Chapter Three
“Miss, Miss, that strange man is here again.” Timmy jumped up and down, and taking her hand, pulled Aubrey to the window.
The five-year-old was prone to flights of fancy, so Aubrey didn’t expect to see anyone. Not like the first time he’d said that a week ago when she’d rushed out of the classroom only to find no one there.
After all, it had been almost a month since that fateful night, and Raphael hadn’t sought her out like she might have thought.
That seemed to be reserved for her dreams. Every night, without fail, she would wake up, hot, sticky, and on the edge of release, gasping his name after yet another erotic dream which left her reaching for her little battery-operated friend. Lately, she hadn’t even bothered to do that. The weak orgasms she achieved that way barely took the edge off. What she wanted, and needed, was to seek out Raphael, and that she couldn’t do.
Despite the intense moments they’d shared in the forest, he clearly didn’t feel the same way, which left her horny and frustrated, and liable to snap at her pupils like she was wont to do to Timmy now.
Oh, for goodness’ sake. This is pointless. Pull yourself together.
“Look, Timmy, we’ve talked about this, there’s no one there, oh…”
The rest of whatever she was going to say fled her brain in a puff of smoke, because the man dressed all in black was none other than Raphael, and he looked good enough to eat. He’d left his long hair loose to fall around his head. He ran a hand through his beard as she watched. The action made his long coat gape open and she swallowed hard when his top rode up, exposing a thin strip of his hairy muscled abdomen. Not an ounce of fat on that man, for sure.
Black jeans hugged his muscular thighs, and she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the bulge they so perfectly outlined. Heat flooded her panties and she was beyond grateful the windows were shut, otherwise, Raphael would have no doubt smelled her instantly. How mortifying that would have been. As it was, he raised his nose in the air, and then looked straight at her. A somewhat uncertain smile kicked up the corners of his mouth, even as his eyes bled to the golden yellow of his wolf’s and back again. Belatedly, she noticed the beautiful bunch of flowers in his other hand.
“Miss, who is that?”
Timmy’s tug on her arm broke the spell, and she focused her attention on the little boy, who regarded her through eyes the color of the deepest ocean, his little brows drawn together in a frown.
“A friend, Timmy, that’s all.” The lie stuck in her throat, but she could hardly tell the boy the truth, even if she knew what, exactly, she was to Raphael.
“If he’s your friend, Miss, why is he not coming in?” Timmy asked. “He keeps going away again.”
Aubrey’s heart gave a very suspicious lurch in her chest at that innocent question.
“He’s the man you’ve been seeing, Timmy?”
“Yep, and look, I think he’s coming in this time.”
Sure enough, Raphael unlatched the little gate and strolled up the path in the long loose-limbed stride so typical of a male, predatory shifter. She sure felt like his prey, as she somehow got her limbs to move to intercept him.
“Right, let me just...” Flustered, she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. As usual, it was escaping the bun she tried to contain the bane of her existence in. She really ought to just cut it, but somehow she always chickened out at the last moment.
She flicked on the smart board on the wall—the school’s newest and high-tech teaching tool—and selected an educational video for the class to watch.
“I just have to pop out. Watch this in the meantime.”
A chorus of happy whoops greeted that announcement, and taking a deep breath in for courage, Aubrey reached the front door just as his heavy knock heralded his arrival.
The part-time secretary the educational board employed stuck her head out of the tiny office at the same time.
“I’ve got this, Brenda,” Aubrey said. “I won’t be a minute,”
“Sure thing, my dear.”
Brenda smiled at her and shut the door to her office behind her. Before she could lose her courage and change her mind, she yanked the door open. Raphael must have been in the process of bashing on it because his fist missed her nose by inches, and he fell forward only to catch himself at the last minute.
“Jesus, don’t do that. I almost hit you.”
His deep gravelly voice did strange things to her insides, as did the way he now shuffled from foot to foot and then thrust the bouquet of flowers at her.
“Here, I didn’t know what you liked, so there’s one of everything in there. I’m sure the local florist thought I’d lost the plot. Anyway—” He stopped speaking, inhaled sharply, and grinned. “Will you please take this and let me in? I fear we’re attracting an audience.”
Sure enough, a peek past his huge shoulders showed several of the mothers arriving to pick up their kids, staring at them both, open-mouthed. No doubt wondering why such a hunk was delivering flowers to the spinster teacher.
“You can’t come in. I work here, and it’s almost pick-up time. What are you thinking?” She tried for her best schoolteacher tone, but just a husky imitation of her usual voice came out. What the hell was that about? To add insult to injury, her nape started tingling the more his spicy scent enveloped her, and her hand went up to that mark without any conscious thought. Raphael’s low growl at her action made her gasp. She hastily dropped her hand, but the damage was done because she looked into the softly glowing eyes of his wolf.
“Little doe.”
Two little words, delivered in that deep, dark delicious growl, made her want to forget everything and jump him like a wanton woman.
“Don’t call me that. Please, just leave. I can’t do this now.” She put her hand out to push him back, but the minute her palm touched his chest, his heat scorched her skin. Tingles of awareness traveled up from that point of contact, raced each other over her skin until they settled in her pussy. There was nothing at all she could do about the way her body reacted to being this close to her mate. Instead of pushing him away, her fingers curled in the fabric of his t-shirt to pull him closer.
Not that she could move him either way.
“I know. I just came to give you these.” Raphael uncurled her fingers and pushed the bouquet of flowers into her hand. It served as a wonderful distraction to bury her flaming face inside them, as his free hand briefly caressed his mark.
“Go, work, I’ll see you later. We’re sorting this tonight.”
With those ominous words, he shut the front door for her and Aubrey blinked as she slowly came to her senses.
Oh Lordy, was that a promise or a threat?
****
Raphael forced his feet to keep on moving, one step in front of the other, away from his mate. He hadn’t dared hope for this, had half-expected her to throw his flowers back in his face, which was why he’d chosen to come to her place of work instead of her home. He’d counted on the fact that she wouldn’t want to make a scene in front of her pupils.
What he hadn’t counted on was his wolf’s reaction to seeing her in person. The sensible blouse and long pencil skirt shouldn’t have looked sexy, yet all he could think about was what she might be hiding under there. From the barely-there makeup, to the strawberry-blonde hair, which she’d tried and failed to contain in a bun at her nape, to the sensible flat court shoes on her feet, she’d dressed to convey the image of the quintessential schoolteacher.
Yet her reaction to him had been anything but.
Raphael nodded toward the bundle of human mothers who didn’t even attempt to hide their ogling of him. They couldn’t really help themselves, reacting to the pheromones his wolf sent out without even trying. In his younger years, Raphael had taken full advantage of this phenomenon. Newly mated, however, the attention simply made him uncomfortable.
There was only ever going to be one woman for him, and that was the curvy little deer he’d left behind in the school house.
Aubrey Verene. Her name rolled off the tongue. Not that she would be Verene for much longer if he had anything to do with it. For starters, that deer-shifting clan were a pain in the hoofs, lost in outdated ideas of what a mating ought to be.
Raphael didn’t want or need a blindly obedient mate. No wolf shifter had ever favored one of those. She-wolves simply weren’t docile like does were, which was why his pack had been outraged when they found out he’d mated with a deer.
They might have united with him in the attack of the southern wolves. That had been an attack on their territory, after all, and a threat to one of them was a threat to them all, but they sure as fuck hadn’t appreciated the reason for it.
Serena, the highest-ranking female of their pack, and mother of the young she-wolf, who’d been trying to push her daughter onto him for weeks now, had been the most vocal of them all.
“This is preposterous. No wolf can be mated to a deer. You need a strong female by your side.”
Raphael had challenged her, hackles drawn, teeth bared, and, eventually she had grudgingly bowed her head in submission.
Collins, as ever the peacemaker, had stepped in.
“Our Alpha has chosen.”
While Collins had sided with Raphael in public, he’d had plenty to say to him in private.
“She is right. You need a strong female by your side. Deer are not known for their strengths and she’s a Verene.”
Collins had spat that name out as though it was an insult. His wolf had wanted to tear the other man’s throat out for disrespecting their mate. His animal didn’t care about any of that. Aubrey was his, and that was all there was to it. The man knew better, of course.
“She also left the community and has chosen to live in the village.”
“Among humans. What does that tell you, boss? And she hasn’t been back, has she? A she-wolf would have fought by your side, not hidden away in the one place we can’t enter in our wolf forms. Are you sure about this?”
Raphael sighed, remembering that conversation, just as he had done then, and glared at the neat little cottage his mate called home.
She had green fingers, as one might have expected of her. Neatly trimmed flower beds lined the path up to her front door. With the snow having melted and spring in the air, the first shoots of whatever bulbs she’d planted were pushing through the earth. An equally impressive vegetable garden slumbered away by the side of the cottage. Her scent was everywhere, calming his agitated wolf. One sniff was all it took to locate her spare key inside the fake rock by the porch steps, and having scanned the area to make sure no one was watching him, he let himself in.
His wolf whined low in his throat because being surrounded by all the things she touched on a daily basis was bliss and hell all rolled into one. It also made him doubt what in the hell he was doing here.
This was her home, he could tell that from all the little personal touches, from the crocheted throws over the old settees nestled around the fireplace to the many sketches on her wall, which had clearly been drawn by her.
He stopped the longest at the picture of a black wolf. Teeth bared, he was staring right out of the sketch, silhouetted against the night sky, menacing, and dark. Was that how she saw him?
Prowling around her place and snooping in her things would not get him the answers he sought. It would no doubt just piss her off, and he hadn’t come here to argue with her.
Raphael had enough arguments to last him a lifetime.
Wincing, he bent down to rummage around in her fridge. Barely healed, his side still hurt like the fucking bitch. The fight to the death the southern wolves’ Alpha had challenged him to, the one he’d agreed to in order save his pack and to stop all-out war, had been hard won.
Driven by the need to avenge his sons’ demise, the old timer had fought dirty. Manson Southern hadn’t ruled his notorious pack and gotten away with their misdeeds for all that time without knowing how to fight.
It had taken all of Raphael’s strength to bring the older wolf to its knees. The death of Manson meant Raphael was now in charge of them all, which placed the human village containing his mate smack bang in the middle of his territory.
He could just imagine his mate’s face when he imparted that bit of knowledge. A deer surrounded by wolves.
Would she run, or would she stay? That was the question which sat heavily in his gut, as he set about preparing a meal for them both, with the few ingredients he’d found in the fridge.
Only one way to find out and he was going to settle this tonight, once and for all.
Aubrey was his and he would make her see that, come what may.