We keep trying until I’m shaking so badly I can’t keep still. Bas shifts back and wraps me up in a warm hug. “Nevermind. Let’s get you warm, and we can try again later. I felt it. You nearly had it.”
I shake my head. “It’s OK. Maybe I just don’t have enough magic.”
“Nonsense.” He bends and scoops me up into his arms. “You’re plenty magic. You’ll find it.”
I have doubts, but in the end maybe it doesn’t matter as much as I once thought. I have a wonderful mate who is everything I could have asked for, and he doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. I just hope my family isn’t too disappointed.
Thinking about my family brings me back to reality a little. One thing leads to another, and I start thinking about the few job applications I wrote before I found out Bas was my fated mate. All of them were for places far from Mosswood. Far from the temptation of mooning over him. Well clearly that’s not going to work out now. I can’t even be separated from him for a week without suffering. I can’t possibly work in a different state or county.
When we make it back to the cabin, he switches on the hot water in the shower, and I step under the spray with a groan. It’s so good it stings, but I don’t care. I stay under the water until my skin is flushed red, I’ve stopped shivering, and I feel toasty warm.
I still can’t shake the niggling worries though. It’s like they’ve burrowed deep. Even when Bas wraps me in a towel and kisses the top of my head, I feel all tight and anxious.
“Hey, you’ll get there. Don’t worry about it.”
I sigh into his broad chest. “It’s not that.”
“What is it, then? Something is worrying you.”
A fun little bonus of the bond is that I get absolutely nothing by him these days. “Yeah. It is.”
He kneels, drying me off while I just stand there and lift my arms like a toddler, letting him take care of me. He doesn’t ask any further questions, just waits for me to elaborate.
“What am I going to do after finals?”
“Walk into any job you like, I would imagine. Anyone who knows what they’re doing will hire you. Is that what’s got you all tense?”
“No. Yes! I don’t want just any job! I want one at Black Pines. I want to be with you. But they’re not hiring.”
He laughs, and I scowl at him.
“Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?”
Bas sets the towel aside and scoops me over his shoulder, laying the flat of his hand across my ass with a smack but too gentle to really hurt me. “Yes, I do. I think it’s funny that you’re worried about having to work at all if you don’t want to. Don’t you know I’d take care of my mate?”
He tosses me onto the mattress and then climbs on top of me, pinning me down with one arm across my body and his heavy head resting on my belly. “Don’t you know that, Ver?”
I laugh. “Yeah, but what if I want to work? What if I need to? I can’t imagine life not doing anything.” It would feel weird not to work. It has always been something Mom insisted on, even though she’s sick. She and Dad own their own business and she refuses to hire anyone to run the books, even when she’s having a bad week. She’s always said working is one thing that makes her feel competent and independent. I know she’d be disappointed if I gave that up to be a housewife.
Bas turns his head to kiss my belly, sending a shiver of pleasure up to peak my nipples into tight points. “Then apply until you get the perfect job, or I’ll quit and you can have mine.”
“Bas, that’s ridiculous! I’ll find something, but maybe it’ll be a compromise. Maybe I won’t be a ranger right away.”
“Now who’s being ridiculous? You’ve wanted this for so long.”
“I wanted you.”
He lifts his head to look at me, a question in his expression.
“I wanted anything that would bring me closer to you. Maybe I didn’t even realize it when I took the course.”
“Then you shouldn’t compromise at all.”
“That’s not how life works, though, is it?”
He’s quiet for a while. Eventually, when my legs are starting to go numb, he shifts a little. “I want you to have everything you want. Everything. I want to make sure of it.”
I ruffle a hand through his hair. “Hey, trust me. You’re doing some heavy lifting in that department. I have no complaints.”
