~

 

“Did you notice what I noticed?” Ashley whispered as she stood beside Nancy and leaned in so that the others couldn’t overhear her.

“Tell me what you noticed and I’ll tell you if I noticed what you noticed.” Nancy offered her a smug grin.

“It stopped snowing.”

“Your point?”

“Escape.”

“To tell the truth, I’m too tired to escape right now,” Nancy said. But she grimaced inwardly at the lie.

She was tired, but not too tired. She’d voted to kill her mate, and that thought didn’t sit right with her anymore.

Ashley had voted to escape, but that thought didn’t sit right with Nancy either. She wasn’t sure if the mating pull was in full force within her, or if she was just warming to her mate’s charms. Whatever it was, she was also unsure if she liked that idea or not.

In the meantime, while she was figuring it out, she wasn’t about to do anything stupid like venturing out into the snow with Ashley. She also wasn’t about to let Ashley do anything stupid like going out alone.

“Too tired?” Ashley shot her a questioning look.

“Kind of — yeah.” She lied again.

“Tired?” Ashley offered her a look of pure disbelief.

“Yep.” Nancy offered back, but she couldn’t meet Ashley’s eyes as she lied again.

“As in…?”

“Tired.” Nancy shrugged her shoulders and immediately put one foot in front of the other and walked away from her friend before she had to explain herself anymore.

Heck, she needed to know her own mind before she could ever hope to try and tell someone else what she was thinking.

 

~

~

~

 

Eliza finished washing up her hands of fairy dust and magic, dried them off on the towel, and yanked open the bathroom door to find Drake standing in the middle of his bedroom with a bottle of wine in one hand, two glasses in the other, and a big grin that stretched from ear to ear on his face.

Eliza’s heart hit her ribs hard and made a concerted attempt to escape toward him. Somewhere in the back of her mind warning bells were ringing — Eliza wanted to smack that little Quasimodo upside the head and silence those bells.

She’d been the one who had voted to stay. She’d been the one that had stopped running first when her mate was chasing her. She was the first of her friends to realize that fate had given her the opportunity to be happy, loved, and to be a part of another kind of family for the rest of her life.

And he did have wine.

“You think you can bribe me into being your mate?” She tried to keep her voice even and a blank look on her face. She didn’t know if she was pulling that look off, but still.

“Yes.” Drake couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear even if he tried. He wasn’t about to try.

“Huh?” Eliza looked confused; she didn’t have to fake that look.

“No.” Drake chuckled at the look on his mate’s face.

Eliza folded her arms under her ample breasts and watched as his eyes flicked down to take them in, but snapped right back to her eyes once more.

“See, now I don’t know if you’re just trying to play me and backpedal,” she lied.

“I…” Drake’s grin dropped like a stone. His dark eyebrows pinched together as he considered her words.

“Because what’s good for you is good, but did you ever consider at all that what’s good for you might not be what’s good for me?” She had him on the run, and she was going to make the most of it.

“Well, I…” Drake thought about it long and hard. If he was actually following her chain of thought, then she was right, being his mate might not have been what was best for her.

Or was it? Fate seemed to think so. Hell, he liked to think so.

“Didn’t think so,” she tipped her chin up in defiance.

The look on his face was priceless — confusion, constipation, and uncertainty. All good as far as she was concerned.

She wanted to chuckle, but she couldn’t. It would have given the game away, and she wasn’t done with making him squirm just a little bit more just yet.

“Okay, now hold on a minute and let’s back this up.” Drake was confused, and he’d rather try to move heaven and hell that rush his mate into anything, but obviously, she didn’t know that.

“Back up? Like — against the wall?” Eliza raised her eyebrows in expectation.

“Huh?”

Now Drake was really confused. He had to wonder if his brain had farted and he’d missed something along the way somewhere.

“Like — back me up, cage me in,” Eliza did just that. She walked backward until her heel hit the wood, her backside hit the wall, and she questioned him with a look, but, unless he was mistaken, that look was very naughty indeed.

Boy, did he not want to get ahead of himself and grab the wrong end of a stick that she could use to beat him with. Not that she’d need to – he’d be beating himself with it.

“And have your wicked way with me?” Eliza flashed him a damn wicked smile.

Drake made a strange gurgling noise in the back of his throat before he swallowed down hard. His mouth was moving but the only sound that was coming from him was a low, deep, hungry growl that rumbled in his chest and got stuck in his throat.

“That’s…” Drake managed to push out just the one word before his brain gave up trying to make more.

It was true to say that his little brain had taken over from his big brain, and she had painted a very erotic and damn tempting picture within his very dirty mind.

“Do you need me to draw you a picture?” Eliza asked, and when the corners of her lips turned upwards, her eyes sparkled with mischief and humor.

“You just did,” Drake growled.

He wasn’t quite sure how he made his legs move, but he did.

He practically tossed the bottle of wine and glasses onto the top of the chest of drawers, uncaring when one glass fell over, because he only had eyes, and a brain, that was fully focused on her.

Eliza felt the rush of heat and excitement that shot through her body. She didn’t know whether to burst out giggling or shriek that she’d changed her mind and run for the hills.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t sure of her mate, she was, but that hungry look in his eyes and the sheer overwhelming size of the man as he closed in on her – just like a predator hunting its prey, did give her a moment’s pause for thought.

That moment ended when Drake palmed the wall on either side of her body and took her lips with a kiss that made her head spin and her knees weak. Her stomach flipped and then flopped, and her womb was shocked to life by a bolt of pure excitement.

Eliza’s hands palmed the wall behind her. Her fingers curled in much the same way as her toes did.

She had the urge to touch him — feel those hard muscles beneath her fingertips — skin to skin, and she knew that feeling was not going to go away anytime soon.

She was the fish caught on the hook, and he was the fisherman that was reeling her in.

Caught.

Funny thing was that Eliza knew that she was right where she wanted to be.