Shane
dragged me into the kitchen. He pressed me against the wall and kissed the air
from my lungs.
“What was that for?” I asked when he
finally pulled back.
He rested his forehead against mine,
his shaggy black hair tickling my face.
“That was an apology,” he said.
“For what?”
He sighed. “For everything.”
His hands ran over my shoulder where
the skin was still red from the healed claw wounds. He nuzzled the spot, ghosting
his lips over the reminder. His body trembled once, and I wasn’t sure if it was
from horror or relief.
“Shane, it was an accident,” I said.
“It was an atrocity,” he growled,
pulling away from me to pace the kitchen. “I should not be able to harm you.
Mate’s do not harm each other.”
“I’m not a werewolf, Shane. If I
was, your claws wouldn’t have done any real damage, and I would have healed it
in seconds. The mate-bond is designed for werewolves, not breakable little shifters.
It’s my fault I got hurt.”
“Don’t say that,” he closed the
distance to me, his hands slapping against the wall on either side, his arms
caging me.
I ignored my first impulse to start
a fight with him. The puppies were in the next room, needing the adults to be
calm. I put my hands on his bare chest. “You need to calm down, Shane,” I said.
He collapsed against me, the
aggression gone in an instant. He pulled me away from the wall and settled me
on his lap on a chair. He held me for a while. I listened to his steady
heartbeat and enjoyed the warmth of him. Despite the comfort of his arms, panic
was waiting to ambush me. I was bound in an unholy and potentially volatile
alliance to a man I barely knew. The government was aware that I was a shifter
and could ruin my life at any given moment. Randy was involved in some shady
military activity and lying to me about it. Anti-Supernat terrorists were
planning something horrific in a week, and I was supposed to stop them. I
needed a new toaster for my apartment, and I was fairly certain I was out of
ice cream.
“I need to go dancing,” I said into
the silence.
“Shto?”
Shane asked, then clarified in English, “What?”
“I have no ice cream.”
“So?”
“I have no ice cream. I need ice
cream. I can’t have a total breakdown without ice cream. As soon as you leave
me alone I’ll go buy some, only I’ll be so freaked out I’ll start screaming and
crying into the display case at the store. Everyone will stare at me and some
high school drop-out will stop bagging groceries and lead the crazy lady outside.
Then I’ll still be without ice cream.”
“Baby, you’re starting to worry me.”
“I need a toaster too. But a toaster
makes me think of heat, which makes me think of you. And that weird electrical
thing I feel when we touch. Once you leave I’ll be tempted to stick a metal
knife in the toaster and end up frying myself just so I can feel something like
touching you. So I shouldn’t get a new toaster. Or maybe I should, because I
could use the old one to electrify myself and have the new one ready to go. If
I lived through it. Then I could eat some ice cream.”
Shane was staring at me like any
sane man would look at a crazy woman on his lap. He was obviously trying to
find the right thing to say but the only sound he made was an incredulous, “Ah,
so, hmmm.”
At a loss, he nuzzled my neck and
held me closer against him.
“You can be crazy, Love,” he said at
length. “I like crazy.”
“Good thing, cause I’m not thinking
that I’m going to be the picture of mental health for a while.”
