Page 53 of Mated into the Mob

“What is that crap?” Flint stared at me.

“It’s disco.” It made me think of painting my room as a kid with Dad. Any memory of him was now tainted after his response to Flint and my pregnancy, but I’d been trying to banish the bad and reclaim good memories of my childhood. I refused to let him being an ass ruin the good times.

I strutted around the room and boogied.

“Ummm, excuse me. You’re supposed to be painting.” Flint waved his brush and almost splattered paint over me.

“Getting in the mood.” I bopped about, doing the signature disco moves. “Dance with me.”

“Don’t really know how.”

“What? You own a club and you don’t dance?”

“Not whatever that is you’re doing.”

“Get down here.” I pointed to the floor. “It’s called the Funky Chicken.”

Flint turned up his nose. “It’s funky alright.”

“Not funky as in stinky.” I flapped my arms. “Pretend to be a chicken.”

My mate rolled his eyes, muttering, “Don’t see the point,” but he followed my example.

“Now stick your neck forward like chickens do when they’re walking around.” I blasted the music so it filled the room. “And strut like a chicken. Come on.”

We flapped and strutted and shoved our heads forward, and Flint chortled, and that got me laughing. When the music stopped, we fell into one another’s arms.

“That was ridiculous.” He kissed the top of my head.

“That’s the point, babe.” I surveyed the wreck of a room. The painting could wait. I took my mate’s hand and dragged him toward the bedroom.

“Thought it was paint, then sex.”

“Changed my mind.”

26

FLINT

“Sure you wanna come tonight?”

My mate was close to his due date. His belly was so big he’d almost tripped a few times. I’d had a new bed delivered, and we slept in the living room as I didn’t want him climbing the stairs.

Tonight was the full moon. La luna for my great-grandmother. The moon shining light in the darkness. Noir for her mate. It was a pack tradition. La Luna wolf shifters were superstitious, and we believed the goddess herself was looking over us on this night.

“You might have to take me in a wheelbarrow,” he said as I helped him out of bed after his early-evening nap.

Our mate can not sit in a wheelbarrow!My wolf was indigent.

“Ummm—”

“Joking, babe.” He staggered into the first-floor bathroom to pee. “Besides, I have a big strong man to hold my arm and make sure I don’t go face first into the ground.”

“That would be me.” I did a little shoulder shimmy. It was hard to imagine me doing that before I met my mate.

La Luna Noir pack started their run a few minutes before midnight and ended it an hour later. Tony ate a late dinner, and I packed snacks for him to nibble on. When I looked at what I’d prepared, maybe I should have gotten a wheelbarrow—for the snacks, not him. But a backpack would do.

The woods on our estate were perfect for a midnight run, but this was our private domain, and so we drove thirty minutes into the countryside to pack land, accompanied by the usual security detail.

---