By the time they arrived back home it was after ten o’clock and Frances didn’t even bother to pretend that she wasn’t tired. Before she started up the steps to the apartment she looked back at Maggie and then Cage, all but ordering him to walk Maggie back to her apartment.

Cage gave her a raised brow in answer to her order and managed to stay silent until he heard the front door lock before he turned to look at Maggie.

“You don’t have to,” she blurted out loud.

“I don’t have to what?”

“Walk me back. I’m just across the street.” He knew that, but he couldn’t help and smile at the sweet scent of her desire. It rolled off of her in waves even if she was struggling not to show him how she felt.

“And what if I wanted to walk you?”

She blinked at him a few times before answering him. “Why?”

He could hear her heart pounding in her chest, like a small creature running through the underbrush, a tasty morsel for a big hungry cat. “To thank you, Maggie. For everything.” He saw the surprise on her face and shook his head. “Is that so hard to hear?”

She worried at her bottom lip and damn if it didn’t take every bit of restraint that he had to keep his hands at his side. It wasn’t enough that he had to keep from touching her, he had to fight his jaguar who was more than happy to point out that Maggie wasn’t just attracted to them, they could easily scent her arousal.

When she started to speak, his attention pulled back from his carnal feelings and focused on her answer.

“I’m just trying to help out. If it wasn’t for people like Paulie who reached out to help me,” she shook her head slowly, a shadow flickering over her features, “I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

She shivered and before he could think better of it he reached out and took hold of her shoulders. “Let’s get you inside.”

He was rewarded with a stunned look from Maggie, her eyes widened and her lips slightly parted. But she didn’t say a word.

“Maggie?” He heard the soft growl of his jaguar almost purring through his voice.

“Yes?”

He watched her wince at the sound of her own voice and didn’t want her to be embarrassed in front of him. Before he spoke he tried to find the right words. The polite words. And he could feel his jaguar watching from the shadows inside him. “May I walk you home?’

He could see the protest on her lips. Before she could speak, he smoothed his hands down her arms to gently pass over her elbows. As his hands continued down toward her wrists, he was barely brushing her skin with his fingertips.

“Let me walk with you, Maggie.”

By the time his hands circled her wrists he felt her heartbeat trembling just beneath her skin. He knew she was reacting to him, but he also knew she’d likely catch a cold if they stayed outside much longer.

He moved one hand down from her wrist and took hold of her hand in his. Leaning closer, he held his cheek a little less than an inch from hers, whispering in her ear. “Either you walk, or I carry you inside your apartment.”

That got her moving with almost a stutter in her step. She clutched his hand and moved along beside him as he walked toward the back of the diner. The parking lot at the back was little more than a layer of gravel worn into the dirt beneath it. If there was a heavy rain, the parking lot turned into a thin lake of water, but the gravel kept it from sucking the cars down into the muck that would form.

When she started up the stairs before him, his gaze traveled down her back and followed the seductive swing of her hips and the well-worn jeans that lovingly cupped her backside.

His jaguar was trying to wrest control from him, needing to taste and touch soon… very soon.

Cage refused, reminding his beast that their need came second to the comfort and happiness of their mate, but the animal reminded him how alone they had been without her.

She reached the landing before him, but he found her fumbling with her keys.

He could only hope her nerves were because she felt the same need for him instead of something else. He didn’t trust their bond because he hasn’t had any time to cement it with her. What could he do, but try?

“Here, give me the keys.”

She froze slightly before the door, the keychain dangling from her fingers.

When she didn’t move, he stepped up at her back and set his left hand on her shoulder and then reached around her body, gently tugging the keys from her hands.

“The one with the red rubber thing around it.”

He quickly turned the ring to hold the key between his fingers and leaned forward to insert the key in the lock. It didn’t take long to twist it open, but it took a long pause for him to realize that the strange feeling rolling through his body was Maggie, trembling against him.

It would have been easy to joke with her about it, he wasn’t a man that found sex something he had to hide or pretend not to like. And the feeling of Maggie’s luscious form pressed up against his front was a sinful delight. As he stood there he leaned back enough to whisper into her ear. “You should go inside, Maggie, or I might think you’re trembling because of me. And then we’ll really be in trouble.”

He felt her sway forward and then she stopped and settled back against him.

She turned her head slightly in his direction, but he wasn’t sure if she really saw him, or if she was only pretending to look. “What kind of trouble?”

Oh, Maggie, he chastised the young woman pressed so intimately up against him, do you know what you’re doing?

He hoped she did, because he didn’t have much resistance left.

“If you stay right where you are, I’m likely to turn you around and take you up against this wall.”

“Out here?” Her voice brushed against his skin as if it was a physical touch. “Someone might see us.”

He smiled, and his jaguar flexed its claws in the darkness. She didn’t say no.

She didn’t say no.

“Then let’s go inside, Maggie. I need to get you inside.”

The mood shifted once they were inside. Dropping her keys onto the top of the tiny dining table, she turned to look at him as she flicked the light switch on the wall. The old fashioned bright light bulbs in the clear glass fixtures was nearly blinding to him as if he was staring into oncoming high-bearms.

When he turned to look at her he found himself stuck in place. He didn’t make a move to walk away from the door. His gaze moved around the room, nothing looked familiar to him and he realized in a rush that he knew little about Maggie beyond her past. He knew nothing about the woman she’d become. He wanted her, yes, but his mate deserved more than a quick tumble in the sheets. What he did for a living might be seen as a bit barbarian for humans, but he knew how he should treat a human woman. He’d seen Devlin and Boone find their mates and he wanted to honor Maggie and show her that he was more than instinct, blood, and fang. She should be treated with respect with time taken to get to know her first.

His jaguar was ready to eviscerate him, but once he’d made the decision, Cage was determined to see it through. “I should be heading back.”

“Do you have to?” He heard confusion in her tone and knew it was his fault. Outside, he’d been only too eager to get her inside and here he was, suddenly trying to get out again.

It startled him to see her looking right at him, straight into his eyes. “I got you home safely.”

“And you didn’t want to stay?” She blinked at him a few times and damn if she didn’t worry her lip again. She might even look a little disappointed, but maybe that was just his wishful thinking.

Or his jaguar pushing for control.

Just watching her teeth press into the fullness of her lip, he wanted to be the one biting it.

Bite her.

He shoved his jaguar aside.

Our mate. It pushed back.

“You want me to stay.” He’d meant it as a question, but it almost sounded like a command.

And Maggie, well she didn’t look like she was arguing. “I do, actually.” Before either of them could say a thing, she’d crossed to her refrigerator. “I just moved back, but my dad stocked the fridge with some basics.”

As she swung the door open he watched her bend over to look inside, he had to grind his teeth together to keep himself from scaring her. “I don’t need anything.”

She stood up with a long-neck bottle in each hand? “No?”

He caught sight of the label and started to salivate. Okay, so he was already hungry being in a room alone with Maggie but add his favorite IPA into the mix and he was a goner. “Yes.”

He followed her to the couch and sat down beside her with a little over a foot between them. She handed him one bottle.

“Can you open it for me?”

Yes… his jaguar sighed, buttons too. Zippers…

“Sure.” He took one bottle of beer and easily pulled the top off of it and tossed it into the garbage pail across the room. When he handed the beer back to her she smiled and handed him the other bottle. He quickly repeated the gesture and rid himself of the cap. Taking a long drink from the bottle he watched her doing the same and nearly drowned in the rush of beer in his throat. He was too busy staring at the way her lips wrapped around the mouth of the bottle to remember to swallow.

He coughed and nearly lost the rest of his beer down the front of his shirt.

Still, he managed to keep hold of it and watch her lower the bottle from her lips, and he didn’t grab her and lay her back on the sofa. So, all in all, he considered it a win.

His jaguar, on the other hand, was pissed. Murderous, really. And he was the target.

“I didn’t know your unit was still tight with my dad.”

“Most of us,” he added.

“Most of you,” she agreed, “I just didn’t know that y’all were this close.”

He turned toward her tucking his leg up on the seat and leaning on the back of the sofa. “It helps,” he shrugged, “I mean, I thought once I left the service I would get as far as I could from the others. I wanted to find a place out in the middle of nowhere and live out my life in peace and quiet.”

She gave him a long thoughtful look. “Too much peace and quiet?”

“Pretty much.”

She laughed and damn, her breasts jiggled under her blouse and he had to hold tight to the longneck of his bottle.

“So,” she looked over at him, her eyes intent on him, half-lidded with sleep or seduction he couldn’t tell, “what’s this club Frances was talking about?”

“A fight venue. We have everything from boxing to MMA, amateur wrestling, and cage matches.”

She gave him a look that said she caught the irony of the fact that he was involved in that kind of a business.

“This was just my way of putting my bonus to work for me.”

“Bonus?” She sat back on the couch and propped her arm on the back, so she could lean her cheek on the back of her hand. Cage barely resisted the urge to reach out and tug on her hand until she moved closer, but then, he reasoned, he wouldn’t be able to look at her face.

And she was so damn beautiful.

“The bonus from the government for those of us willing to join the program. Like a signing bonus. They were pretty open about the likelihood of us coming back in one piece, or at all,” he felt the words as they scratched through a tunnel of sharp-edged self-loathing in his throat, “I’m surprised your father didn’t tell you.”

“Well, our relationship now is night and day from what it was like when I was Frances’ age, but there’s still a whole galaxy of things that my father doesn’t and won’t tell me. We don’t even talk about that time of his life much. It’s better that way.” A muscle in her cheek twitched, matching one in her temple. “And that’s okay. We’re doing well.” He heard the tentative sound in her voice, the thick swell of her throat with unspoken feelings. She wasn’t comfortable with the direction the conversation was going and he made a note of it. This was a topic he would have to tread lightly on if he wanted to keep things easy between them.

He approached his side of the story with careful, plodding steps. “The military had us in a special unit, because of our special skills.”

Cage watched the words slowly sink in, pressing a line between Maggie’s brows. “Because you were all shifters.”

He chose his words carefully. “Yes, we were shifters.”

“Was my father the only one who wasn’t?”

“No,” Cage knew there wasn’t anything classified in this part of the truth. “When they formed the unit, all of the officer’s directly under him were all perfectly human. Hard cases, yes. Assholes, most of them. They got their messages across quickly.” He swallowed another taste of bile on the back of his throat. “They weren’t going to make it easy on us.”

She nodded. “People who are considered different always have to prove themselves more. Do better. Take more crap than others.” Maggie looked into his eyes and smiled. A moment later her face flushed with heat. “But I knew you were special,” she almost sighed the words, “I knew it from the first moment I saw you.”

He heard the words and found himself catapulted back in time. Thinking back to the first few weeks of his ‘encouraged’ enlistment. He hated everything back then. The military, the food, the officers, every damn thing. And he’d shown it in his way. And that way usually ended up with him being punished for something. “I was in trouble a lot back then.”

“But think of what you did with it,” she smiled at him. “You found a way to make it work for you. You became a leader. You became an example to the others in a good way.”

She looked off into the corner of the room as if she was waiting for something to happen.

“Maggie?”

She blinked a few times and he saw the shimmer of tears on her lashes.

“What’s wrong?”

He reached out for her, but she sat back a little bit, putting her just out of reach. He wondered if she was pulling away from him or protecting herself. He didn’t like either option much.

“I saw you and thought I’d never find a way to be like you, sure of yourself, skilled.”

“You were young, Maggie. Still in school.”

“A teenager,” she groaned, “awkward all over and given the order to stay far, far away from my father’s soldiers.”

“Did he think we would hurt you?

She shrugged. “You were all dangerous as far as the military was concerned. I could understand why my dad wanted me to stay away, but he should have known that when he told me to stay away, it was only going to make me even more curious.” She got a far away look in her eyes and her smile was almost wistful.

“What was that all about?”

She shook herself and focused back on his face. “What was what?”

“That look on your face.” He saw the languid smile stretch across her lips and he was near desperate for a taste.

And given the look in her eyes, the dilation of her pupils had nearly turned her eyes black and his jaguar was eager for a peek. He had to hold back a little while longer.

“I guess,” she looked away as if she was afraid to say the words, “I’m just happy that I get to spend this time with you.” When she met his eyes he saw a dangerous spark in her eyes. “I’m just waiting for my dad to realize what he’s done and tell me to stop.”

His jaguar didn’t like that idea at all. Then again, neither did he.

“Would you,” he wondered aloud, “stop if he asked you to?”

I could stop him, his jaguar volunteered.

No you won’t, he groused right back.

“I can’t believe that you think I would stop just because he said so. I’m a woman now. I’ve got my own life that I’m leading where my father doesn’t get to tell me how to act or who to stay away from.”

“I like that.” Cage nodded. “You’re not afraid to speak up.”

She winced and let out a little sigh. “Is this where you tell me I’m ‘high maintenance’?”

He saw the expression on her face change a moment later, a little lift of her eyebrows and a widening of her eyes to match the surprise parting of her lips. It wasn’t until he felt her fingers press back against his that he realized he’d taken hold of her hand.

Deep inside of him, his cat purred like a kitten and he knew he was in deep trouble.

“Babe, you’re as far away from high maintenance as you could get,” he heard laughter in the air before he recognized it as his own. “You’re a hands-on kind of girl with a solid grasp of reality.”

Her laugh was a little pinched in tone. “So, I’m like a mechanic with good common sense?” She shook her head and sighed. “Does that mean I get to charge you for a tune up on your daddy skills?”

It wasn’t the words she said. No. There was something about the way she said the words that twisted him up inside.

He felt her fingers move against his, and when he looked her straight in the eyes she gave him a little smile and then a wink.

“Don’t worry, Cage. I offer installment plans.”

Her thumb rubbed up under his palm and the knot in his stomach released, sending his blood flooding south. He had to resist the urge to move on the sofa.

And he couldn’t. Shifting on the couch, he felt something stretch inside of him. It twisted and turned like a key, and when she wet her lips he felt like something broke open down in his soul.

But Maggie wasn’t like him. She wasn’t a shifter and she didn’t know what being with him meant, at least what he wanted from her.

“Maggie, I shouldn’t stay here with you. Not alone.”

“I’m a big girl, Cage. I’m a woman who knows what she wants.” She sighed, and he watched her chest rise and fall with every breath.

“What would your father think?” He tried to draw his hand away, but she didn’t let go. “I don’t want to get between the two of you.”

She laughed, a soft breathy chuckle that tickled over his skin. “You’re acting like this is something different than what it is.”

For the first time he felt thrown off balance but in a different way than before. He had been pulling himself away from her, only to realize she might just be pulling back from him.

And he didn’t like it, not one fucking bit.

Knowing he’d likely made a fool of himself already, he forged on ahead choosing to walk through the onslaught of fire rather than stand there and take the hits.

“What is this, Maggie?”

“My father already knows how I feel about you, Cage.” She blushed a little bit, but she didn’t let go of his hand. “I’ve been crushing on you since the first time I saw you. I’d walked by the training facility a hundred times or more waiting for a chance to see what all of you looked like and finally got my chance. Everyone was lined up and staring straight ahead as my dad shouted orders. Every one of you were so different from the other, but you were the one I saw.

“The only one I saw.” She lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to the tip of one of his fingers. “It was crazy, I know. But I took one look at you and something inside me said that you were mine.” Laughing a little, she let go of his hand and stood up in front of the couch. “I knew it was a daydream. I knew I was insane to believe it. You’re this amazing man. You’re built… boy howdy are you built. You could bench-press a truck if you had a mind to do it. And you’ve got this… heat about you, the kind that radiates like a solar oven and makes me warm and achy all over, but it’s okay, Cage. I get it. I’m the Colonel’s little girl, I doubt you’d ever see me as a woman you could be with, so I’m happy to do what I can to help you… just for the chance to be close enough to-”

He pulled her down, stealing the words from her mouth with a startled gasp. Sprawled on top of him, he felt her brace herself. “Don’t, Maggie.” He filled his hands with the full curve of her backside and pulled her up a little more to feel her heat pressing down on his throbbing erection. “Don’t sell yourself short like that. I see you as a woman. With you pressed all up against me, there’s little left working in my brain that would tell me to let you go.”

“Then don’t,” she relaxed against him and he slipped his thigh between hers. Her hands grabbed at his shirt and tugged at it enough to strain the buttons, “don’t let me go.”