I felt as nervous as I had on my prom night. It had gone differently than I'd expected, and far worse than anything I could even imagine for tonight. I'd thought I was going to lose my virginity to my date. Instead, he ended up ditching me at the dance, and I never saw him again. He must have taken someone else back to his rented hotel room. At the time, I'd been devastated, but now, I saw it as a blessing in disguise.
Tonight, I knew Mika wouldn't ditch me for someone else, but having his full attention seemed even more unnerving. Fated mate or not, I wasn't ready to be someone else's everything, the way Becca was for Bruce.
That wasn't fair. Bruce had cared enough about shifter and human studies to attend the only school offering the degree. On paper, he'd graduated with a master's in humanities, but Becca had defended him vehemently when her ignorant bestie (me) had said he could get a humanities degree anywhere.
It served me right, ending up with a shifter alpha of my own.
It never failed.Even with my decluttered room and newly sorted dresser drawers and hanging rack, I arrived at the hotel with five minutes to spare before we had to be in the ballroom for the rehearsal. Bruce and Becca were already greeting people at the open double doors.
"I'll be right back," I reassured them as I rushed to the elevator, completely forgetting to stop by the front desk for the key. I realized my mistake at the locked hotel room door. Iknocked, hoping against hope my punctual mate had waited for me.
"Did you forget this?"
Grecian pillars hid the doorways from all but the folks across the way. I stepped back and looked down the hallway toward the elevators I'd just exited. Mika sashayed down the hall in a gray suit and burgundy tie, waving a blue key card at me.
"Yes."
"Thank Becca. She sent me after you."
He slipped around me and opened the door, and I laughed. My bestie knew me better than anyone. "She may be the woman, but I'm the damsel in distress."
"Let's make that de-stress." He tugged my tuxedo bag from my grip and led the way past the bathroom to the closet, where he hung it next to a black vinyl bag. Then, he shoved me against the opposite wall and kissed me.
De-stress was right. I snaked my arms around his neck to hold myself up while my legs turned to gelatin. The simple presence of his pheromones reset my body to factory settings. I felt relaxed and rejuvenated at the same time. My blood pressure lowered in all but one obvious spot.
I wanted to keep kissing him, but the alarm bells that had faded into the background charged to the forefront of my mind when a clock struck six outside. Jerking my head to the side, I broke the kiss, panting in his ear. "You have a wedding to rehearse."
"It's not my wedding." He stepped back, giving me some room to compose my rumpled suit. For a moment, I thought he would drop to one knee and propose, but then he grinned and took my hand. "The sooner we leave, the sooner we can come back here."
While that was true, I hoped Mika wouldn't be too angry with me when I ditched him after dinner. He was my mate, but Becca came first, at least for tonight.
10
MIKA
After the rehearsal dinner,Becca grabbed Gabe's hand, and away they went. It was the same way she'd dragged him off to the tattoo parlor two weeks ago, but it felt different this time. He felt like mine.
"I told you so," Bruce said beside me. Once again, we sat at a bar, the hotel's, with expensive bottles of liquor lit up by a giant screen pulsing with psychedelic colors. "Their friendship comes first."
"That's fine with me."
He laughed. "You should tell your face that."
I buried my head in my hands to hide my eyeroll. Bruce was one of my oldest friends, but he still annoyed the shit out of me sometimes, especially when he was right.
I wasn't like this. I wasn't a typical alpha, always flexing their muscles and keeping their omega within kissing distance. I hated public displays of affection, but my body ached, the farther away he walked. My head ached, and I was one loud rant away from getting myself thrown out of this bar, and maybe the hotel.
Bruce patted my shoulder, and the touch settled me. It was his final night of freedom as much as it was Becca's. "What do you want to do tonight?" I asked.
"The only thing I can't do with Becca." He looked expectantly at me, and my mind drew a blank. "Shift, Mika. I want to shift and run along the coast." He elbowed me in the side. "Remember when those kids thought you were an otter?"
"Who could blame them?" I tapped my nearly empty glass against his half-full one. "Have you ever seen a meerkat swim?"
"Still can't say I have," he teased. "Running through the foam as the tide rolls in doesn't count!"
"I'll show you." I took the final sip of beer and placed the mug on the bar top with a solid thunk. "Let's go."
"That's the spirit!"
