Page 40 of Remington’s Mate

“So maybe this succubus thing picked something out of your mind she thought would lure you in. Or maybe your mind put Jaeda’s face on the faceless woman.”

“That’s what I kept trying to tell myself. But now I can’t stop thinking about something Jaeda told me.”

“Don’t tell me she’s having wild boink-a-thons in the spirit world too.”

“I’m not boinking the succubus. We have a spiritual connection.”

“Oh, shit, you are in love.”

Smack.

“Ow!”

“No, seriously, about Jaeda. We always thought she was totally human, but actually she’s not.” He told Colt what Jaeda had said, about having an amorphous blob of energy that should be an animal.

“And I started wondering, if our animals live in the spirit world when we’re in human form, then what if her animal got lost in there somehow? And that’s why it never manifested?”

Colt sat up. “You think this thing—this entity—could be her animal? But she only has one shifter parent—a wolf. So wouldn’t it always be a wolf?”

Remy shrugged. “Probably. Maybe I just want it to be her.” It would have been cool to find Jaeda’s animal for her.

“Or maybe you just want Jaeda,” Colt said.

“Well, yeah,” Remy said. “She’s—I can’t describe it. I can’t remember when I wanted somebody this bad. Not just to fuck, though.” He shifted his weight so he was facing Colt. “It’s like, I want to find out all about her. Everything she’s thinking. And my fucking leopard wants to protect her all the time, even though I know she can take care of herself.”

“Oh, hell.” Colt started grinning.

“What?”

Colt just shook his head, the grin getting bigger.

“Oh, no,” Remy said. “Don’t go thinking that. She’s not my mate.”

“That’s how it started with me and Callie.”

Mate? his leopard said. The pretty girl is our mate?

Figures, his owl said. I leave you in charge, and you find us a puny human.

She’s not our mate, for fuck’s sake! Remy said in exasperation.

I want her to be. His leopard pouted.

“Shit,” Remy said. All he could see were the potential problems—and there were a lot of them. The first being Jaeda herself. “If this is true—and I’m not saying it is—she is not going to be happy about it.”

“Why?” Colt said, sounding offended. “What woman doesn’t want a piece of this?” He gestured at the two of them.

“Right?” Remy said glumly. “Look at us. We’re sexy. We’re smart. We’re fucking adorable. But she wants to be human. She wants nothing to do with shifters.”

“And yet the minute she heard what we were doing, she jumped in with both feet,” Colt pointed out. “Plus, she felt you up. And threatened you.”

“Practically at the same time,” Remy agreed. “It was unbelievably hot.”

“She wants you.”

“Not as a mate. I think she’s still holding a grudge about that underwear thing when we were teenagers.”

Colt cracked up. “That was epic. I thought Michelangela was going to tear our limbs off and leave our torsos flopping in front of the community center like beached trout.”