CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

 

~

 

Whoopsies!

“Weeellll…” Kelly didn’t know exactly how to answer that one. She made a big show about thinking it over to buy her some time.

It wasn’t like she could just rush into the rest of her life — was it?

On the one hand — you didn’t just fall madly in love at first sight with someone, did you? It was more lust — wasn’t it?

On the other hand — it was fate — wasn’t it? And she’d never heard of one instance where fate had been wrong in the mate department.

She wanted that satisfying chocolate cake moment. The moment when the glorious taste was on your tongue, and you reveled in it like a pig with your nose in the trough — the moment before the guilt of the number of calories you just consumed kicked in.

She’d had that moment — she’d kissed him back like he was chocolate cake and she was ravenous for more — funnily enough, the guilt hadn’t kicked her up the backside – yet.

There was just that uneasy feeling within her that people would think it was too soon. That she was rushing. She was easy — then she came to the startling conclusion — what people?

It wasn’t as if her fellow witches were going to judge her — they knew the score about mates. It wasn’t as if the pack was going to judge her — they knew the score with mates.

So who, exactly, was she worried about, and why did she care what anyone else thought? It was her life to live, and she only had one shot at it. Didn’t she owe it to herself to start living as soon as possible?

She could get run over by a bus tomorrow. One of those frozen poo-packs from an airplane could land on her head. A vampire could think she was a tasty treat and suck her dry of blood until she resembled a prune. A meteorite could strike the planet and wipe out all life as she knew it, not that she’d be around to know it because she’d be dead.

She could procrastinate so long that life just passed her by.

Or…

“No comment.” Kelly winced as she copped out.

Fate sucked.

Life sucked.

She sucked.

“I can wait,” Mason said, more like a promise of what was to come then a line that he was throwing at her.

Kelly didn’t think that was fair. Those words melted her heart and resolve — not that she’d had much of that since he’d kissed her — faster than a blowtorch on ice.

“Now, what did you go and say that for?” Kelly groaned as she grumbled. Then she sighed.

Mason didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He winced.

He’d said the wrong damn thing, but then that was just his big, stupid, alpha ways. He did know how to talk to a woman — just not the woman that was his mate.

“Because it’s the truth…” He got no further, as his mate reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pushed up onto tiptoes.

Then she was straining to reach his lips — but, he was quick to act. His brain kicked his backside into gear, and he brought his lips down on hers.

His beast growled within him. He growled.

Mason would follow her lead where ever it let them — and when she tried to climb up his body of her own free will, that lead told him to place one hand on her backside and help her up.

Good choice. She wrapped her legs around his hips, and that brought its own kind of a growl that caught in the back of his throat.

She was pressed against his hard length, and there was no way in hell that he could ever not growl at that feeling.

In Mason’s mind, sex was sex, but she was his mate, and that was different. He wanted to go slow but was desperate to speed things up. He wanted to curb the feral side of his nature, and yet he wanted to lick her from head to toe.

He knew that his man brain, big and little, would undo him eventually, but he still had time — how much time was anyone’s guess.

He needed to make the most of the time that he had — show her that it was all about her. He was an alpha and could control his urges – well, up to a point.

His beast grumbled a growl within him, that part of his nature wouldn’t be so easily denied. The wolf was eager to claim their mate — just in case she decided to run off again.

Mason closed the beast down as best he could. There was no way that he could put the wild side of himself back in the cage completely — not now that he had his mate in his arms and was kissing her as if his life depended on it.

When Kelly broke away from his lips again; he tried not to take it personally. “Prying eyes!” she said, and he didn’t understand. He offered her a goofy and quizzical look in return. “Don’t you have somewhere more private, like a bedroom?”

Mason certainly didn’t need her to hit him over the head with a sledgehammer on that one. Just the sound of the word – bedroom coming from her lips was enough to send him off and running like a sprinter out of the traps.

He tried to tell himself that it didn’t mean what he thought it meant. She just wanted privacy – he couldn’t expect anything more than what she was offering him — but his little brain was working overtime at the thought of getting her in his bedroom, putting her down on his big bed, and doing what mates did best.

Mason took the stairs as if there was a fire and he needed to escape — not that he was going the right way to do that — but still. Down the corridor, turn left, and he kicked the door open and had to stop it from rebounding against her back.

He stalked inside and tossed the door closed behind him. With each and every step that he took, he grunted and growled at the feel of her sex pressed against his.

It was like a tease, a taste of what was to come, and he wanted what was to come more than he needed the blood in his veins or the damn oxygen in his lungs.

Life was great. Life was grand. He had his little witch mate in his arms, and he was going to make the most of it.

He didn’t hate fate so much anymore. He certainly didn’t hate witches so much anymore.

At least, not his witch.

“Oh, a bed,” Kelly offered the dirtiest little giggle that he’d ever heard in his life. Perhaps he heard what he wanted to hear?

“It’s … a bed…” Mason didn’t want to rush her. He did, however, bring his lips down on hers once more with hungry kisses that devoured her very soul.

Kelly had to wrench herself away. “People usually lay on beds,” she offered back.

Did she really need to draw the alpha picture?

Mason took a step and paused. “If I get you to that bed, I’m going to want to…”

“You don’t need to draw me a picture; I get it — I want it.” She couldn’t emphasize that last part enough. Obviously, she did need to draw the alpha a picture.

With a deep, hard grunt, Mason stalked toward the bed. Somewhere within the back of his mind, there was a little version of him that was doing somersaults, cartwheels, and dancing a jig.

Mason lowered her down to the bed and pulled back slightly as he started to unwrap her body like his Christmases had all come at once. Almost naked, and as curvy as hell, the alpha swallowed down hard at the best Christmas present ever — and it wasn’t even Christmas.

He yanked the shirt from his body and her eyes devoured his hard muscles and ridges that looked as sexy as hell. He reached for the button of his jeans, flicked it open, gripped the zip with his finger and thumb, and then his eyes snapped back to hers. “You know I’m going to…?”

“Oh, geez,” Kelly reached up and slapped herself on the forehead. “Well, if you don’t then I will!”