“Okay,” I say, mind still caught up in how I’m going to impress her. I’m outside on the sidewalk before what she said really sinks in.
We can meet at the clinic.Why would we—?
Ohhh.
Shit.
She thinks our mating is going to be a medical procedure. Something clinical involving Dr. MacDougal and a high-tech turkey baster. Something that happens in separate rooms.
That’s…not what I had planned. My stomach hollows.
I have to tell her. Obviously, I have to tell her. She consented to something without fully understanding what she was signing up for. If she was thinking a doctor was going to impregnate her, I’m pretty sure that knotting her all night is going to be a dealbreaker.
I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming. If I’ve learned anything about my mate, it’s that she’s loyal to a fault: loyal to her children and friends whodeserve it…and her husband who definitely doesn’t. She’s not going to cheat on him.
“Excuse you,” a human man huffs as he steps around me to enter the bookstore.
I move to the side so I’m out of the way. How fitting for the situation. Ever since I found Julia, I’ve been standing to the side so I’m not inconveniencing her crappy human husband with my needs. From what I gleaned during our karaoke night, he’s not meetingherneeds. He never even kisses her.
How cold and cruel must he be if he looks at his perfect peach of a wife and doesn’t want to worship her with his tongue?
Damn it, I don’t want her to say no. I deserve my mate, and more importantly,she deserves me.
I march back inside and around the store until I find her in a back corner on a ladder, hanging little bats above a display of ghost stories.
“Julia.”
“Ian!” she squeaks in surprise and nearly falls backward off the ladder. Instinctively, I reach out to steady her and end up with a handful of plush ass. I am really not sorry about it. She quickly dismounts, so I reluctantly have to let go of her, but my fingers and cock twitch in tandem at the memory of the soft feel of her.
She glances at the folder I’m still carrying. “Sorry. Do you need something else? Did I miss a signature line?”
“No.” I take a deep breath as I scramble for the right words. The bookstore is busy, still milling with leftover story-time kids and their parents along with other customers. This is not the right place to have this conversation about whether I get to put my dick in her or not. “Listen. I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Is there somewhere private we can talk? It will only take a minute.”
She glances around and then pulls me into a small alcove near the restrooms that houses a fire extinguisher and a drinking fountain. It’s so small that we both barely fit in it. “What is it?” she asks in a low voice, sounding worried. “Were you wrong about us being mates?”
“No!” Fuck. I want to kiss her. Our bodies keep brushing against each other in the tight space, elbows and hips and shoulders. “It’s about this weekend. About… we’re not… it’s not… we can’t meet at the clinic, Julia,” I finish in a rush.
“We can’t?” Her brow furrows. “Is it at a different doctor’s office?”
I run my fingers through my fur, alarm bells ringing in my head that this is the day I lose her. It’s only a week after I found her, and now, squashed between a leaky drinking fountain and an avocado-green wall, I’m going to lose her. But still, I can’t stop the growl that comes out of me. “No.There won’t be any doctors involved. You’re mymate. We’ll do this as nature intended.”
Chapter 14
Julia
He can’t mean what I think he means. But he does. One look at his heated expression confirms it. He’s totally serious.
All this time I’ve been trying to keep my surging hormones in check, keep things appropriate, and he’s been thinking about being with me like that. Skin to skin. Putting his…knot? Is that what the brochure called it? Inside me. Filling me up with hispups.
My whole body gives an inadvertent shiver. It’s been so long since anybody thought of me that way. I’m feeling the ache of longing in places I’d forgotten about: My throat. My chest. Between my legs.
“I’m married,” I whisper. Flimsy words when he’s looking at me like that and I’m close enough to feel his body heat.
“You are,” Ian rumbles, bracing his forearms against the alcove wall on either side of my head. He leans over me so his forehead presses against mine, the length of his snout brushing the bridge of my nose. “But he agreed.”
My lips tingle at his nearness. This has to be the mate bond making me feel like this. So reckless. I squirm against the wall, my head warring with my body’s instinct. “Not to that.”
“He said he doesn’t want to know about methods and details. This is just the method.” He rubs his snout against one side of my face and then the other, marking me in the middle of Dog-Eared Pages.
