Page 25 of Her Purr-fect Christmas Mate

He could understand that. There were few things in life he would dread more than having to go to his grandmother for advice.

Which brought to mind further complications. Christmas was two days away; his grandmother would expect his presence at Christmas dinner, and a report on his life’s work.

I’ll save you that, at least,he promised his mate silently.

7

Peony

Mordecaiwasbeingnice.

She was appalled.

Hating him had been so easy. It had almost felt good, in a sick, twisted way, when he left Club Inferno without calling out the board on their comments about her. If her heart had to be cut out, he might as well stomp on it too. If there was no hope, then she could wallow in self-pity endlessly, as though she were a teenager again.

And then he’d brought her home and it had become horribly, awkwardly clear he’d made his excuses at the club in order to spare her the pain of listening to further insults, and he’d listened to her hiss and spit about him with all the anger she could no longer hide now that she was a shifter, and he had beennice.

He’d offered to buy her clothes. He wanted to help her.

His words echoed in her mind.I wouldn’t have left.

Maybe there was still hope that this wasn’t a tragedy after all.

Why was that a more terrifying thought than the idea that she was doomed?

She was still perched on his bed, the fact of which she’d become horribly aware the moment he said the wordnaked. Which was another appalling thought. She was a grown woman. She knew how shifters worked. How the matebond worked. The thought of being naked in front of her mate shouldn’t make her want to squeal and roll into a ball like an embarrassed teenager.

*How do I shift back, then?*

A pause. “You want to try it here?” Unsaid: here in my bedroom? On my bed?

She wasn’tactuallyreading his mind. That one moment of absolute, hair-raising connection as her cat raced into his mind to find out if he was lying to her was bad enough.

She didn’t need telepathy to know that was what he meant. And once he’d said it—or not said it, whatever—there was no way she was going to move.

I can’t imagine anything less erotic than this catalogue-photo bedroom, anyway. Even the water glass on the bedside table looked as though, if you touched it, alarms would go off and a store employee would tell you off for touching the display.

*Here’s as good as anywhere,* she said.

Mordecai frowned. How much of what she’d just thought about his bedroom had he heard?

“More than I expect you intended me to,” he muttered. His eyes creased at the corners. Was that a smile? Was hesmiling?

First he’s nice, now he’s smiling at me?she thought, as quietly as she could.

His spine straightened, almost imperceptibly. He stood up and moved to the armchair in front of the window. She felt a surge of ridiculous irritation. From the awkward way he planted himself in the chair, it was the first time he’d ever sat in it.

Why have a flash apartment like this if you’re going to treat it like you don’t even live there?

“I first shifted when I was thirteen,” he said. “My grandmother had been expecting me to shift since my eleventh birthday, which was when my father first shifted. It would have caused . . . problems . . . for my first shift to occur in public, so she would take me down to the basement of our building and encourage me to search for my inner animal. Perhaps the same would work in reverse. If you look inside yourself and seek out your human self.”

Her stomach sank. Seek out her human self? She barely knew who that was, now.Someone best represented by a tiny, helpless fluffball.

But—

*Wait. You hung out in a basement, waiting for your inner animal to appear? From when you were eleven until when you were thirteen?*

“Not permanently. She let me out for fresh air on the weekends,” he joked dryly. She hoped it was a joke. “As I said, the consequences if I’d shifted uncontrolled in front of a non-shifter would have been disastrous.”

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