“I like hearing about your life. Since I moved here I’ve been pretty isolated, and I definitely haven’t had anyone to just sit and shoot the shit with. But I have to ask, why are you nervous?”
Calder sucked in a deep breath, scenting the air around him. His wolf didn’t pick up even the slightest hint of fear—curiosity, yes; fear, no. He pulled up a seat next to her at the table, realizing that, imposing as he was, his size may have been part of the problem.
He bit back a groan as she twirled a long lock of hair around in her fingertips, looking as if she were trying to work out a complicated problem.
“It’s embarrassing really. I’m sure you knew the second you met me that I’m not like you. Er—what I mean is that I’m not a shifter, I’m human. Anyway, until I met Gerri, I’d never been around someone like her… or you.”
Calder loved the blush that covered her cheeks as she tried to spit out her brave admission that she’d never been around shifters. “I’m an open book; ask me any questions you’d like. I promise not to be offended.”
Chapter Nine
Daisy quickly perked up, her curiosity spiking to an all-time high. She had a million and one questions, but didn’t want to come off sounding stupid, nor was it her intent to offend him or Gerri with her silly curiosities. “Are you sure?”
Threads of uncertainty tugged at her mind, because she had no idea what was considered proper etiquette with shifters, but how was a girl to know if she didn’t ask?
Calder managed to quash her fears with a soft smile. “Absolutely. Why don’t we do this, so we can get to know one another? You ask me a question, then I’ll ask you a question in return. We’ll work on a quid pro quo kind of system.”
Daisy mulled over his offer. It seemed fair enough. Besides, it wasn’t like she had anything to hide; her life up to this point had been boring as hell. “Okay, that sounds fair. Why don’t we grab a bowl of stew first and ask questions over dinner?”
“Perfect!” Daisy bit her bottom lip, watching as Calder stood and stretched before crossing the room to the cabinets. Her eyes roamed greedily once again over the expanse of his backside. Her breath caught in her throat when he reached up to grab a couple of bowls from the shelf, his tight black T-shirt killing her with each stretch across the muscles that flexed and rippled with every move he made.
“You’re going to have some too, right?”
“Yep, sorry. I’m coming.” Ha! I wish! she thought. She had never been so turned on just by sitting next to a man, but there was something about the sexy shifter that called to her like no other ever had. One glance in his direction, one sexy smile was all it took for her hormones to kick in and demand they be given full attention.
She snapped out of her lust-induced haze long enough to give the stew one last stir, then fill their bowls to the top while Calder filled two glasses with ice and water from the fridge.
A few minutes later, and after they both settled at the table, Daisy wondered anew where she should start.
“This is really good, by the way,” Calder said after his first bite of the meaty stew. “Ask away.” He motioned for Daisy to start off the first round of questions.
Blurting out the first question that popped into her mind, she started with. “Can you really turn into an animal?”
Daisy gasped as Calder pushed his chair away from the table and stood. Shocked at her own impudence, she quickly apologized. “I’m sorry, of course you can. It’s just that with me being fully human, I’ve never seen a shifter—well, shift. All of this is so new to me and so fascinating, my human mind is having a hard time processing all the majik that must surround your life.”
The atmosphere in the room changed, and before she could say another word, a cool breeze whipped through the kitchen. The spot where Calder stood shimmered with majik that made the hair on her arms stand on end. One second the sexy man stood in front of her, and the next an enormous grey wolf stood, eyeing her up.
Her mouth flew open to say something, anything, as the wolf slowly stalked toward her. Her mind worked overtime absorbing the change that had just taken place right before her eyes. She snapped her mouth shut, determined not to scream in fear. God knows she wanted to leap up off of the damn chair and run as fast as she could and as far as her legs would carry her, but she kept her ass firmly planted, knowing he had simply answered the question she’d asked.
Her Gram’s voice popped into her head. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, honey bun.”
Daisy had never understood that particular saying and what her Gram had meant until now. If she was going to ask questions, she had to be tough enough to accept the truthful answer.
The wolf whined, pulling Daisy from her train of thoughts. Shock twisted through her when he laid his head on her leg, his nose precariously close to her crotch.
“Watch it, buddy. Wolf or not, I’ll not think twice about smacking you in the nose if you deserve it.”
The wolf huffed, his ears twitching.
“How had I not noticed your eyes before now?” Tiny gold flecks highlighted deep amber eyes, which she imagined held a vast amount of knowledge in all things ancient and majikal. Without even thinking about it, she reached out to touch his fur, needing to see if it was as soft and as thick as it looked.
The wolf whined again, seeming to like her touch.
“You like your ears scratched, don’t you.” Daisy laughed.
The wolf stepped back as she laughed.
Fear raced through her and, thinking she’d offended the animal, she rushed to once again apologize. “I didn’t mean to insinuate that it was a bad thing. I thought it was cute.”
Daisy blinked as the odd majikal shimmer she’d seen moments ago reappeared and surrounded the animal. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Calder’s voice.
“Actually it does feel good. If you had kept it up, I would have been snoring in seconds flat.”
Daisy giggled, once again surprised by his answer.
“Now you owe me two answers.” Calder took his seat and another bite of his stew.
“That was incredible. Thank you for giving me that first experience.”
“You’re welcome. So how did you meet Gerri?”
“I literally ran into her.”
“What do you mean?” Calder looked at her quizzically, perhaps surprised by her answer.
“I was headed out for coffee one morning and rounded the corner, not paying attention to where I was going. Next thing I knew I plowed right into the poor woman.”
“Huh. That’s pretty odd.”
“Why is that?” Daisy tilted her head to the side, wondering what would be so odd about running into someone on a crowded sidewalk.
Calder challenged her. “Another question—you’ll owe me another answer.”
“Fine.” Damn it, she wanted to know what he’d meant by that statement.
“Wolves—well, all shifters really—have heightened senses. We know there is someone near well before we see them. For instance, I knew someone was on the property the second I got out of my truck to close the gate.”
His answer startled her, and her face must have shown it.
“We have heightened senses of hearing and smell. Trust me when I tell you Gerri would have sensed you or smelled you long before you got anywhere near her. So, yeah. I think it’s odd that she let you run into her.”
“I’m going to owe you a million answers, but I have to know—why would she let me bump into her, then?”
Calder shrugged, “I’m not certain. I’ve never met her in person, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was because she scented you and knew there was something different about you, something her majik told her not to ignore.”
“Interesting.”
“My turn.” Calder flashed her a sexy smile before asking his next question. “Why did you agree to come here? Especially if you had never been around shifters before?”
Well, that was a loaded question if she’d ev
er heard one. Daisy debated internally for a minute, struggling with how honest she should be before she finally spoke, “I guess you can blame it all on curiosity.” Going for flat-out honesty she braced herself, letting the words flow from her lips. “I’ve never had much luck in the dating arena, at all. The guys I’ve dated haven’t always been nice, but what I never understood was, if they weren’t happy with my size why did they even bother to date me to begin with? Why did they all try to change who I was? Why could they never be happy with me?”
And there it was: all the questions she’d walked away from every relationship with, laid out for a complete stranger to ponder.
All the improvements to her self-esteem that she’d worked so hard to make over the years were suddenly stripped away, leaving her feeling once more like the only fat girl in a sea of skinny models.
Daisy pushed the stew around in her bowl. She had no desire left to eat her dinner, though she’d barely eaten all day.
Chapter Ten
Anger pulsed through Calder. Not because of Daisy’s admission—because she’d been treated like shit in the past, by complete assholes who he’d like to find and slaughter for hurting his mate. How a guy, any guy, could look at her and think she was anything but absolutely stunning was beyond him.
She had to know there was nothing wrong with her, right? But one look at the depth of the sadness in her eyes spoke volumes. His beautiful Daisy had believed every fucking hurtful word those morons had ever said. That just wouldn’t do.
“I strongly believe that we go through life meeting a series of people who are horribly wrong for us, because we’re caught up in the age-old struggle of wanting to find our soulmate. So we spend our lives with someone, forcing a warped and twisted relationship on ourselves for the sake of not being alone and we’re surprised when it blows up.”
Calder combed his fingers through his hair, praying what he’d said made sense to Daisy. He needed her to know the guys in her past would never have been right for her, not because there was anything wrong with her, but because she was his mate, destined for him and him alone. “When that one special person comes along—the one you’re meant to be with—he’ll never make you feel the way those losers did.”
“I suppose you’re right. It just hasn’t made my life any easier.”
He didn’t like the fact that he’d made her sad.
His wolf whined in his head. “Cheer her up, asshole.”
“Enough with the heavy talk, let’s lighten the mood back up. I believe you had a few more questions for me?” Maybe if he could get her talking, he could get her smiling again—at least, that was his short-term goal when it came to his beautiful mate.
Calder held his breath, waiting to see if Daisy would shake off the shame she felt and open up to him again. Just when he was ready to give up and call it a night, she spoke.
“Does the transformation hurt? You know, when you shift?”
“Not usually. When I choose to shift there is no pain involved, but if I’m forced to shift because of an injury it can be excruciating.”
“What types of injuries would cause you to shift like you described?” The doctor in her couldn’t help herself, she just had to ask.
“Any severe or life threatening injury, really. Granted we heal faster than humans but we still have our vulnerabilities. Daisy seemed to mull over his answer before asking her next question. “Are you afraid of getting stuck in wolf form?”
That question made him smile—not because it was a silly question, but because she glanced away shyly as the words left her mouth, almost as if getting trapped in an animal form would be her greatest fear. “Not at all. My wolf and I work together to accomplish any task thrown at us. He would never try to take on the human tasks, and I would never try to take over his. Does that make sense?”
“Sort of.”
Daisy brushed a stray strand of hair away from her face, not knowing how such a simple act left Calder wanting to pull her into his arms and never let go. It took every ounce of strength he possessed not to scoop her up, toss her in his bed and pound his cock so deep into her that she forgot all about the guys who’d wronged her in the past.
“Wait, can you and your wolf… er… talk to each other?”
“Yes, all the time.”
“Huh. That’s pretty interesting. What does your wolf think about me?”
“Will you let me show you?” Calder pushed his chair away from the table and stood, holding his hand out to Daisy. He could’ve easily told her that his wolf wanted nothing more than to kiss and touch every inch of her body, but he didn’t want to say it with words that might fall on deaf ears. He wanted to show her that his wolf had only one thing on his mind since the very second he’d picked up her scent.
***
Daisy looked at Calder’s outstretched hand, not knowing exactly what he was asking, or what he wanted to show her. But he had managed to once again spark her curiosity. The man fascinated her on every level. She’d dated plenty of guys in the past and not one of them had ever managed to break through the walls she so carefully constructed within the first few hours of meeting them. Calder, on the other hand, was like a sledgehammer, smashing through her barriers with record speed and grace.
It would take a leap of faith on her part to accept his hand, blindly trusting him not to hurt her—one that she wasn’t sure she was capable of making. Her mind told her to stop, that he would end up being just like all the other losers she’d dated in the past, while her intuition asked her what the hell she was waiting for and reminded her with every breath that Calder was different from any man she’d ever met.
That was exactly what scared the shit out of her.
She could see herself easily falling head over heels for the man who stood before her, offering something no normal man could—a life filled with uncertainty and adventures she’d never know as a human. Her conversation with Gerri replayed in her mind: “Shifters are much different from humans when they first meet their mate. They know immediately that she’s the woman they’ve waited their entire life for. The entirety of their world changes with one scent.”
“What does that mean?” she’d asked Gerri.
“Oh, sweet girl.” Gerri had smiled at her. “Think of it this way. When a shifter male finds his mate, his life is no longer about just him. His life becomes about loving and protecting his mate, knowing that she is safe, well loved, and happy.”
“That sounds pretty fantastic. Do these relationships tend to last long?” Daisy had asked.
“Forever. There are very few divorces in the shifter world.”
But it was the last thing that Gerri had said to her that stuck in her mind more than anything else: “Does having a mate who is one hundred percent committed to you sound like such a bad thing? Is it bad to know that your mate will never speak unkindly to you or stray? Think of how free the love between mates can be when there is an absolute and unwavering commitment.”
Before she said yes or no to his question, she had to know one thing. “Am I your mate?”
She watched as he sucked in a deep breath, his amber eyes glowing as he spoke. “Yes.”
All she had to do was take his hand.
Gerri’s words replayed again in her mind. “Does unconditional love sound like such a bad thing?” Daisy drew in a deep breath and stood, placing her hand in his. “Don’t make me regret this.”
“Never.”
Chapter Eleven
Daisy’s question had shaken Calder. He’d had no idea that Gerri had explained what it meant to be mated to a shifter, but clearly she had and Daisy knew exactly what his outstretched hand meant.
His blood heated nearly to the boiling point when she placed her tiny hand in his. His heart beat hard and fast in his chest.
“She’s accepting us!” his wolf said in awe.
Calder wasn’t about to spend time wondering how Gerri had found his mate, or why Daisy, a mere human, so easily accepted him despite knowing very little about him
or his species. He pulled her close, her chest brushing against his. A low growl bubbled up from his throat as his lips closed over hers, unable to wait another second to see if she tasted as sweet as she looked.
As he deepened the kiss, he was rewarded with a husky feminine purr that sounded just like that of a feisty little kitten. Her fingers tunneled through his hair as he nipped at her bottom lip, gently sucking it into his mouth.
With each new moan he drew from her mouth, he learned that his mate’s passion flowed deep in her veins. The scorching heat she threw off burned him like none other ever had. Scooping her up, off her feet and into his arms, he carried her as fast as he could to the bedroom.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked as he set her gently on the four-poster bed.
***
“Make love to me, Calder.” For once in her life, Daisy knew exactly what she wanted—and there would be no going back. This wasn’t like her former relationships, where she’d waited, hoping it would be worth it in the long run. It never had been. Each new relationship that she’d slowly worked herself into had been a complete disaster, and look where those relationships had ended up: endless screaming matches and broken promises.
This one would be different. She was done taking her time and praying for the best. She was going to jump in and take the plunge. No holding back. This time she would tell her lover exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it.
Gone were the ridiculous nighties she’d hid her curves beneath, in the hopes of looking more appealing to the man she was with. If she was to be Calder’s mate, he would have to accept her for who she was, curves and all—and by the hungry look on his face, it didn’t look like her curves were going to be a problem for him. Not in the least.
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