~

 

“Geez, goldfish brain…” Angela bit out…

“Nope, just as horny as hell for the first time in a long while,” Lark grinned at her.

“Do me a favour and when you feel the need to share … run headlong into something really hard,” Angela grumbled, before she turned on her heels and started back for the Inn.

“What’d I say?” Lark looked a little bemused as Dorothy sniggered behind her hand like a schoolgirl.

“Right idea, wrong time…” Nathan offered.

“I’m old – time is precious – I have to fit things in before other things stop working altogether,” Lark grumbled back, before he turned on his heels and started after his mate in earnest.

“That’s not what I wanted to hear either,” Nathan winced at the thought of it. Then he turned his attention back towards Sarah, “Speaking of which, where we’re we?”

“Before we were interrupted by a bloodsucking relative and her vampire mate…?”

“Exactly…”

“I was blasting you backwards through the air and you were landing with a thud on your pride…” Sarah placed her hands on her hips, tipped her head to one side, and regarded him with amusement…

“So, we did the getting to know you stage…” Nathan gave her a wide, sexier than hell grin that made her stomach flutter and her womb sit up and pay attention…

“Dream on, wolf,” Sarah turned on her heels and started back towards the Inn, but she got no more than two steps before Nathan was right there in front of her. “Oh, you want to repeat the last step, got it.”

“Not so much…” Nathan offered back.

“Well, I’m going to go and…” Dorothy considered it for a long moment. “Wait to be called by my ancestors, I suppose.”

“Or you could help me get lunch started…” Sarah tossed Nathan a scathing look…

“Lunch sounds … good,” Nathan growled. “I’m hungry.” His eyes told her what his lips didn’t, and he wasn’t talking about food.

“You need an invitation…” Sarah offered back, her eyes telling him exactly what she meant…

“Not to come in the Inn, I don’t … and if I hang around long enough…”

“Like a bad smell?”

“Like a mate letting the mating pull do its thing…” Nathan gave her a wolfish grin.

“I might take pity on you?” Sarah teased.

“I might grow on you,” he offered back.

“That reminds me,” Dorothy said with a click of her fingers. “I didn’t put my fungal cream on this morning.”

Nathan opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t find the words. Instead he grimaced at the thought as his mate giggled.

“There’s just too much sharing going on around this place…” Nathan grumbled.

 

~

~

~

 

“Stop following me…” Angela bit out over her shoulder as she made her way through the kitchen of the Inn and pushed through the swinging doors into the hallway.

“Why, you wanna follow me for a bit?” Lark teased, and he had to catch the swinging door before it hit him full on, as his mate let it go with a little more gusto than was necessary.

“Crazy old wolf, you’d probably just chase your tail…” Angela bit out.

She was annoyed with herself, annoyed with him, annoyed with life, and really annoyed with fate for leaving it so long to present her with her mate.

It wasn’t that she wanted him – the man was a wolf shifter – but she would like to have thought that her life hadn’t been about waiting for that one moment…

“Oh, I’m chasing a whole different kind of tail right now…” he chuckled to himself. It was deep, and warm, and she kind of liked it, but that didn’t stop her from turning a full one eighty and coming face to chest with the man who was too close for comfort…

“You might want to rephrase that before I zap you…” she craned her head back on her neck and stared up at him with a dark glare…

“I thought you had a sense of humour…” Lark offered back.

“Obviously so did fate!” She bit out, eyeing him up and down until she locked eyes with him again…

It wasn’t that the man wasn’t a great specimen for his age… he was. She guessed that he kept up with as much physical activity as he could, and he was a shifter… but, that was the problem right there; he was a shifter – she’d bet the man still had a pretty good libido – while she got tired pulling on her tights in the morning…

“Ouch!” Lark growled a little as his beast took exception to her attitude.

Man and wolf knew that no witch was ever over the moon in finding their mate, but she was especially claws and fangs down about it…

“Guilty conscience biting you?” Angela asked and his frown turned into a scowl…

“For what?” He grumbled another growl…

“I don’t know, but I’m sure to think of something…” she bit out, scowling back at him, and wracking her brain for a reason to hate everything about him…

Sure, he was her age and a little cranky, but the man was also funny, and she liked that he gave as good as he got. It had been a while since she’d found someone as sarcastic as she was, and she liked batting words back and forth with him … she just didn’t like that he was her mate and all the rest of it that a relationship entailed.

She’d lived on her own for a very long time, and she’d gone into the care home because she’d had a fall and wondered if living alone was the best option for her if it happened again.

She’d been wallowing in self pity, and by the time that she’d faced up to that and had made her escape with Dorothy in tow … finding Sarah and the thought of a new life … she’d started to feel better about herself again.

Now there he was.

Why couldn’t he have been Dorothy’s mate?

The senile old bat liked that thought, and he liked her too…

Now I have to put up with him…

Mating … pah!

At my age it would be like the trying to fit a piece of a jigsaw puzzle into a space that it sort of fitted…

I’m too old to be doing that kind of thing…

Not that there was anything wrong in doing that kind of thing years ago… but now?

When my joints creak like an old gate?

When I’m about as nimble as a statue…

I bet fate’s busting a gut at this pairing … and in truth, if it had been Dorothy then I’d be having a good laugh at her expense too…

But then Dorothy would probably welcome it with open … legs…

I should have stayed at the care home…

“You know, you have an attitude problem…” Lark grumbled.

“It took you this long to figure that one out … what were you, out to lunch?” Angela shot back…

“She’s probably just nervous about getting naked in front of you…” Dorothy announced.

The woman had strolled out of the kitchen and was headed in the opposite direction from where they were standing by the staircase. She shot just a quick look back over her shoulder at the two mates, and Angela noted the sparkle of mischief and mayhem in the woman’s eyes before she turned back away…