~

 

“Now what?” Jules asked as she placed the snuffed out candles on the table and turned back toward her friends.

“Now what — what?” Mia looked for clarity.

“What are we going to do about our mates?”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind starting where I left off before this whole Aggie thing happened. Preferably not up against the hallway wall,” Debbie said on a low dirty chuckle that made Mia giggle at her friend’s antics.

“Alleycat,” Jules tossed back on a frown that rubbed Debbie up the wrong way.

“He’s my mate — not some nightclub one-night stand. I see nothing wrong in going full steam ahead. Especially, when he looks like that and kisses like a Demon on steroids.”

Jules folded her arms, tipped her head to the left, and skewered her friend with a hard glare.

“Are we sure we want to be mates?” Jules asked.

“We already are mates. The question should be; are you sure you want to lose your mate?” Mia said.

“Lose, as in…” Debbie brought her index finger across her neck and lopped her tongue out of her mouth as she played dead.

“Really?” Jules scowled back at her friend.

“Well, what do you think will happen to him if you decide to walk away?” Debbie asked.

“That’s not my fault,” Jules tossed back. She was on the defensive and something of a back foot.

“It’s not his fault either,” Mia offered.

“So I should just blame fate and jump in with both feet?”

“How can you not like him? He’s your mate.” Debbie said.

“I never said I didn’t like him — he’s annoying…” She bit off her words as she struggled to settle on just one that would perfectly describe him.

“Cute,” Debbie offered with a small shrug of her shoulders.

“Okay, he’s kind of cute, in a hunky, sexy, annoyingly…” She was struggling again.

“Hunky?” Mia grinned.

“Sexy?” Debbie offered as she matched Mia’s grin.

“Stop cherry picking my words,” Jules huffed at her friends lack of decorum.

“But you did say hunky,” Mia reminded her.

“And you did say sexy,” Debbie chuckled.

“And I did say annoying — and male — and opinionated — and a chauvinist…”

“And sexy!” Debbie offered.

“And hunky,” Mia smirked as Jules blew a hard puff of air out of her mouth before pressing her lips together and contemplating just how annoying everybody was being.

“Sexy and hunky is not the point. Every time I see him I just want to…” She lifted her hands in front of her and screwed them into tiny little fists. It looked as if she was trying to wring out the water from some imaginary clothes.

“You talking about me?” Daniel asked, and she wept her head around to find him standing in the doorway.

The man had pulled on a pair of faded jeans. They hung low on his hips and he’d not seen fit to do up the top button — her heart made a mad dash to escape her ribs and get to him.

Daniel wasn’t wearing a shirt, and all of his hard muscles were on display for her viewing pleasure, and view them she did. She couldn’t help herself. Her eyes devoured every inch of flesh — over and over — and over again.

“Hunky and sexy,” Debbie whispered on one side of her.

“I think you problem is sexual frustration,” Mia whispered on the other side.

“I think you should both cut your yapping,” Jules hissed in annoyance. “Simba.”

Daniel’s lopsided grin was both hunky and damn sexy, and he drew her in even more. Oh, how she hated that man.

“Nala.” Daniel’s grin widened as his eyes teased her.

“Ahh, that’s so cute,” Debbie chuckled. “You have pet names for each other already.”

 “No, we don’t!” Jules offered her a look approaching horror.

“Okay, Nala, take a chill pill.” Debbie offered back.

“Besides, he’s more Clyde,” Jules huffed as she tossed up a hand to her mate.

“Clyde?” Mia asked.

“The orangutan…”

“There’s an orangutan?” Debbie looked puzzled as Jules rolled her eyes and in her head and sighed as if the world was coming to an end.

“Does nobody watch the classics anymore?” Jules grumbled.

“Right turn, Clyde. I’ve seen that movie!” Jake chuckled as he strolled into the room. He was dressed identically to his brother and Debbie’s pulse rate shot up like a thermometer in an oven that had been turned up to the maximum setting.

“Don’t start!” Daniel grumbled. It was one thing for his mate to liken him to movie and cartoon characters but another thing entirely for his brother to do it.

“What?” Jake scowled.

“You know what,” Daniel scowled back.

“Are you picking a fight — again?” Jake shot back. “Because I can tell you, I’d rather be wooing than fighting right now.”

“I’m…” Daniel got no further.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Debbie said.

Jake’s head whipped around so fast that Daniel thought he heard the crunch of bone in the man’s neck. His tongue practically lopped out of the side of his mouth, and his eyes were wide as saucers as his brain tried to compute an answer for his mate.

“You’re drooling,” Daniel chuckled.

Jake practically rolled his tongue back into his mouth and swallowed down hard on the low, deep, hungry growl that rolled through his chest.

“And damn good reason,” Jake gave a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows at his mate and reveled in the sound of giggles.

“If you say so,” Daniel offered back.

“Oh, I do!”

It took three long steps to close the distance between him and his mate, but the instant that he got there, Jake reached out his arm, wrapped it around her waist, and hauled her body against his.

“I’m thinking that we continue where we left off,” Jake said with a hearty growl that confirmed his wolf’s approval.

Not that he needed confirmation from his beast, he didn’t, but his mate seemed to rally even more at the sound of that hungry growl.

“I like how you think,” Debbie said on another round of giggles that sounded damn sexy to his ears.

It took no real effort at all on Jake’s part to hoist his mate up his body, and he was off like a greyhound out of the traps chasing a hare, heading for the door, and ultimately for their bedroom. This time he’d do it right and wouldn’t get sidetracked in a damn hallway.

“One down two to go,” Daniel muttered, but it was loud enough for the others to hear him.

“Chickens and hatching come to mind,” Jules said.

“Well, I’m going to go and check on Aggie,” Mia announced as she started for the door.

“Aggie went home with Nestor,” Daniel informed her, almost causing her to trip over her own feet as she went.

“Well, I’m going to go and check on — stuff,” Mia grimaced at the sound of her own words.

“Traitor,” Jules hissed.

“Just a strategic retreat,” Mia rushed out of the doorway before she had to come up with any more excuses or reasons to leave. When push came to shove she had never been good at lying.

“Having another one of those — stop the pigeon — moments, are you?” Daniel asked as he folded his arms across his broad chest and enlarged his biceps twofold.

Jules really wished that he’d stop doing that. It was hard enough trying to keep her eyes off of his body without him offering up more temptation to her addled brain.

“Do I need one?”

Jules readjusted her stance. She planted her feet and folded her arms to mirror her mate.

The constant rush of excitement that heated her blood as it flared through her body and pinged at her womb annoyed her so. She would have slapped herself upside her head if she’d thought that she could get away with it and not raise any eyebrows or awkward questions in the process, but alas, she couldn’t.

“You tell me,” Daniel’s smile was teasing, but it was still so damn potent to her womb that she had the urge to slap him in the face with a custard pie.

Less stop the pigeon and more Benny Hill.

“Pass.”

“On what?”

“Huh?” Jules was lost somewhere between his manly-man chest and those enormous biceps.

“What are you passing on?” Daniel’s grin widened at her distraction.

“Everything!” Jules didn’t have a clue, so she went for the safe option. At least, she thought she had, but when he dropped his arms to his sides and started towards her, she had to think again.

“How about we stop arguing and start talking?”

“How about you stop right there?”

She rushed out the words as she lifted one hand, palm outwards towards him, and couldn’t decide whether to zap him or touch the hard muscles of his chest that were so inviting.

She needed help. She needed her sanity back.

“Worried?” Daniel did stop, but only when he was right in front of her.

“No.”

“Tempted?” Daniel’s grin was more than teasing; it was hungry.

“To zap you? Yes.”

“Liar.”

“First I’m argumentative, and now I’m a liar?”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me?” She blinked twice as she stared up at him.

“Did I stutter?” Daniel’s grin widened, exposing two rows of perfect white teeth, and she zapped him like she’d never zapped anyone before.