Page 52 of Shifter's Dream

She touched his face. “I lied,” she said. “I liked the Hawaiian shirt. It was sexy on you.”

The grin that spread over his face was infectious, and she could not help but smile back at him. She ran her fingers lightly over his cheek and he shuddered and closed his eyes for a second, then he reached up and grasped her hand. His skin was so warm his touch sent goose bumps through her body.

He let go of her, then reached past her to the coffee table and snatched up a pad and pen there. He perched it on the back of the couch and bent over it, painstakingly writing something she couldn’t see. Reed’s heartbeat sped up.

He tore the piece of paper off of the top of the pad, folded it, added something to the front of it, then handed it to her. She took it, tears forming in her eyes and she didn’t know why. She looked at it slowly.

On the front were the words,To my mate, in perfectly legible letters. They were a little bigger than they should be to fit on lined paper, and they weren’t the neatest she’d ever seen, but they looked normal. She opened the paper slowly, wiping at her eyes so she could see what was written there.

I love you. Love me back.

More silent tears spilled. Reed shook her head. She touched his face again. “You can’t.”

He nodded, his eyes pleading with her again. “I do, desperately.”

She shook her head. “You don’t even know me. I’m-I’m emotional. I go cold when I’m upset. I’m… kind of controlling sometimes. Ok, most of the time.”

He nodded like he knew and accepted all that. “I’m impulsive and I’ll smother you, but we can work all of that out.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“I-I don’t believe it.” She touched his face again.

“That’s ok.”

“Will you… convince me?” she said.

Like he knew exactly what she meant, he cupped the back of her head gently and drew her to him, reverently.

His kiss was a promise that she tried to accept.

***

Troy kissed her softly. He could do this all night long, even though his mate’s scent said she was looking for the good stuff, it also said she wasn’t quite ready for it, and that was fine with him. He’d been too hasty in the motel, too quick to get her naked. Tonight, he would get her desperate before he ever got her naked, if it happened at all. There was a lot to all this wooing shit, but so far, he thought he was doing ok.

Troy bunched his female’s soft hair up in one hand and ran his fingers down the length of her makeshift ponytail while he kissed her. She made little teeny keening noises, letting him pull her head back, her eyes closed, looking like the sexiest female in the world. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, then back to her lips, while his hands made themselves at home in her hair, pulling it softly, lifting it and letting it drop, massaging her scalp with his fingertips, anything to get her to make those little sounds. He lost himself in his female’s cool mint scent and the way she responded to every little move he made.

This.This was matehood. He finally got it, finally understood it all, the looks that Trevor and Ella gave each other across the room, the whispers of Beckett and Cerise to each other when they thought no one could hear them, the way that Crew would stare at Dahlia like she was the most beautiful woman in the world, the reason Harlan was such a basket case sometimes, Jaggar and the beast’s obsession with Leilani… He understood it all. Because when someone could make you feel like he felt at that moment, like he was the chosen one, allowed to worship at the temple of the most beautiful goddess in the world, when someone could make you feel like that, you didn’t ever let them go.

Troy made his way along his mate’s collarbone, kissing lightly. He licked her skin once and liked it, so he tested another spot. Her skin tasted exactly like he remembered. He couldn’t get enough. Her scent thickened to sugary sweet, freshmint.

She tugged at his head. “I want you on this side of the couch,” she said in a bedroom voice. Troy did not need to be asked again. He leaned over the couch, one hand on one side of her, one hand on the other, and hopped over, landing between couch and coffee table as neat as you please. She smiled like she was impressed, and her scent said the same, and he could not help but grin.

Troy knelt and leaned in close to his female, kissing her first on the lips, then on her chin and cheek, then moving back to her ears, while she moved sinuously beneath him, leaning back on the cushions, presenting her neck for his attention. He spanned her waist with his hands, over the blanket, content with feeling the throb of her heartbeat through his fingers. Every time she moved her hips, he pulled her just a little closer, ground her against him just a little bit, but he didn’t do any more than that, because he wanted her desperate for him, and he was willing to take all night to get there.

“Remember those things I told you not to say at the motel?” she said softly, her breath coming in hard little gaspy sips.

“Yes,” he murmured into her ear.

“Can you say them now?”

“You’re beautiful,” he told her, kissing around the shell of her ear. “You’re perfect,” he whispered to her, nuzzling the spot just behind her earlobe with his tongue. “You’re the most beautiful female I’ve ever seen,” he said, pulling his hands up to her hair to twist thick locks of it around his fingers.

She laughed softly. “Don’t you think that’s laying it on a bit thick?”

“I mean it all,” he said in his adorable way, pulling back from her a bit, catching her eye, trying to convey his sincerity.

---