by M. L. Briers
There was a tingle against his lips that rushed through his body and confirmed what he already knew. His.
Kelly was about to protest — she really was — but then something strange happened, and she had to wonder why she was fighting against fate of things.
She already knew that fate had the upper hand, and she’d helped it on its way when she’d made several wishes on her journey to finding the man of her dreams — her soul mate — would kicking him in the balls really be the way to go?
Bree, the vampire, Mason, fate, destiny, magic, and even she herself had all combined to bring her into his realm, into his arms, how could killing him be right?
His lips were soft and made her’s tingle, but not so soft that they weren’t demanding – oh, boy were they. That kiss was part sweet, and part – bring it on!
And he did. With the rumble of a growl that got lodged in his chest, he pressed to deepen the kiss, and she was more than curious – she was bewitched, spellbound, and that should never happen to a witch.
Kelly had never been a glass-half-full kind of a girl, but when he deepened that kiss; her cup runneth over.
She was reminded of the words of the great sage – Scooby Doo – oh boy, oh boy, oh boy – it seemed fitting.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
~
With a thoughtful frown, the vampire pressed his ear against the window and listened hard.
“You liked being stuck against the glass so much that you wanted to do it again so soon?” Bree sniggered as she folded her arms, thrust out a hip, and watched the vampire eavesdropping on the alpha and his mate.
“It’s quiet in there — too quiet,” Jai said.
Nathanial leaned in toward him. “What do you hear?”
The vampire bit down on his annoyance at the loud bark of the man’s voice beside his ear. He rolled his eyes and tried to resist the urge to punch him in the face. “Slurping.”
“Isn’t that the sound that vampires make when they feed?” Bree tossed back.
“No — clever clogs, it’s not.” Jai sneered. “I think the alpha has finally managed to kiss his mate.”
“About time,” Nathanial chuckled.
“Oh — my — Goddess,” Bree snorted a chuckle. “You two are worse gossips than the elderly at day camp.”
“Day camp?” The vampire chuckled.
“You know, the place they go to socialize, have lunch, compare aches and pains,” Bree tossed back.
“You know, you will be elderly one day too?” The vampire said with a smirk. “Or I could fix you…”
“Fix me?” Bree looked disgusted by the idea. “Growing old is a privilege — many don’t – and any aches, pains, and illnesses are just battle scars.”
“So, you don’t want fixing?” The vampire asked.
“I’m not broken…”
“Yet,” Jai tossed back.
“You need a new perspective on life…”
“Oh, I’m doing just fine…”
“I’m going to tell Martha…” Bree smirked.
“Is that really necessary?” The vampire said, and he straightened up and eyeballed her for a long moment to see if he could tell if she was joking or not.
“Yes.”
“I’m sure she has something better to do than…”
“Oh, I’m sure Martha could spend a few hours of her time enlightening you…”
“Okay, how much?” The vampire demanded. He’d lived enough lifetimes to know that you didn’t mess with an elder witch and that everyone had a price.
“Money can’t buy my silence,” Bree announced and turned her nose up at the idea.
“Jewellery — a house?”
“Boy, are you scared of Martha,” Bree sniggered.
The vampire started to count things up on his fingers. “Let’s see — she’s an elder — she’s a witch — she’s cantankerous…”
“Oh boy, are you gonna get it when I tell her what you just said,” Bree chuckled.
Bree turned on her heels, tipped her chin up even higher, and stalked away. Nathanial leaned in toward the vampire again. “Someone’s in trouble,” he sniggered.
Nathanial stopped sniggering when the vampire’s fist caught him square on the chin.
~
Kelly wasn’t sorry about the kisses, not sorry one little bit that she’d allowed them to continue until she had to break away from him to breathe, because she’d forgotten to do that, and she thought that breathing would be beneficial to ensuring that she partook in many more kisses like that with her mate.
He was hot. His kisses were hotter – like the hottest sauce mixed with molten lava hot, and she was in danger of melting in his arms to slide down his hard sexy body and become a puddle at his feet.
Weak legs, weak brain, and what she was sure was a weak look on her face as she tried to keep up appearances and berate him without words. She didn’t trust her voice, mainly because she was breathless and her brain didn’t believe a word of the reproach that she wanted to offer him.
After all, a girl couldn’t be too easy to claim as a mate, now could she?
Mason hadn’t wanted to stop kissing her – kissing her and more, and it was the x-rated more that was playing in his brain like a slideshow that he was trying to shake off.
He looked at her hooded eyes and her slightly swollen – much kissed – not kissed enough – lips, and knew what was coming. Playacting and mistruths – whether because she thought she had to do it after she’d lost control as he had, or because she was still unsure about going full steam ahead and becoming his mate – that he couldn’t be sure of.
But, she’d kissed him back – and then some! That he could be sure about.
Kelly knew she needed to talk, but who could form a defense for those actions? She’d practically licked the man to death like a faithful puppy. Well, not quite, but she didn’t think that she’d done herself any favors in the denial department.
“Well, aren’t you going to say anything?” she demanded, still sounding breathless even though she’d meant to berate him.
Mason still looked hungry like the wolf, and then a slow smile started to pull his lips, and he might still have had hungry eyes, but they were also laughing, teasing, and, worst of all, knowing.
Ha! The man was going to call her on it – she needed a game plan. She needed to kick her brain into gear and figure out a sarcastic put down that would put him in his place and remind him to be a gentleman.
“I apologize for taking liberties, you were … irresistible and I couldn’t help myself. Just one touch of your lips made me forget myself, and I throw myself on your mercy, even if I don’t deserve it…”
What!? That definitely hadn’t been what she’d expected to hear coming from the savage beast!
“Ummmmm,” Kelly couldn’t think – she was gobsmacked – hit over the head by a big old sledgehammer of chivalry and sweetness by a man that could have stepped out of the pages of a romance novel from the beginning of the last century.
Was he a knight of the round table? Sir Galahad? Mr. Darcy?
“I wanted to lick you from your head to your toes and back again…”
Okay, maybe not Mr. Darcy! But, she liked that sentiment.
“Can we rewind to the part where you were feeding me a line?” she teased him, and he looked blank – like she’d hit him with a pop-math-quiz. Maybe not a line?
“I don’t do lines, sweetheart,” Mason growled beneath his words. His beast was still prowling, and it sounded like velvet over gravel and made her skin tingle. “I’m all me – take it or leave it.”
Take it! She thought, and then rushed to rein those horses in.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
~
Whoopsies!
“Weeellll…” Kelly didn’t know exactly how to answer that one. She made a big show about thinking it over to buy her some time.
It wasn’t like she could just rush into the rest of her life — was it?
On the one hand — you di
dn’t just fall madly in love at first sight with someone, did you? It was more lust — wasn’t it?
On the other hand — it was fate — wasn’t it? And she’d never heard of one instance where fate had been wrong in the mate department.
She wanted that satisfying chocolate cake moment. The moment when the glorious taste was on your tongue, and you reveled in it like a pig with your nose in the trough — the moment before the guilt of the number of calories you just consumed kicked in.
She’d had that moment — she’d kissed him back like he was chocolate cake and she was ravenous for more — funnily enough, the guilt hadn’t kicked her up the backside – yet.
There was just that uneasy feeling within her that people would think it was too soon. That she was rushing. She was easy — then she came to the startling conclusion — what people?
It wasn’t as if her fellow witches were going to judge her — they knew the score about mates. It wasn’t as if the pack was going to judge her — they knew the score with mates.
So who, exactly, was she worried about, and why did she care what anyone else thought? It was her life to live, and she only had one shot at it. Didn’t she owe it to herself to start living as soon as possible?
She could get run over by a bus tomorrow. One of those frozen poo-packs from an airplane could land on her head. A vampire could think she was a tasty treat and suck her dry of blood until she resembled a prune. A meteorite could strike the planet and wipe out all life as she knew it, not that she’d be around to know it because she’d be dead.
She could procrastinate so long that life just passed her by.
Or…
“No comment.” Kelly winced as she copped out.
Fate sucked.
Life sucked.
She sucked.
“I can wait,” Mason said, more like a promise of what was to come then a line that he was throwing at her.
Kelly didn’t think that was fair. Those words melted her heart and resolve — not that she’d had much of that since he’d kissed her — faster than a blowtorch on ice.
“Now, what did you go and say that for?” Kelly groaned as she grumbled. Then she sighed.
Mason didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He winced.
He’d said the wrong damn thing, but then that was just his big, stupid, alpha ways. He did know how to talk to a woman — just not the woman that was his mate.
“Because it’s the truth…” He got no further, as his mate reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pushed up onto tiptoes.
Then she was straining to reach his lips — but, he was quick to act. His brain kicked his backside into gear, and he brought his lips down on hers.
His beast growled within him. He growled.
Mason would follow her lead where ever it let them — and when she tried to climb up his body of her own free will, that lead told him to place one hand on her backside and help her up.
Good choice. She wrapped her legs around his hips, and that brought its own kind of a growl that caught in the back of his throat.
She was pressed against his hard length, and there was no way in hell that he could ever not growl at that feeling.
In Mason’s mind, sex was sex, but she was his mate, and that was different. He wanted to go slow but was desperate to speed things up. He wanted to curb the feral side of his nature, and yet he wanted to lick her from head to toe.
He knew that his man brain, big and little, would undo him eventually, but he still had time — how much time was anyone’s guess.
He needed to make the most of the time that he had — show her that it was all about her. He was an alpha and could control his urges – well, up to a point.
His beast grumbled a growl within him, that part of his nature wouldn’t be so easily denied. The wolf was eager to claim their mate — just in case she decided to run off again.
Mason closed the beast down as best he could. There was no way that he could put the wild side of himself back in the cage completely — not now that he had his mate in his arms and was kissing her as if his life depended on it.
When Kelly broke away from his lips again; he tried not to take it personally. “Prying eyes!” she said, and he didn’t understand. He offered her a goofy and quizzical look in return. “Don’t you have somewhere more private, like a bedroom?”
Mason certainly didn’t need her to hit him over the head with a sledgehammer on that one. Just the sound of the word – bedroom coming from her lips was enough to send him off and running like a sprinter out of the traps.
He tried to tell himself that it didn’t mean what he thought it meant. She just wanted privacy – he couldn’t expect anything more than what she was offering him — but his little brain was working overtime at the thought of getting her in his bedroom, putting her down on his big bed, and doing what mates did best.
Mason took the stairs as if there was a fire and he needed to escape — not that he was going the right way to do that — but still. Down the corridor, turn left, and he kicked the door open and had to stop it from rebounding against her back.
He stalked inside and tossed the door closed behind him. With each and every step that he took, he grunted and growled at the feel of her sex pressed against his.
It was like a tease, a taste of what was to come, and he wanted what was to come more than he needed the blood in his veins or the damn oxygen in his lungs.
Life was great. Life was grand. He had his little witch mate in his arms, and he was going to make the most of it.
He didn’t hate fate so much anymore. He certainly didn’t hate witches so much anymore.
At least, not his witch.
“Oh, a bed,” Kelly offered the dirtiest little giggle that he’d ever heard in his life. Perhaps he heard what he wanted to hear?
“It’s … a bed…” Mason didn’t want to rush her. He did, however, bring his lips down on hers once more with hungry kisses that devoured her very soul.
Kelly had to wrench herself away. “People usually lay on beds,” she offered back.
Did she really need to draw the alpha picture?
Mason took a step and paused. “If I get you to that bed, I’m going to want to…”
“You don’t need to draw me a picture; I get it — I want it.” She couldn’t emphasize that last part enough. Obviously, she did need to draw the alpha a picture.
With a deep, hard grunt, Mason stalked toward the bed. Somewhere within the back of his mind, there was a little version of him that was doing somersaults, cartwheels, and dancing a jig.
Mason lowered her down to the bed and pulled back slightly as he started to unwrap her body like his Christmases had all come at once. Almost naked, and as curvy as hell, the alpha swallowed down hard at the best Christmas present ever — and it wasn’t even Christmas.
He yanked the shirt from his body and her eyes devoured his hard muscles and ridges that looked as sexy as hell. He reached for the button of his jeans, flicked it open, gripped the zip with his finger and thumb, and then his eyes snapped back to hers. “You know I’m going to…?”
“Oh, geez,” Kelly reached up and slapped herself on the forehead. “Well, if you don’t then I will!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
~
“Just checking!” Mason rushed out with a deep rumble of a chuckle as he yanked the zip downwind, pushed his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans, and dropped them to his knees.
“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” Kelly chuckled at the sight of his hard body, his long, thick, length, and grinned with glee in her eyes as they sparkled with excitement. “That beats chocolate cake!”
“Chocolate cake?” Mason chuckled. He didn’t understand the feminine mind, and he wasn’t sure that he ever would.
“Meh, you’ll learn.” She waved an absent hand.
In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t important. All that mattered now was them.
“Moving on,” he growled.
“Wish you would
,” she chuckled again. “Do you need directions?”
Mason grumbled a growl in the back of his throat. “Hell no!”
The alpha certainly didn’t need directions, or a map drawn for him as he started at her lips, and devoured her all the way down.
Kelly had to wonder if there was an inch of her that he hadn’t touched, licked, kissed, or paid some kind of attention to. Not that it mattered — she wasn’t going to point out that he’d missed a spot. If anything, she wanted to hurry him to a spot that needed more attention than others.
Then he was there, and her mind suddenly went blank of anything other than what he was doing to. She reveled in it, she rejoiced in it, and right as she rushed headlong into the intensity of her first release — she was more than thankful for it.
When Kelly finally pried her eyelids open, there he was climbing up over her body on his hands and knees with dark, sinfully hungry eyes, and a predatory smile that showed the beast within.
Wow, and he was all hers.
His muscles were working overtime beneath his skin, and he looked good enough to eat. To hell with chocolate cake — her new favorite thing was Mason.
“You’re all mine,” Mason growled, and the excitement within her soared to new heights.
She was just thinking the exact same thing.
Kelly could only offer him a wicked grin as he lowered himself down onto his elbows, and she felt the press of his length against her body.
Kelly offered a dirty chuckle. “That’s not where that needs to be…”
“I’m not there yet — they say patience is a virtue,” Mason growled, but he had a big old wolfish grin on his face.
“They also say put the wood in the hole — I don’t feel a lot of that going on.” With a deep, satisfied growl, he pushed inside her. “Okay, so you do know where it goes.” She chuckled again, but with another push of his hips towards hers, that chuckle ceased to exist.
“And I know just what to do with it.”