Page 104 of Cross To Bear

“My mum said I was a bloody terror as a kid, always needing to be amused by something, then getting bored with one thing, then the next. She always had to fight to stay ahead of me, otherwise I made my own fun, with glue, scissors, textas on the wall…”

“Oh my god, I need to meet this poor woman and give her a hug,” Maddie said with a grin.

“She’d like that.” My smile faded. “Then she’ll tell you stories. So many fucking stories. Actually, scratch that. The two of you are never allowed to be in the same room as each other.”

“You don’t want to take me home to meet your mother?”

Maddie was trying to keep things light, but I couldn’t. I just fucking couldn’t.

“I’ll take you wherever you want to be, love, you know that. I’d walk in the front door of my parents’ place with pride if you were on my arm. Mum has been hassling me to bring you by, but…” I darted closer, because she was a flower and I was a bee, frantically fluttering my wings just to stay aloft, right before I was drawn forward by her perfume. “I wanted you to myself for just a bit before their crazy made you reconsider bonding with me.”

I wasn’t sure how she’d respond to that, so I kissed her before she could, my mouth unable to stop with just one. She was like a packet of chips, salty and crisp on my tongue, making me go back again and again for more until my lips stung.

“I’m not going to reconsider.” Her words punched me right in the chest, stopping my heart then getting it beating again. “Nothing you’ve told me puts me off. If anything, it’s kind of hot. The others are all rawrr…!”

She lunged forward, pushing her face into my neck, but she had to have felt me go completely stiff when her little blunt teeth gripped a fold of skin. My breath came in harder, faster, my hands clapping down on her hips, holding her right where she was, finding the right angle and then rocking my hips back and forth until she pulled away. Maddie’s cheeks had reddened, and her eyes glittered with an artificial light, right as she forced herself to smile.

“Yeah, just like that.” But as I watched her eyelids flutter, she reached over and stroked a strand of my hair backwards. “So to make sure I have things clear, you want to be the boss sometimes and throw me around like a rag doll in bed?”

“Fuck yeah I do.”

My cock pulsed in agreement, feeling her heat through the thin fabric of her underwear.

“And sometimes you want me to be the one taking control.” She leaned in and brushed her lips across my ear. “So me taking you to the cinema and forcing you to sit there as a little piece of plastic kept rocking against your prostate, each breath edging you closer and closer to coming. That would’ve been a good thing, right?”

I couldn’t reply, my throat dry as dirt, so I pulled back and stared into her eyes, mutely pleading for just that, right as I nodded.

“So you’re gonna be a good boy for me?” God, how I fucking wanted that. I’d be the fucking best for her every damn day. Nothing would stop me from striving harder and harder to earn her praise, and I wanted to tell her that, but I just nodded again. “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”

I loved that grin of hers, the reckless edge we so rarely saw, but it was always so good when I did. Her sensible side reasserted itself quickly though.

“But I need to know what the hell I’m doing first, so not now, OK?”

“Not now,” I agreed, ignoring the intense pain in my chest. I’d pushed past it plenty of times before and I could again. Before things started, I’d known that today wouldn’t end with my bite mark in Maddie’s neck and everything that had happened since confirmed that. “But soon?”

“Soon,” she promised me, sliding her hand down my cheek. I covered my hand with hers, able to accept that for what it was. A step in the right direction. I clasped her close then and just held on, to her, to the future, to everything that might happen and might not. I was in no matter what, all the way in.

Chapter 59

Bjorn

I never thought I’d get to the point where I’d hate the buzz of my phone, but as I worked on a piece for a new client, I heard it go off once, twice, three times in rapid succession. I tried to push past it, ignore the pleas for attention.

Because I knew who it would be.

Not any of the boys. Not Maddie. Not even Cress. I’d made clear she needed to step in to the studio to talk to me, even if I was with a client. No, instead I saw the notifications popping up, one by one as I flipped my phone over. Mum, Mum, Dad, Dad, Mum, Mum, Mum… fuck, even one of my grandmothers had been roped into ringing me. I shook my head, hitting playback message, only to hear her reedy voice come through.

“Bjorn, love, your mother has let me know there’s a little problem between you—”

Little fucking problem? I stabbed my finger on the screen then deleted the message along with all the others. Mum was trying her damndest to rally all the support she could to try and force a reconciliation, but she had no idea what she was asking for.

“When a fated mate isn’t right for a sleuth, sometimes they find someone else.” I heard my mother’s poisonous words in my head, playing back over and over. “Someone better.”

But there was no one better for us than Maddie. No one. The change in Hawk was the prime piece of evidence to support this. The fucker smiled this morning rather than biting each one of our heads off before serving us handmade fucking croissants he’d spent hours labouring over, and then he looked at her. Maddie. She was the sun and we were the planets caught in her orbit. We fell over ourselves to get her a coffee, some toast, a chair. Crash was blushing like a virgin bride every time she was around, shooting her sidelong looks like we were at high school. And Razor? He just surveyed everything with a smug look of satisfaction, as if we were all finally doing what he wanted us to.

But I was the thorn in everyone’s side, or rather Mum was. If she’d had her way… If she’d succeed… I was forced to put my phone down or I’d crack the screen, but right as I was casting about wildly for calm, I heard a sharp knock on the door.

“Not right now, Cress…” I growled, the bear pushing to be let free. He was sure he could sort my family out with one paw tied behind his back.

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