Page 23 of Pregnant Kidnapped Mate

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Chapter 10 - Alek

Even after we talked about it, it wasn’t until the next day that it finally sunk in. We’d had sex. Amazing sex. What was more, Iris seemed to trust me again.

When we’d gotten home the day before, there had been none of that earlier fear, none of that hesitation or a trace of worry on her face. Instead, it was practically the opposite. She’d practically dragged me into the shower with her the instant we got back, apparently not sated by our excursion in the woods. But it wasn’t until I’d woken up with her curled in the crook of my arm that it really hit home. I fell back asleep, wrapping myself around her, holding her close, letting her scent wash over me as my wolf growled in contentment.

When I woke, Iris was gone, her side of the bed still warm. Having her scent in my bed was somehow just as much a turn-on as seeing her naked.

The smell of breakfast pulled me fully out of sleep, and I headed downstairs. Iris was sitting at the kitchen table, phone in hand as she nibbled on a piece of bacon and devoured a cup of coffee.

“Hey.” I leaned over and kissed her neck, my hands massaging her shoulders. Her scent surrounded me, making it a lot harder to focus on the topic I wanted to bring up.

“Mmm. Hey, yourself.” She tilted her head as I continued to kiss her neck. “Careful, or you might be late to wherever you need to go.”

“Trust me,” I growled, “I’d be more than willing to be late for anything if it meant I got to fuck you senseless.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she murmured.

My hand slipped beneath her shirt, squeezing her breast. Then I sighed. “As badly as I want to have sex right now, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

She eyed me uneasily, her body tensing. “What is it?”

“I really want to introduce you to more of my friends,” I said.

She froze, the sexual tension snuffed out as quickly as a match. “Your friends like Dan?” she asked. Her voice was tight, and I could sense her retreating into herself as unease filled her eyes. It stung a bit. Even if she trusted me now, there was still a long way to go before she felt the same way about other shifters.

“No, not like Dan,” I emphasized. Just the thought of the way he’d been making her life difficult and how he’d tried to frighten her that first night was enough to make me bristle with rage again. “Most of my friends aren’t like that. And I don’t think I can really call him a friend anymore, anyway.”

“And your friends are all wol—uh, shifters?”

My mouth quirked upward. “Yes, they’re all wolf men,” I said jokingly. “But none of them will eat you, I promise.”

She gave a half-hearted smile.

I sighed, crouching down to take her hands. “You don’t have to meet them if you don’t want to. I’m not going to force you. But you have to believe by now that I would never deliberately put you in harm’s way.”

“Not deliberately, no,” she agreed after a minute. “But you trusted Dan, too.”

I winced. “Dan’s different,” I said. “The friends I want you to meet are the guys I’ve spent years of my life with. I’ve fought beside them. They’ve saved my life, and I’ve saved theirs. Besides you, they’re the most important people in my life.” If Iris registered what I’d just said, she didn’t acknowledge it. “And I want to introduce you because I want you to get to know them, and to realize I’m not the only shifter who isn’t going to eat you.”

Iris bit her lip, looking outside, where the sun was still finishing cresting the trees. “These are the guys who are with the women I met?”

“Yeah, they’re their mates. There are a couple of others, but that’s the majority of them.”

Iris hesitated again. “The women were really nice,” she admitted.

I took her head in my hands, our faces inches apart. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to,” I said. “I promise that.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You mean, besides kidnap me and bring me here?” she teased. “Twice?”

I hesitated. “Okay, starting now, I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to. Deal?”

She gave me an appreciative smile, then took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, her voice small and maybe a little uncertain. “All right.”

I beamed. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. Before I could stop myself, I leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine. I loved the taste of her, couldn’t get enough of it. And it was with more than a little difficulty that I pulled away.

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