Page 45 of Stolen Mate

“She did because she was a survivor. She had your grit and determination. It took a hell of a lot of courage for you to come around from the back and get the drop on them. By the way, you with a shotgun, dressed only in my sweater. I’ve got to tell you, pretty sexy.”

“You’re a sick man. You do realize you’re naked and have a hard-on, right?”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “I am and I do. Come on inside, you sexy shifter, you, and I’ll fix you breakfast.”

“Can we have it in bed?”

“Is there any other place to have breakfast with a naked man with a hard-on?”

“I can’t think of one,” she said with a laugh.

They entered the cabin and Derek pulled on the pair of jeans he’d had on the night before, but that was all. If Tess could run around in nothing more than his sweater, he could walk around in just his jeans. He joined her in the kitchen where he began cooking shakshuka.

“The whole fated mate thing has meaning among our kind, doesn’t it?” she asked and then seeing his smile she asked, “What?”

“I like how you refer to shifters as ‘our kind.’”

“Just stating the obvious, but when you told Henry I was your fated mate that seemed to kind of slow his roll.”

Derek nodded. “It did. Fated mates are a big deal. Not everyone is gifted with one.”

“There’s more to it than just the romantic stuff, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” he said, stopping in his chopping. “The romantic stuff and feelings are all there. But any male shifter worth his salt would literally die to protect his fated mate. Without her, he’s nothing. In some species—wolves for example—males don’t survive more than a year past their fated mate’s death. In most cases it’s more like six months. They just sort of fade away. We bears aren’t quite so dramatic, but we become grumpy and morose and most often go off and live as hermits.”

“So even though you knew I was your fated mate, you were willing to let me go.”

Derek nodded. “To be honest and clear, I would never have let you be gone for good. Both Zak and Jax told me that it was fine to let you go and see if you’d make the right decision, but if you didn’t, I should go to Seattle, track your ass down, and drag you home.”

“You couldn’t do that in a metropolitan city like Seattle.”

“Think not?” he laughed. “Ask my sister about how she and Deke finally got together.”

Tess joined him, wrapping her arms around the bicep of the hand that was holding the vegetables as they were chopped and brushed her cheek along the muscle before kissing it.

“You want me to go back to Zak’s, don’t you?”

“Much as I don’t want to admit it, yes. I thought about an alarm system for up here, but what good is it, as we’d have to respond and by the time we got here, it might be too late. I thought about finding a place in town, but that, too, isn’t foolproof. No, the best solution is for you to be at the lighthouse compound.”

“I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t want to be parted from you.”

“No chance of that,” he said. “If Sienna hasn’t already done so, we’ll move your things into my room, which will now be referred to as ‘our room.’ I suspect she did that once Annie told her Lara would be joining us as well.”

“Hey, I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but I think I might have been followed when I left the airport in Seattle. I thought I saw the same SUV, but then I lost it.”

“Could have been Colby; if not him, then probably the Shadow Sisters.”

“I wondered in light of his knowing I told my sister about shifters if it might not have been Henry.”

“Maybe, but Henry’s a cheap sonofabitch, and having you followed in Seattle would be expensive, but I’ll see if I can’t find out who it was.”

“Or maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being paranoid when there are people out to get you.”

CHAPTER 18

TESS

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