Page 2 of Claimed By the Hunter

A few minutes passed, and she peeked around the corner when she didn’t hear anything. Her heart started to calm when there was nothing there.

Good. She’d lost him. She needed some time to grasp how her life was changing. Dammit. She didn’t want to deal with all the wolf-mating stuff. She didn’t want to have cubs or learn how to howl. She wanted a normal simple life. Was that too much to ask?

“Are you ready to go home, Mate?”

She screamed and twirled around to see the guy standing a foot from her with his massive arms crossed over his chest.

“I don’t have time for you,” she said.

He smiled gently, which made her heart and emotions feel all squishy, which pissed her off even more.

“You don’t have a choice, Mate. The universe put us together. I’ll never be able to love anyone but you and vice-versa.”

“But I don’t want to have to deal with that heat the girls are dealing with.”

“You’re already dealing with it. I can smell your need, and it’s getting stronger the longer we stay here.”

He was right. She’d never felt this level of passion before, and it just kept getting more intense. Her emotions were all over the place, and she could feel her anxiety worsening.

“What do you expect from me?” she asked him.

He closed the gap between them and cupped her face in his hands. “Let me take care of you. There will never be anyone else in my life who’s more important to me than you.”

Nicole swallowed. The way he looked at her and touched her, mixed with the woody, musky scent, made her panties drenched and her stomach convulse.

He was so damn handsome, large, and muscular—everything she ever wanted in a man. Her heart already told her she was his, but her head kept fighting. This just couldn’t be real. And why now? She needed to spend her time working on setting up the bakery, not getting it on with the hunk that towered over her at the moment.

Chapter Two

As Hunter drove into town, he sensed his mate nearly ten miles away. When he pulled in and got out of his truck, he smelled peaches and cream, making his cock instantly hard for the first time in his life. Stiff and painful.

Hunter remembered his brother talking about how strong his mate's scent was, but he didn’t know it was so sharp and all he smelled at the moment.

Her scent was so strong that he would have been able to find her several miles away, so he knew where she was and snuck up behind her. Hunter watched his mate run away from him and grinned before he turned to the others.

“I’ll be seeing you guys later. Don’t bother us when we get home,” Hunter said and walked the way Nicole was going.

He smiled when she looked around the corner of the building. His grin grew when she mumbled words and complaints under her breath.

“Are you ready to go home, Mate?” he asked.

When she turned to face him, he saw how she was fighting her attraction and mating heat. He could also detect fear, which didn’t sit right with him. He moved in slowly, smoothed the hair away from her face, and stared into her eyes, hoping she could read him like he was able to do with her. After they were together for a while, she’d be able to read him easily.

“Everything’s going to be all right, baby. Just let me take care of you,” he said.

“I don’t want this,” she whispered.

He hated hearing that but knew he had to give her a break because she didn’t understand, and she’d just met him. Finding his mate was something he’d dreamed about since he was sixteen years old. “Come with me. We’ll talk on our way home, and I’ll make something for you to eat.”

He held out his hand and waited. His breath burst out of his lungs when she took it. He didn’t care if she was hesitant because she still reached out to him. They didn’t talk on the way to his truck or when he lifted her into it, but he felt her eyes on him.

He was glad everyone had gone because he could feel the different emotions scrambling in her, and embarrassment was one of them, but it eased when they were on their way.

They pulled up to his house. “You’re living here?” he asked in surprise. Her scent was so strong he couldn’t have missed it. He hadn’t been home in the last few weeks because he’d been helping a sheriff’s department that suddenly lost its sheriff a few hours away, so he stepped in to train the deputy for the sheriff’s position. It had taken longer than he thought it would.

“Yes. We were trying to find a place for Simone and me since Brenna is with your brother. But now Simone has Jake.”

“And you have me. We’ll get the brothers to build us a house in the same area as this main one, but until then, we’ll deal with the situation.”

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