Kidnapping sounded like such a harsh word. It evoked images of masked gunmen, or knife-wielding maniacs. What else was Annie supposed to call it, though, when a man forcibly removed her from her place of work, refused her demands that she be released, and transported her to a secondary location? Where he used more force to remove her from the vehicle utilized in the abduction and to haul her into a secure location of his choice.

When she put the question to him, Jonas just grinned. “I call it a first date.”

Annie stifled the urge to punch him, and then wondered why she’d bothered. She socked him hard right in the belly button.

“A date? A date does not involve the use of force, Paddington, so how about you try again.”

Jonas seemed to realize that if he released her at this point, she would waste no time in putting some distance between them. Instead, he shifted his grip until he held her against his chest. Then he simply lowered both of them to the sofa in his living room and kept her imprisoned on his lap.

“That’s what I’m trying to do, Annie,” he said with a sigh. “I’m trying to try again. With us. So how about you let me make the attempt, okay?”

She glared at him, not failing to notice that even cradled on his lap, she still had to look up to meet his gaze. His size should have intimidated her, but in reality it just made her feel safe. Cared for. Which was the opposite of the way he’d been trying to make her feel from the instant their first kiss had ended.

The memory allowed her to rebuild a bit of her defensive shell.

“Why would you need to try again?” she demanded. “Was something you said the first time unclear?”

A frustrated grumble bubbled up from his chest. “No, dammit. I made myself too fucking clear that day, didn’t I? You heard every word I said and very correctly judged me to be a complete and utter arrogant fuck.”

“Flaming asshole,” she corrected absently, barely hesitating over the unaccustomed curse. Her mother had raised her not to swear.

Shock knocked Annie back a mental step. She’d spent the last week trying to think up strategies to eventually prove to Jonas Browning that he’d been wrong about not being her mate. And now he was going to admit it all by himself?

She didn’t know if she was prepared for this.

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” He sighed. “Either way, what I said was complete bullshit, Annie. You knew it then, and after having my nose rubbed in it like a naughty frickin’ puppy, now I know it, too. I was wrong. And not only that, but I was rude, and I’m sorry. For all of it.”

Nope. Not prepared at all.

Annie sat there for a few seconds, chewing over the apology. It sounded honest. Smelled that way, too. But it was also pretty vague, and she wanted to make certain her mate understood exactly what he had to be sorry about.

Shifting her weight, she ceased trying to push herself away from him, and instead crossed her arms over her chest. Then she leaned back against his arm and lifted an eyebrow in challenge.

“All right, you’re sorry,” she acknowledged. “Name the reasons why.”

He made a choking sound. “Excuse me?”

“You said a lot of things that day, Jonas. I want to know which of them, exactly, you’re sorry about.”

“I already said, Annie. I’m sorry for everything. Doesn’t that cover it?”

She recognized the note of whining in his voice, the one that brought to mind a little boy who’d gotten caught putting frogs in someone’s bed. But Jonas wasn’t a little boy. He was a grown man. And if he was going to be her mate, she needed him to say that, straight out. Otherwise she’d always wonder whether or not he knew how he felt about her.

And she’d always wonder if he felt the same way she did.

That was no way to build a life together. Her wolf could just hold on for ten more minutes while their human sides got this sorted out.

“Damn it, Doc. I can barely remember everything that came out of my mouth last week. It was all dumb. It was all crap. Isn’t that good enough?”

“No. Because I remember it. All of it.”

Jonas let his head fall back against the sofa cushions and sighed as if he’d just finished a marathon and now wanted nothing more than to sleep for days. Annie might consider letting him. After he finished apologizing.

“Okay, then.”

He raised his head and fixed her with a level gaze. No more evasions.

“I really don’t remember all of it. That’s the truth. Not the words that came out of my damned fool mouth. I was panicking, because something was happening to me that I didn’t even think was possible, and my brain was having a hard time processing it. But I remember that I hurt you. That I claimed you were imagining a bond between us that wasn’t there. That’s the thing I’m most sorry for, because it is there. It’s real, and it’s powerful, and I’m ashamed that I ever tried to deny it.”

Annie felt herself begin to melt even as her wolf threw back its head and howled with joy. Their mate accepted them. What else did they need?

Dropping her arms, Annie curled her fingers around Jonas’s shoulder. That was the admission she’d been waiting for, but he wasn’t finished.

“I also attacked you out of my own insecurity,” he said, tightening his arms around her. “I tried to make it out that your feelings were not only invalid but inappropriate, and that was about the dumbest thing I’ve ever said in my life. I apologize. I’ll apologize for all of it as many times as you need. But can you forgive me?”

“What brought you to this great realization?”

He looked uncomfortable for a minute, then chuckled. “Honestly, I realized I’d been a dick almost immediately. I’m not so clueless that I can’t tell when I’ve been talking out of my ass. But I was still confused. I really did believe that stuff I told you, about brown bears not mating the way other shifters do.”

“Then what changed your mind? Because obviously you feel something if you’ve admitted there’s a bond between us.”

This time he actually squirmed while he hesitated.

“It was my mother,” he finally mumbled.

Annie blinked. “Your mother.”

“Yeah. She came to see me this afternoon, and she told me a story I’d never heard before. About her family, and the aunt I never knew.”

Annie listened while Jonas related the tale his mother had shared with him. She couldn’t imagine going through that kind of trauma and feeling that the nature of her own inner beast was to blame.

Lupines could play pretty rough, and they held on to some pretty primitive behaviors of their own. Mate hunts, in particular, drew a little too deeply on the feral wolves inside them for Annie’s taste. But in general, she’d never feared her beast, and never really worried about losing control of it. Not to the extent where she thought it could kill someone and leave her with no remorse for what they had done.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “For your mom and your grandparents. For your aunt’s mate. That’s something no one should have to go through.”

“I know. But that’s what shaped the rest of my mom’s life, and our entire clan. Hell, it shaped most of brown-bear society from what I can tell. Once the story spread, it really hit home with our kind. Almost all the clans ended up adopting the same kind of no-tolerance policies toward loss of control that my parents did. So what started out with my mom really did become an ‘all brown bears’ kind of thing.

“But the point was never to deny the mating instinct. They just wanted to keep control even under the influence of such a powerful emotional state. Keeping your cool became so much a part of them and of the clan that we started to think we didn’t feel the same things other shifters did. When the truth was, we felt them even more deeply.”

Annie slid her arms around Jonas’s neck and drew him to her in a long, tight hug. “Control is a good thing, especially for a shifter. We shouldn’t ever forget how strong we are, or what we’re capable of when our animal instincts are aroused. But we also can’t forget that we’re living, breathing people, and we deserve to feel our feelings. All of them, good and bad.”

“You’re right.” Jonas buried his face in her neck and returned her embrace, holding her as if she was the center of his universe. The most precious thing in his world. “I found that out the hard way. I couldn’t stop what I was feeling for you. And after a while, I stopped wanting to try.”

“Good.” Annie pulled back to smile at him, letting the joy she felt at being in her mate’s arms shine through her expression. “That means there’s room for you to want something new. What’s it going to be?”

His eyes bled to bear, irises expanding until no more white was visible. Annie felt her belly clench, low and tight, as her wolf responded.

“There’s only one thing I want now.” His voice came out in a low rumble that made her press her thighs together. “And that’s you. Mate.”