Page 27 of Falling for her Guardian

Which wouldn’t have been much of a bluff. She was practically drooling over him and she wanted very much to find out what it meant to be a shifter’s mate. But instead of doing any of that, she was going to run away like a little scared mouse and hide in the bedroom until the lust tingling through her veins was under control.

However the hell she managed that.

He rose to his feet slowly, towering over her, and then he said softly, “If that’s what you’d like, you can have my room.”

“Wh-where will you sleep?” Curious, yes, but she also wanted him to know that she wanted to sleep alone, because she did.

Definitely.

Almost one hundred percent.

“I’ll bunk in the other bedroom. Come on, it’s late.”

He took her down a hall and turned on the overhead light in a large bedroom with a mahogany sleigh bed covered with a navy blue and cream quilt. He went to the nightstand and clicked the button to turn on a lamp that looked like a flickering candle, then he strode into the attached bathroom and came out a few moments later.

“I put out a towel for you if you’d like to clean up.” He pulled a shirt out of a drawer and tossed it to the bed. “You can sleep in that. I’ll see you when you wake up.”

He headed for the door. She was so tempted to ask him to stay with her, even if it was just for sleeping, that she had to grit her teeth to stop from asking him.

Hell, at this point, she was feeling pretty damn needy and would probably beg him just to stay in the same room.

“Good night, Storm.”

“Good night, Seren. Sweet dreams.” He smiled at her and then pulled the door shut.

She sank onto the bed and groaned.

Her body was humming. How had she been so affected by a kiss?

She wished she had a phone so she could call Noelle and talk to her about everything. She’d tell her how she couldn’t stop imaging Storm running his fingers, and more, over her skin and how she’d never felt so crazy-attracted to a guy in her life, even the dreaded ex who she’d thought was really handsome.

But he didn’t hold a candle to Storm.

Sexy ice blue eyes, dark hair that had that just rolled out of bed tousle to it, and damn was he strong. Broad shouldered and stacked with muscles, she wanted…to very much open the door and find him and do…stuff to him. With him.

She needed time to think.

This wasn’t rational, right? She couldn’t just meet a guy and fall in love with him, because that was the stuff of cheesy holiday romance movies or the novels her mom liked to read with the ripply-muscled shirtless men on the covers.

Not real life.

Certainly notherlife.

She stared at the ceiling and wondered if everything really had happened for a reason, that her car broke down where it did, when it did, and the witch had opened a portal right at the same time that Seren happened to slip on ice and fall into Northernmost, where Storm just happened to be patrolling.

He wasn’t from the North Pole originally. His family was in Pennsylvania. She never would have met him if she hadn’t stumbled into Northernmost.

So…fate.

It had to be.

But what did that even mean for her?

She lifted her head and looked at the closed door. He’d turned off the bright overhead light, leaving the room bathed in amber from the flickering faux candle lamp.

Dropping her head back to the bed, she stared at the light moving on the ceiling and wondered what she should do next.

Storm stripped off his shirt in the spare bedroom and stretched out on the full bed he’d put in the room for when his parents visited, but he couldn’t get comfortable. After tossing and turning for a while, he grabbed his cell and walked out to the great room, stopping at the master bedroom door and listening to hear if Seren was awake. He thought she was as affected by him as he was by her, but she’d been able to walk away from the best, most devastating kiss he’d ever had in his life.

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