~

 

Liam stalked towards the connecting door, wrapped his hand around the handle and yanked … nothing … he wasn’t the only one sticking like glue. He reached down, twisted the key in the lock and yanked again … nothing…

“Magic? Really?” He growled.

“A girl likes to feel safe…” Agatha offered back, sarcasm dripping from her voice as she raised her hands and got rid of her wards… “Abracadabra…” she offered, and when he snatched the door open on a huff, he almost head-butted it.

Liam grunted and snatched a look back over his shoulder at her before he took just one step and stopped…

“You’re not planning anything … deceitful, are you?” He offered and got a butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth look back from her. That look sent something trampling all over his last nerve…

“Me…?” she placed her hands on her chest and tried to look innocent, but innocent didn’t suit her. Not when her eyes were flashing with mischief and humour.

“Oh, yeah … you!” Liam growled back.

“Perish the thought.” She snapped out with a shrug off her shoulders…

“Now, see … that doesn’t make me want to rush to trust you…”

“That’s your shortcomings not mine.”

“Sweetheart, there’s nothing short on me…”

“Except your temper?”

“I think I’ve done pretty well … considering…”

“Give that man a round of applause…” she tossed back with another small sneer. “You still attacked an innocent man for no good reason…”

“Except that he had you hostage…”

“Did not…”

“Yes, he…”

“Did bloody well not!” Her hands went to her hips and Liam turned to take a step back towards her. If she wanted to challenge him then he was all up for it.

His wolf growled at him, a warning to be easy in his step with their mate. Liam sighed … he hated it when his beast was right…

“I thought he had…” He offered back.

A man did not like to admit his mistakes, and this admission was to his mate of all people. He shouldn’t have been making mistakes, but he was only human…ish.

“There you go then. We all know what thought-thought, don’t we?” She cocked her head and challenged him to continue with his self-denial of the facts.

Liam grumbled another growl. Eating humble pie wasn’t exactly his favourite dish of the day.

“You were wrong too…” he tossed back, trying to deflect his own mistake back onto hers.

“Oh, do tell?”

“You went in the tunnels…”

“I did. I didn’t know I had to check my every move with you first.”

Liam opened his mouth to speak and paused … that sounded like a trap if ever he’d heard one.

What was he supposed to say to that?

He certainly wasn’t her keeper…

He certainly wasn’t going to chain her to the kitchen sink, barefoot and pregnant, although that thought kind of appealed to him right then. Especially, after she’d said she wouldn’t run off and she had done just that…

The woman was mischief personified, and she’d laid a damn trap for him with her words…

“You don’t …” he took a few steps towards her and she watched him like a hawk. “Unless you’re in danger, and then you’re damn straight I need to know where you are every moment of every day.”

“That’s…” she hesitated – chewed on an imaginary wasp for a moment – and then shrugged her shoulders.

“Oh look, we agree on something,” Liam tossed up a hand in her direction.

“I’d say more … the path of least resistance,” she offered back.

“It’s nice to see that you can, at least, be reasonable…”

“How unlike a woman…” she said rolling her eyes…

“Ah-ha!” he exclaimed, taking a few more steps. “I knew you were trying to trick me into saying something…”

“Male chauvinistic or misogynistic…?”

“Exactly!”

“And you did…”

“Didn’t…”

“Mean to do it?” She cocked her head to one side and narrowed her eyes on him.

“You are…” he pressed his lips together and started to count to ten … he got to three and a grunt, before he reached out, wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her body up against his.

It felt damn good – soft and curvy in all the right places…

Mine…

“Do not…” she started, but there was a wolfish grin that spread across his lips and caught her entirely off guard…

So did the kiss…

His warm lips came crashing down on hers and made her stomach flip and her head spin – and that was only the start of her troubles.

Her body responded to his kiss and there was something of a denial of service where her mind was concerned.

She wanted not to like it.

She wanted not to be aroused by his hard body pressed against hers, by his hands as they roamed, by his kisses as they deepened and took her along with them…

It was just that nobody was telling her whole body that, because her mind had already rebelled and gone to the dark side…

His mate … she certainly knew it, body, mind, and soul…