Page 43 of Arctic Panda's Secret Mate
HAISLEY
Haisley was pretty sure that she had just successfully taught Tristan that Alaska was a horrible, terrible, no-good place to live and it would not only hurt his face but try to eat it. She was lucky he had any toes left, and she worried that she’d completely sabotaged any chance she had to convince him to come and live with her here.
She already knew that he could have no possible desire to leave a literal paradise behind for… what? He was handy and could probably work for Mr. Barnum on call for repairs, but it wasn’t aliving. The room and board wasn’t a lot, even if she was a pretty good cook. He’d be leaving behind a tight-knit found family.
All she had to offer him wasAlaska.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling dumb and hopeless, when he finally agreed to limp to her room and take a shower to thaw out his poor feet. “I wanted you to see the Alaska that I love and I just screwed it all up.”
Tristan drew her aside at the door to her room and turned her to face him. “You can’t think that was in anyway your fault, can you? I knew what I was getting into, I was the one who thought yay, it will be fun to roll around in the snow and didn’t think about how hard it would be to get everything home afterwards. I’ve been a shifter for most of my life, I shouldknowbetter.”
Haisley was trying not to cry, and it took her a moment to figure out why she wanted to.
Because she’d thought for a few blissful moments that she could have Tristan and the place that she loved, and now she knew better.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, hoping that her lip wasn’t actually trembling.
“I’m not,” Tristan said. “That was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. I have never felt so alive. I would go out and do that again if I could feel all my toes.”
“You would not!” Haisley said in disbelief.
“I would,” Tristan insisted. “You showed me how beautiful this place can be, and how challenging. Iliketo be challenged. I don’t want to go through life on easy mode. I want repair jobs with unpleasant surprises and magic garages and, I don’t know, do you have avalanches? Shifting Sands is gorgeous, and we should vacation there some time, but at some point, a tropical island is just not that exciting.”
“You are delirious,” Haisley said firmly. “You have scrambled your brain with hypothermia.”
Tristan smiled down into her face and took her chin in his hand. “I am delirious,” he agreed. “Delirious in love with you.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how delirium works,” Haisley murmured, but then Tristan was kissing her, and pressing up against her so that she was aware that some of his parts certainly weren’t suffering from frostbite.
She got her room door open and fell inside with him. “We should get you out of those wet clothes,” she told him firmly.
“Yes, ma’am,” Tristan said. “But you know, I’ve heard that the best way to warm a body is to press it up against another body with no clothing between them.”
“I’ve heard that, too!” Haisley said, giggling. “And we definitely want to warm you right up!”
His fingers were chilly, but Haisley didn’t mind them on her skin as he undressed her. She pulled him down under the covers with him, hissing when his toes touched hers.
They simply cuddled at first, touching all over, kissing and cradling each other. It wasn’t long, however, before Haisley found herself begging for more, wantonly rubbing herself against him and taking him into her.
They made love slowly, exploring every inch of each other, testing every position and way to share pleasure. Haisley took his cock into her mouth and teased him with her tongue. Tristan found her clit with one clever finger and sucked her nipple until she felt entirely undone and then he put her all back together again when he rode her to a crest of bliss that they shared.
Afterwards, they took a blazing hot shower together, soaping all of the places that they had discovered on each other, and then they dried off. Haisley realized that she was salivating. “Is that Chef’s goose that I smell?”
“He bought two of them, I understand,” Tristan said, toweling her hair between kisses on the back of her neck. “He didn’t want to run out, even before he accounted for a stowaway.”
“Oh, but what will you be eating?” Haisley realized.
“He’s got a comprehensive menu that will satisfy me a fraction as much as you just did,” Tristan said, nibbling an ear.
Haisley felt her face heat. “They probably know exactly what we’ve just done.”
“What mates do,” Tristan said with a shrug. “And they’ve all got their own mates to stave off hypothermia with if they want to.”
“Maybe without the hypothermia part!” Haisley laughed.
She pulled on a long wool dress embroidered with poinsettias and Tristan borrowed her bathrobe to make the walk of shame back to his room for dry clothing.
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