Page 26 of Her Purr-fect Christmas Mate

He didn’t need to explain why. No matter what his inner animal was, no shifter wanted to reveal the existence of magic to all and sundry. The world was complicated enough as it was.

Still.

Two years. When he was just a kid.

Maybe waiting for your inner animal to show up until you were a grown-up and sucked face with the right person wasn’t so uniquely terrible, after all.

*What sorts of things did you focus on, trying to find your inner animal?*

“Sensory experiences. At least, what I assumed the sensory experiences of my . . . of it would be.”

She caught the slight hesitation, and her eyes narrowed.He’s hiding what his inner animal is. Why? The same reason he keeps avoiding all my questions? Maybe it’s something really embarrassing. Like a squid. Or a toad. Or—

Wait. What if he actually is a frog?

The thought cheered her more than it should have. Maybe they were a good match, after all.

I hope he didn’t hear that.

She told herself sternly to focus. Sensory experiences. The way she experienced the world as a cat was so vivid—The smells! The sounds!—but it wasn’tallan improvement on her human senses.

Her cat didn’t have great near vision. It didn’t have opposable thumbs. It was good at jumping, but it had to be because it was so damned short. She’d had to jump up on this bed just so she wasn’t yowling at Mordecai from a million miles below him.

The bed . . .

There were other things her cat didn’t have, either. All the treacherous soft, hot feelings she hadn’t been able to ignore before she shifted. They were still there, waiting, but they weren’t as utterly distracting as they had been.

Where were they waiting?

Somewhere deep inside her. She closed her eyes.

And was immediately distracted.

A basement? Really? Someone as rich as him couldn’t afford a private warehouse or something to hang out in waiting to shift?She opened her eyes again. Mordecai’s gaze was distant.

Is he talking to his . . . whatever he is?Her stomach dropped. She’d imagined lots of things about what meeting her mate would be like, but not how she’d have so little control over her telepathy. She was so exposed, and he was so icily controlled.

There had been a moment before when she’d almost felt as though she’d broken through his shell. She’d been so surprised by his pronouncement that he shouldn’t have left her that she chased his thoughts back to their hiding-place. And as soon as she’d gone down that road, she’d realized what it was. The matebond. A literal—well, a magical—bond. Like a ribbon.

Or a chain.

Her heart skittered at the memory.

She’d been outside her own mind. She hadn’t known what it was like to beinsideher own mind until then. Being in Mordecai’s mind had felt wrong, and dangerous, but a delirious sort of dangerous, like if she’d just reached further then something wonderful would have happened.

So of course she’d jumped back as quickly as she could.

Could I do it again?Would she want to?Yes,her cat said at once. It flexed its claws.We should go back and find out MORE.

Which was technically a horrible thing to consider—breaking and entering somebody’smind—but also kind of tempting. No, it wasn’t the idea of sneaking into his mind that attracted her (her cat disagreed strenuously).

It was the idea of Mordecai Leith, he of the unscalable cheekbones, losing control enough to let her hear his inner thoughts.Oh YES,her cat said, changing its mind at once. Could she make him do that? She imagined his frosty calm cracking. What would it be like?

What would it HAVE been like, if I hadn’t shifted when he kissed me?He’d tried to control himself. It had lasted all of a second. She remembered his mouth opening beneath hers. His hunger for her. There hadn’t been anything icy about it.

Could I do it again?

“Miss— Peony?”

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