario to the next like lily pads, reliving every moment of the past two days. Like the feel of Jamie’s rough hands on my thigh, how wet I was for him from just the sound of his words in my ear. But before I can lose myself in the erotic memory, my mind jumps to the moment I watched him run off into the woods with the rest of his pack. It feels like a lifetime ago when I first learned about the colossal secret he’s been keeping and saw him in his wolf form for the first time, yet it’s only been two days.
I remember running back to my car in sopping wet clothes and a snotty nose. At that moment, it didn’t matter that I felt like a drowned rat sitting in the driver’s seat. My heart felt so full, it propelled me throughout the drive home. But after making it to his house, surrounded by all of his things, I felt extremely lonely.
Though I’ve finally convinced myself to accept his offer to move in, I know it’s going to take a while for this place to truly feel like home. I can only hope that being with Jamie will help ease the transition. Because despite so much change, he’s here. And he’s still mine. More so now than ever before.
It’s hard for me to imagine being someone’s mate. Being tethered to them in such a permanent way seems foreboding. But the romance reader in me also finds it incredibly romantic. I’ve read books about fated mates before, in fairy tales and fantastical worlds, but not in real life. Not like this. It’s common knowledge that werewolves have mates, but instead of reading about it in books, I’m living it. I’m a romance heroine come to life.
The longer I lay in the dark listening to Jamie’s steady breaths, intrusive thoughts start telling me things I don’t want to hear.
Being his mate means he’s going to be stuck with you.
He’s going to get sick of you.
He’s going to resent you.
I groan and roll over to face away from Jamie. The wall of his bedroom is illuminated by the faint glow of the waning moon. Its current phase holds no claim over him, but in a few weeks, he’ll be forced to shift again. I wonder what it is about that he despises so much. Is it painful? Is it scary? It must be, losing yourself to a different state of mind, one you won’t even remember.
And what is it like, being in a body that’s not human? Will he get sick from being in the rain all night even though he had a different set of sinuses at the time? Is his fur thick enough to have kept him warm?
“I can hear you worrying over there.”
Jamie’s voice startles me. “I am not.”
“You are,” he deadpans.
Then I feel his hand on my arm. He rubs up and down, bringing goosebumps to my skin, but it’s soothing. The bed sinks as his weight shifts and then he’s right behind me, holding me just like he did yesterday after our kiss, after he explored me for the first time. It’s the feel of his body pressed to mine that eventually shuts off my mind, allowing me to sleep peacefully.
Chapter Twenty-Five
JAMIE
The moment Raegan’s alarm goes off on her phone Saturday morning, she bolts out of bed and rushes to the guest bathroom to take a shower. Her absence from the bed immediately hits me as I roll onto my stomach and moan into her pillow. The smell of her coconut shampoo fills my nostrils, soothing the ache in my chest that has swelled from her absence.
We’ll be getting a new bed frame for her room today, which means last night might have been my last opportunity to share a bed with Raegan Baker. We still have so much to discuss, and having time to think over the whole ‘being mates’ situation, she might very well turn and run in the opposite direction.
I want her to take as long as she needs, but what if Rhett was right about your soul eventually giving up if you ignore the pull for too long? What if, by the time she decides she wants to be together, the fire between us has fizzled out? There are so many layers to the situation now. Last week, all I wanted was for her to move in with me, but what if she eventually changes her mind about that too?
I’ll just have to savor her scent in my sheets for as long as it lingers.
I take my time dragging myself out from under the blanket, giving Raegan plenty of hot water before starting my own shower. After I hear the water cease to run through the pipes, I strip from my boxers and turn the knob in the shower to freezing, because yes, after having Raegan’s ass pressed against my groin all night, my balls are bluer than the walls of this room.
I wash quickly, my body shaking violently from the temperature, and when I’m done, I stand naked on the plush rug staring at my reflection in the fogged up mirror.
How did we get here?
