Page 14 of Wishes and Research

Knowing my neighbors, some mage had been one-upping someone else and it’d gotten out of hand. It might’ve been here or one of the other towns that had a lot of mages and dragons, but the whole situation screamed mage shenanigans.

“Have you been able to narrow down their natural habitat?” That had him chattering away until we reached my place, but the only thing I really learned was that people needed to clean their kitchens more and the bugs might like McDonald’s.

Yep, some mage had been fucking with people.

I wasn’t so sure it’d been us, though.

The local mages were more of the flowers out of season level of stupid, and it was a really good thing that our new bug cutie didn’t know much about the local flowers. The shenanigans were in full force but he hadn’t seemed to notice.

“Oh, someone said one of the local residents had beetles?” Paxton lost track of what he’d been saying as we pulled in front of the cute Victorian I’d bought a few years ago. “I…this is lovely. Um, yes, someone has beetles?”

No one sane had beetles.

“Lorne has beetles of some sort but from what I understand he only has them because they’re sparkly?” Paxton looked over, clearly confused and probably thinking I was fucking with him. “Seriously. He’s into sparkly things and the bugs are really shiny?”

I hadn’t seen them, but that was what I’d heard.

Paxton didn’t seem to believe me, so I kept going as I parked. “He’s not breeding anything weird if that’s what you were thinking, but they’ve supposedly taken over his guest room and they’re really freaking out his partners.”

I turned the car off and was ready to get out before the word finally hit him. “Partners?”

Nodding, I glanced toward the door. “Let me get that for you.”

At first, he was too busy thinking about Lorne’s love life to overthink me opening the door, but by the time I got to the passenger side, his brain was multitasking. I wasn’t sure which topic would get first billing in his brain, but I was stupidly excited to see that he’d waited to get unbuckled.

Such a smart boy.

As I reached in to release the belt, he swallowed hard. “Do…do you need more than one partner?”

Interesting.

“No. I’ve never dated more than one person at a time and nothing in me says I need to keep looking for more than one person to complete my family.” When he just kept watching me, I had to resist the urge to kiss him. “If my partner thought he needed someone else, we could talk about it, but I really don’t see my family forming that way.”

I’d never thought about having more than one mate and I’d always know my mate wasn’t local. There hadn’t even been a push to date any of the local subs because I knew they weren’t mine. But Paxton, well, he was mine.

“Okay.” His brain still seemed to be going a thousand miles an hour, but he waited for me to steer the show.

As I stepped back and held out my hand, he studied it for several long seconds before grabbing his bag with one hand and reaching out to take mine with the other.

The weight of his hand was filled with the trust he was placing in me, but I wasn’t sure he was ready to talk about that yet. “I’m glad you asked the question that was on your mind. It makes me feel more confident and just happier in general.”

His gaze stayed on our hands for several long moments, but as he finally looked away and up at me, his brain skipped back to our original topic. “I don’t date more than one person at a time and I don’t want a poly relationship.”

“Thank you for letting me know that’s an important boundary for you.” Mates were always compatible.

I’d heard Alick mumbling that to himself several times as he’d bonded with his mate, but he was right, so I wasn’t worried about Paxton. I knew we’d get there eventually, but for the time being, I just soaked up his adorably polite responses. “You’re welcome.”

He probably had no idea why I thought he was so cute because he rolled his eyes and huffed, but he let me keep holding his hand and didn’t pull away even when I shut the door. “We need to talk about our plans for tomorrow.”

Instead of?

Paxton shot me a look that said he thought I had other plans, but I wasn’t sure what his fascinating mind had come up with. Still, I nodded and took the curious statement seriously. “Yes, we’ll do that first thing and then we’ll have dinner.”

Was he worried that I’d get distracted trying to get to know him?

Was he picturing something steamier than just dinner?

I wouldn’t have been surprised no matter what had come out of his mouth, but he nodded slowly and didn’t give me much to go on. “That sounds like a good plan.”

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