Page 4 of Beautiful Sight

“What was that?” Tessa asked after they had stepped through the barrier.

“What was what?”

Tessa stopped and turned her head as if to look behind them. Facing forward again, she shrugged. “Never mind.”

Jefferson studied the woman before beginning to walk again. Had she felt the barrier? That would be unusual for a bland, but not unexpected if she had some trace of supernatural being in her. He had a feeling she had some magic that no one, including her, knew about.

Looking around, he noted nothing had changed since the last time he’d been to the café for a meeting three nights earlier. Mystic’s alley was probably the cleanest one in the city, but Tessa wouldn’t appreciate that. Nor would she feel the thrill that Jefferson did when admiring the wall of twinkle lights that surrounded the door to the café.

Several feet from the doorway, he stopped. Turning to face the woman who was destined to be his partner for the rest of their lives though he had yet to tell her, Jefferson said, “I’m going to pick you up because there’s a couple steps here and I don’t want you to trip and fall.”

He was surprised when Tessa nodded. “All right.”

Pushing the deep red door open first, Jefferson wrapped an arm around his mate’s ass and lifted her easily. He smiled when she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Stepping into the café, he carefully set her down before turning and closing the door.

“Mmmm,” she moaned. “It smells delicious.”

Jefferson wasn’t sure if she was talking about him or the café. He had to stifle a moan of his own as his cock twitched and throbbed in response to being so close to his mate.

As he released her and stepped back, he hoped he could take things slow enough that he didn’t scare Tessa into running. He wanted to claim his mate immediately if not sooner, but needed her to be agreeable to their mating, or it wouldn’t stick. Then they would both face a death sentence.

“Good evening, Jefferson.” It was the gentle, contralto voice of Mystic, the café’s owner, and a mysterious woman in her own right. “Congratulations on finding your mate.”

Jefferson turned and met Mystic’s bright white smile. The ancient woman wore her years in the many wrinkles on her milk-chocolate-brown skin. She stood straight but was barely five feet tall, and did not weigh more than ninety pounds. Her pure white hair was short and naturally curly. Her deep brown eyes held the wisdom of the ages.

Tonight, she wore a red shirt with an ankle-length skirt of many colors. Her red Crocs matched her shirt, somehow pulling the outfit together. She wore a half-dozen necklaces around her neck, several rings on her fingers, and a number of bracelets on her left wrist.

Jefferson stood back and watched as Mystic turned her magic on his mate. In seconds, the woman would know more about Tessa than he might learn the rest of the evening.

Mystic turned to Tessa and took her hand, gently cradling it between her own. “Good evening, Miss. Welcome to Mystic’s All-Night Café. How about a nice hot chocolate and a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit to start? And then a chocolate-cherry croissant?”

Tessa startled at Mystic’s touch for a moment before she relaxed and smiled. “That sounds wonderful, thank you.”

With that, Mystic linked hands with Tessa and led the way to a table in the back of the room. It was tucked behind a large bushy tree and barely visible from the rest of the room. Jefferson and the other council members often used this table for informal gatherings. For complete privacy during their more formal meetings, they used the private conference room in the back of the café.

After Tessa settled into her chair, Mystic said, “I’ll be back with your food in just a few minutes.”

After giving him a look that told him they would be talking later, Mystic left them alone. Jefferson’s wolf bristled at the woman’s audacity, but the man had a feeling that whatever the woman had discovered about Tessa was about to bite him in the ass.

Only when Mystic entered the kitchen and was out of sight, did Tessa tilt her head slightly to one side and ask, “What did she mean when she said congratulations on finding your mate?”

Chapter Three

As she got past the possibility of being auctioned off as a sex worker, Tessa’s shock slowly wore off. Now that she had given herself to this man’s care, she was growing curious. She did not wait for him to answer her first question before throwing a few more onto the table that sat between them.

“And why did that man back at the warehouse call you Alpha? And agree not to talk to me until tomorrow morning? What’s going on?”

She could feel the staticky chill of nervousness waft across the table from where the man sat. She had never been formally trained, but as her eyesight had diminished, Tessa had discovered that some of her other senses grew more finely tuned, including a sixth sense of intuition or gut instinct, or whatever it was called. Without her sight, she could read a person’s intent, good or bad, in seconds, whether or not she touched them.

And at the moment, the man across from her was nervous, and about to lie to her. Before he could, she asked one last question. “Who are you? And please don’t bother to lie to me. My bullshit-o-meter is super fine-tuned, at least with anyone other than my son. I still can’t believe he gave me to human traffickers.”

The chill eased and she was shocked when it was replaced by a heat that warmed her even without the man’s touch. She pulled in a sharp breath when her pussy responded by growing damp and needy. At fifty-one, and without a man in her life since Theo’s father walked out six weeks after she’d come home from the hospital with their son, she considered herself a born-again virgin, except for George, her battery-operated boyfriend.

But here was a man who made her feel safe and secure, and was willing to take her into his home with no apparent strings attached. She thought that if she asked him to fuck her on the table, he would agree in a heartbeat.

He began to chuckle, the sound of which sent shivers through her so strongly, she had to shift in her chair. She then ran her hands up her opposite arms to try and settle the goose bumps.

Before he could answer any of her questions, she smelled food and a moment later heard Mystic’s footsteps as she approached the table.

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