MASON

I pulled at my hair over and over again as I walked around outside the house in mindless circles. The craving had lessened in her arms. Licking her had been…

My everything.

And just like that, when the hunger for her had died down enough for me to think, a small voice whispered, “Take.”

I put up a mental block against that voice.

And lost my shit all over the place when it pushed back; the hunger burned, my temper snapping.

And I broke a freaking door.

I lived by my control.

I fed the regulator like a well-tended pet with a schedule. I’d always been in charge of my urges, sexual and otherwise.

I kicked a boulder, sending it sailing into a tree, cracking the poor oak in half as it fell against the road.

Well, shit.

I stomped over and shoved the tree out of the way as if it was a feather. I was getting physically stronger, sharper, hearing things I had no business hearing.

Like the music of her blood.

Her heart calling to me.

I fell to my knees.

The desire to bite her was just as powerful as the desire to mate with her, to take her from behind. My hands shook as I dug my claws into the earth and braced my body in a hunting position.

The more blood I was exposed to the worst it got.

And I could feel her blood mating with mine, swirling around in a dance so ancient that even I didn’t know all of the movements. But my blood did — hers did. It recognized its mate and was rejoicing while simultaneously pumping to all the wrong areas in preparation for the final joining.

I scowled as my heart thumped in my chest.

If I never completed the mating, it wouldn’t matter. She was immortal; she would survive it.

I, however, wasn’t sure I would.

And that is the problem, isn’t it?

What if she was weak like my last mate?

What if she hated me? What if I killed her?

So many what-ifs and so many scenarios I didn’t understand how to fix or control.

I would not risk her.

I would not.

“You sure pout a lot for a male.” Cassius suddenly appeared next to me.

“Didn’t hear you,” I grumbled, still in my protective positioning.

He shrugged and looked back at the house. “I brought reinforcements.”

“Everyone’s back?”

“Alex thought it would be best for Hope to discuss war strategy with Timber. They’ll be back later this evening.”

I groaned. “You didn’t have to cut your trip short. The fight between good and evil is more important than my… cravings.” I gulped.

Cassius’ eyebrows shot up. “What makes you think your cravings aren’t a part of that war, Wolf?”

Frowning, I looked down at the same earth I’d sworn to protect, its minerals swirling beneath the surface, kissing my fingertips. I belonged in the dirt, outside; I belonged with what I’d sworn to protect, and yet, I’d abandoned it. “This war is better off without me. I’m not that important, Cassius. It took one weak human to prove that I am nothing. I can’t fix what’s been broken.”

“Maybe you can…” Cassius hesitated. “…maybe you can’t. But the point…” He tilted his head and then leaned down next to me, his feathers shaking as pieces of dirt flew up and touched them, changing their color from blue to brown and back again. “…is to try.”

The dirt fell back to the ground in an array of colors and burst into a small field of wildflowers where my fingers were pressed. “Angels and their tricks.”

He shot me a half grin. “You know I don’t control the wings. Sometimes I think it’s Sariel’s way of still speaking to us, always creating, always moving.” He locked eyes with me. “I do not control them. I’m a part of them, and they are a part of me. Control does not always equal good. Sometimes, control is evil.”

“Control keeps things in line.”

“No…” Cassius turned and started walking away. “…control is just another word for fear.”

I watched his body disappear through the woods and glanced back down at the wildflowers, finally deciding on picking them as I wiped my dirt-covered hands on my jeans, and made my way slowly back to the house.

Serenity was downstairs with Genesis, her smile genuine as the girls huddled over a magazine.

Ethan’s green eyes narrowed in on me as he sniffed the air, and then his eyes widened a bit before he elbowed Cassius.

Cassius just shrugged. “Let it go.”

“This isn’t frozen,” Ethan said through clenched teeth. “This is going to be a clusterfu—”

Genesis cleared her throat and held out one of the twins to Ethan. He sighed and took both of them out of the room, but not before giving Genesis a disgusting kiss on the lips and shooting me another threatening glare.

“He slobbers all over you,” I pointed out. “You can’t enjoy that.”

“Twins.” Stephanie swept into the room. “I’d say she enjoys it very much.”

I made a face and lamely dropped the wildflowers in front of Serenity. “For you.”

I inwardly rolled my eyes at myself. Is that the best I can do? I may as well have brought in my latest kill with my tongue hanging out and panted next to her like a new pup.

Serenity held the flowers to her nose. “Thank you.”

“Thank Cassius.” Why did I say that? Why am I speaking still? “His feathers created them with their creepy angel magic.”

Serenity’s face fell. “Oh.” She laid the flowers back down on the table like the gift wasn’t really a gift anymore.

“You’re the one who picked them.” Cassius brushed a kiss across Stephanie’s nose.

Happy couples. Everywhere.

Disgusting.

Even an angel had a mate.

I snapped my teeth in irritation and jerked open the fridge door in search of something to eat.

“Alex, damn it!” I slammed the door closed. “Did he take all the food?” My berries were gone. Not a pinecone in sight. There was nothing in the damn fridge but ketchup and a glass jar of pickles.

I opened the freezer. I knew I had stored some frozen berries in there a while back.

Nothing but meat.

And a frozen pouch of blood.

I swallowed.

The room fell silent.

I slammed the fridge shut, opened it, and slammed it shut again, throwing an unbelievable tantrum that I couldn’t control even if I’d wanted.

“Looks like you need to go to the store,” Cassius said calmly. “Take Serenity.”

I held my laugh in.

It wasn’t funny.

He wanted me to take a vampire that I wanted to devour alone, in a car, to a store that had every single piece of meat my wolf would kill to buy, to eat, right in the damn aisle.

“I love grocery shopping!” Serenity jumped out of her chair.

I gave Cassis a middle finger and then did it again just for good measure.

“When my parents were alive—” She stopped talking and looked down at the ground.

Hell.

I was screwed.

Her heart raced.

And then her jumbled thoughts pumped out. “Not enough for them to stay.”

My heart cracked in my chest as the words tumbled out of my mouth. “I’ll take the Jeep.”

“You can make a list while he drives.” Genesis winked at me.

Stop being helpful.

Genesis was one of my best friends. But she also had a gold medal in manipulating me into doing things I didn’t want to do, like during Christmas when Ethan wouldn’t watch Hallmark, and she’d said she’d comb my fur if I sat next to her.

I was loath to admit the times I’d choked up watching those damn movies.

Within minutes, I was driving Alex’s new shiny white Jeep Wrangler through the downtown traffic in search of Whole Foods while Serenity sat stock-still next to me.

I’d been forced to put on a shirt and nice jeans with a pair of flip-flops that I reserved for outings. But when I’d come downstairs, Genesis had sent me back up to shower the dirt from my hands and face.

I was a wolf. Wolves were meant to be dirty.

The argument hadn’t stood.

So, I’d pulled my hair back into a rubber band, put on the too-tight white t-shirt that made my chest itch, and managed to get in jeans that I assumed would split in two if I bent over one too many times.

The minute Serenity had seen me, her heart raced a rhythm that made my blood soar.

She wanted.

I wanted back.

And we were alone.

Mating in the back of Alex’s Jeep actually cheered me more than I thought, but it was wrong.

All wrong.

Wolves and vampires did not mate.

Someone got something wrong.

And if I lost it all…

Lost her…

Lost anyone…

Control, control! I ripped the wheel and cleared my throat as I turned into a parking spot near the front of the store. “So, you like grocery shopping?”

I inwardly groaned. Was I always this bad at decent conversations with people I wanted to lick?

Maybe that was the problem; I’d never wanted to lick anyone, claim anyone as badly as I did her. It made me stupid.

Sex made everyone stupid.

But at this point, I’d probably get first prize.

Serenity grabbed a cart and smiled up at me. “Yeah, it was one-on-one time with my parents. We’d always grab a Starbucks and then run around and find all the best bargains on food. We never ate the same thing every week. My mom liked keeping things fresh and exciting. Some weeks we did pasta one day and a casserole the next, since we don’t really eat to survive.” She shrugged. “We eat more for pleasure than anything else.”

I swayed when she said pleasure.

My eyes swam with lust.

She steadied me with her hand on my arm.

“Sorry,” I croaked then looked down at her hand and took it in mine, helping her push the cart toward the produce section.

I didn’t want to let go.

I knew I should.

It would be the wise thing to do.

Because I was minutes away from stripping her naked next to a head of lettuce. That damn well would cause a need for clean-up on aisle four.

“Relax…” she whispered. “…it’s just grocery shopping and a little hand-holding. It’s not marriage. You don’t have to keep me.” Her heart stuttered a bit.

I felt her pain, the intense need to be needed. Wanted.

“It would be more than marriage.” I spoke in a quiet voice, releasing her hand in order to grab the same lettuce I was hell-bent on pushing her up against. Carrots. I mindlessly started tossing things in the cart without any sort of purpose to keep my hands occupied. They wanted her skin so bad I couldn’t focus. My teeth kept pressing against my inside cheek, imagining piercing her soft flesh.

I gripped the cart again.

Serenity seemed to know the storm that brewed inside as she very gently kept rubbing her thumb over my hand.

“It’s scary. This whole mating business.”

A fresh wave of guilt hit me. “I wish it wasn’t me.”

She stopped walking.

A horrified expression had me picking her up into my arms and holding her against my chest. “Get that thought out of your head. It’s not you… I’m just…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “…I’m a broken, dirty mess, and you don’t deserve the mess. You deserve the masterpiece.”

Tears filled her eyes as she reached for my face then slowly cupped my cheek. “Mason, the mess is the masterpiece.”

And then, very gently, she pressed her lips to mine in a chaste kiss that had my lungs burning for more, my body hard and aching.

“I wish…” My eyes searched hers. “…I wish I believed you.”

“Me too.” She gave me a sad look as she slid down my body.

I felt her breasts against my chest; I wanted to grab them, see them fit into my massive hands, watch her scream my name. I wanted so much.

I didn’t know how to have her — without losing control.

Without giving in to whatever the hell was wrong with me.

“I don’t want to hurt you again,” I admitted in front of a box of Cheerios.

She grabbed the cereal and tossed it into the cart. “Have you ever thought that maybe if you drank more blood you’d be able to think clearly?”

I frowned. “But wolves don’t drink blood.”

“Right, but you’re… not… just a wolf.” She said it with slight hesitation.

“Are you suddenly a vet?” I joked and grabbed ten more boxes of cereal. Genesis loved cereal, and Hope, it seemed, was either pregnant or Alex needed to feed her more. She constantly ate at midnight, giant bowls, sometimes three.

“I could be wrong.” She eyed some oatmeal and tossed it in the cart. “If I’m wrong, I’ll go hunting with you.”

My ears perked up. “Do you think you can keep up?”

She smacked me in the chest.

It only stung a bit.

I rubbed the spot and winked.

She was so pretty, my mate.

Hell.

I needed to stop thinking that way before I screw us both, making it so she couldn’t escape me, escape the bond.

But she was pretty.

So pretty.

Her eyes flickered green.

“Hungry?” I asked.

“Starving,” she admitted. “I would probably eat two of your steaks.”

I groaned at the erotic picture. “Wolves like to make food for…” I didn’t say mates, but that was what it was. It was our job to hunt the food, prepare it, provide for their every need.

I frowned at the memory of my last mate not liking steak but eating it because I’d wanted her to.

Then frowned harder.

“You alright?” Serenity asked, steering the cart into the meat aisle,

“Yeah, I’m just—” My mouth went completely dry.

“Stunned into silence over meat?”

She crossed her arms while I stared, while I lusted, while I briefly imagined becoming a butcher and licking the table after I prepared the food.

And then Serenity, in all her beauty, reached for some steak, sniffed it, then held it out. “This one’s good.”

I’d never been so wrongly aroused in my entire existence as she licked her lips, held the steak out to me, and provided the only two things I needed in life in one shiny package.

Her.

Steak.

Her.

Steak.

I felt my body give way. I tried to control the urge, but I was too late. I opened my mouth to say something, probably run, but before the word could get out, she grabbed my hand and jerked me into a door that was for employees only. She tore at her own arm then held it to my mouth.

I took her blood.

My wolf roared to life as I pressed her up against the wall, my teeth locking onto her wrist, my body pinning her next to the employee-of-the-month chart, my damn eyes glued on Bart, the winner of February, and then the chart fell to the floor as Serenity rubbed her body against mine.

The friction in my jeans was too much.

She reached down and flicked open the button.

And then my mouth was on hers.

Hers on mine.

This. This is what I should have done yesterday.

This.

She gripped my length as I rubbed instinctively against her, devouring every cry she made as if it was the sole purpose I’d been put on this earth.

Not here.

We couldn’t. She was better than that.

But I couldn’t stop.

I was going to have to call Ethan from prison.

And explain that I mounted my mate in the employee break room of Whole Foods — and liked it.

“Mason…” She purred my name as I cupped one of her perfect breasts in my hands. It was heavy and formed perfectly for my palm. It was mine.

I dug beneath her shirt, desperate for more, just as she reared back and sank her teeth into my neck.

My wolf roared within

My vision cleared as tiny particles of dust floated in the air around me, as the heartbeats of hundreds of people in the store flooded my ears, their thoughts, their souls in all their colors flashing for me to see.

I saw it all.

I saw the world through new eyes.

And I was greedy for more.

Serenity sucked through her lips and then fell back against the wall, mouth parted, blood dripping from her lower lip as her crazed green eyes met mine in confusion and wonder.

Chests heaving, we stared at one another.

I couldn’t speak.

Slowly, I righted her clothes as she wiped her mouth and then in a stunned voice confessed, “You’re half vampire.”

I brought a shaking hand to my face and wiped my mouth. “How?”

“I don’t have the power to change someone, to even awaken something that’s been dormant. There’s… there’s no way. I’m not part of the council. I’m not old enough I’m—” She kept shaking her head.

“Cassius—” I grabbed her hand. “—Cassius will know. Let’s grab the food and go.”

“If the cart’s still there.” She shot me a small smile.

I returned it with a brilliant one of my own. “We were in a hurry.”

“Next time…”

Did that mean there would be a next time? Could I even handle it without exploding on the spot?

“…we go slow.”

“Slow,” I agreed, not sure if I could do anything slow when it came to her. “We’ll go slow.”

I could have sworn I heard a dark chuckle from somewhere and a whisper that said, “Lie.”