Impulsive Destiny

by Cassandra Lawson

  Zane sighed and nodded. “That wasn’t my finest moment.”

  On instinct, Lexi reached over to grab Zane’s hand, and glared at Connor for upsetting Zane. Clearly, Connor was amused by her reaction, because he laughed at her.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I think you have the same effect on her,” Connor told Zane. “Call me after you drop them off,” Connor ordered Danny before walking away.

  Lexi didn’t pay much attention to her surroundings as they made their way to the house. While Connor had tried to soften the words, she was more prisoner than guest, something she’d experienced before. A shudder ran through her body as she pushed the memories back. No, she would not think about that right now. Zane leaned into her side and rubbed his cheek up and down her arm, as if sensing her need for comfort.

  “It’s going to be okay, angel,” he reassured her softly, and she wanted more than anything to believe him, but she had no idea how she was supposed to survive in this time. And to think, it hadn’t been that long since her biggest worry was getting home from MacArthur BART. Fate really loved fucking with her.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Danny and Quinn left them at the sparsely furnished home with promises to bring by more clothing for Lexi later. If it were up to Zane, he and Lexi wouldn’t wear any clothes. Of course, with the uneasy way Lexi had been watching him since they’d arrived at the house, Zane was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get naked with him at the moment. He could only imagine what this shock was doing to her. He was having trouble believing it himself, despite the fact that he’d known it was possible to move across time before today, even if he’d never actually met anyone who’d done it. The Fae were something he avoided, like anyone with half a brain would. Not even his impulsive nature was enough to make him want to seek out one of those sick bastards.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked to break the silence.

  Lexi cocked her head to the side and thought for a moment. “I’m starving. Isn’t it funny that I didn’t even notice until now?”

  “Not really,” Zane answered with a shrug. “I’m also starving, but I’ve been too busy thinking about getting you here to notice until now.” He decided not to add that he’d also been thinking about getting her naked again, which was pretty much constantly at the forefront of his mind. Moving closer to her side, he pushed her hair forward over her shoulder so he could see his mark on the back of her neck before letting out a sigh of relief. Just the sight of the mark brought him a sense of peace like he’d never experienced. It was still red, but he was already picturing how it would look when it healed and took on the silvery color that happened when a shifter marked his mate.

  “Why do you keep pushing my hair forward?” she asked.

  “I want to see my mark.” He gave her a sheepish smile. “This probably doesn’t make much sense, since you didn’t even know shifters existed until today, but seeing my mark soothes me. Does it hurt?”

  “A little,” she admitted with a blush, and Zane found himself leaning forward to breathe in her scent. She didn’t need to say the words. While the mark hurt, what she mostly felt when thinking about it was aroused. That was a good sign, in Zane’s opinion.

  “Let me feed you,” Zane cajoled, and then frowned. “Hopefully, they left us simple things to heat up. I’m not sure how to use much in the kitchen. To be honest, I’m not a great cook in my own kitchen.”

  Since he’d always had people, like his mother, stopping by with food, he’d never had to learn how to cook for himself. Now, he felt bad that he couldn’t take better care of his mate.

  “I’m a pretty good cook,” Lexi told him with pride as they headed into the kitchen, while Zane did his best to keep his hands to himself.

  Lexi looked around the kitchen and shook her head. “On second thought, I’m not sure how any of this works.”

  Zane laughed and rummaged through the refrigerator until he found some meat that looked like it could be eaten cold. “How about this?” he suggested.

  “I’m a vegetarian,” Lexi replied. “I’m not vegan, so I can still have milk products, but not meat.”

  “You don’t eat meat?” Zane practically gasped, truly shocked. He practically lived on meat, like most shifters, so the idea of going without it was unfathomable.

  Lexi just shook her head and looked in the refrigerator to find something else to eat. “This is California. There are plenty of vegetarians living here. We have whole restaurants that are vegetarian and some that are vegan.”

  “This isn’t California anymore, and I can assure you that there are not many vegetarians here, if any,” Zane argued.

  Lexi pulled out some cheese and fruit, and Zane suddenly realized how insensitive his comment had been.

  “It’s hard to remember that everything in my life is gone,” Lexi said sadly.

  “I’m sorry, angel,” he apologized, sitting down and pulling her onto his lap, which relieved a huge amount of his own tension.

  “Why are you sticking with me?” she asked without looking at him.

  “You said you wanted me with you,” was his simple answer.

  “And if I’d said I wanted you to leave me alone, would you have?” she asked.

  Zane hesitated because the right thing to say was that he would have honored her wishes, but he wasn’t about to lie to his mate. “If I believed it was what was best for you, I would have left you.” That wasn’t exactly an answer to her question, but he was afraid of how she’d react to the truth.

  Lexi surprised him when she let out a weak laugh. “That’s a funny way of not answering my question.”

  “I answered it,” he insisted, rubbing his cheek against hers and smiling when she didn’t pull away. “Listen, I get that you don’t understand this, but you are my mate. That means I need to take care of you.”

  “You barely know me,” she argued. “Having sex and biting my neck didn’t make me your mate.”

  “No, you were my mate before any of that happened, and I don’t need to spend more time with you to know that. That’s not how this works.” He was trying hard to find the words to make her understand. “I’m not human or vampire, so I don’t need to wait to fall in love. When I pulled you out of that creek, I knew you were mine—the only female in the world who was meant to be mine.”

  “I wish I didn’t like the way that sounds,” Lexi mumbled.

  Zane couldn’t hold back his satisfied grin. “I’m glad you like the way it sounds because it makes me even more sure of what I’m feeling. The idea of finding my true mate seemed impossible. There’s also the fact that I worried if I found her, she’d be resistant, like my brother, Cam’s mate, but you already get how right we are for each other.”

  Lexi stiffened in Zane’s arms before sliding off his lap. The loss of her touch was hard, but nothing compared to what she said next.

  “Zane, I can’t be with you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The anguish that flashed in Zane’s beautiful eyes nearly had Lexi taking back what she’d said just to make the pain go away, but she was smart enough to know she’d only bring Zane more pain if she didn’t put a stop to whatever this was now. She knew she was giving him mixed signals about where they stood. One minute, she was practically clinging to him, and the next, she was telling him things wouldn’t work between them. Even worse, she didn’t want Zane to leave her. That was pretty damn selfish, but she needed him. Still, she had to make sure he wasn’t getting any romantic illusions about their future because she was a fucking mess. She’d been a fucking mess before being transported through time. Zane had to understand that this wasn’t his fault. Even though that line always sounded terrible, it really was the case with them. It would be so easy to fall into his arms and let him take care of her, but that wasn’t the type of woman she was.

  “Don’t you see what a mistake being with me would be?” Lexi had to make him see reason. “I’m completely screwed up. No, that’s not even enough to describe what I am. You’re
this happy fun-loving guy who sees the good in the world and even in people like me. That is nothing like what I am. The few relationships I’ve been in have ended because I can’t completely let people in, and I pushed the guys away. I don’t do cuddling, and I prefer being alone most of the time. The only reason I’m not still a virgin is that I forced myself to have a few relationships to try to prove I could be normal, but I’m not.”

  “You like cuddling with me, and you feel better when I’m with you,” Zane reminded her, and she wanted to argue, but it was true. There was something different about Zane’s touch—something different about his presence. Still, she couldn’t say that because it would only encourage him to hold out hope for something they couldn’t have.

  “I haven’t been acting like myself,” she argued, which sounded so lame, she almost laughed. “Even if all of that weren’t true, we can’t start a relationship with my life turned upside down like this. If we did, how would we know it wasn’t me just using you as a crutch?”

  Zane smiled and shook his head. The hurt was gone, and he seemed pleased with himself all of a sudden. Lexi realized that she’d managed to move herself to the farthest corner of the kitchen to try to get some space, not because she didn’t trust Zane, but because she didn’t trust herself when Zane was close to her.

  Zane stood and prowled toward her. “Did you have to force yourself to be with me in the hospital earlier today? Were you trying to prove anything to yourself when you let me slide into your body?”

  “No,” she admitted. “I liked being with you, and I wanted you so much I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “And you’re getting aroused thinking about it,” Zane added as he moved so close, the heat from his body practically caressed her skin.

  “I’d just woken up in a hospital, and I was confused about where I was. I’m not saying you took advantage of me, though,” she added quickly.

  “Just thinking about how much you enjoyed having me inside of you has you wet and ready for me again.”

  Lexi said nothing. What could she say to that? There was no denying the fact that her body responded to Zane’s presence, longing for his touch again.

  “Do you ever give up?” she demanded, angry with herself for reacting to him, and angry with Zane for refusing to see reason.

  “No, I never give up when I really want something,” Zane told her with a lopsided grin. “Most people say I’m a pain in the ass.”

  “You are,” Lexi muttered. “I don’t like stubborn men.”

  Rather than looking offended, Zane gently stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. Lexi was amazed by the strange sense of peace she got from his proximity, and she wanted to lean into him. When most people touched her, she was bombarded with emotions, and not all of them were nice. What made that hardest to deal with was her inability to completely shake her belief that they were the other person’s emotions, not her own. Of course, she knew that was impossible. Then again, she’d been pretty sure time travel, vampires, Faeries, and shapeshifters were impossible until a few hours ago.

  “We’re not right for each other, Zane,” she insisted again.

  “You haven’t said anything that would make me believe I’m not the perfect mate for you,” Zane stated in a confident tone. “It’s my responsibility to give you what you need. You need fun, touch, and healing, and I’m going to give all of those things to you.”

  “You’re impossible,” Lexi grumbled with an exasperated sigh. “I’m trying to save you from being hurt, or worse, being stuck with a mess like me.”

  Zane leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss on the tip of her nose before rubbing his cheek against hers. “Eat, angel,” he coaxed with a grin, pointing to the food she’d abandoned on the counter. “Then we’ll explore the house. Maybe they gave us a computer, and we can try to watch a movie. Quinn says there are lots of sex movies you can watch on a computer. I’ve never seen a sex movie before, so I think we should watch one of those together. That’ll take your mind off all of your problems.”

  Lexi just stared at him for a moment before speaking. “Did you just ask me to watch porn with you?”

  “If porn is sex movies, then yes, I did,” Zane replied. “Watching sex isn’t as good as having sex, but something tells me you aren’t going to ask me to fuck you again today. Naturally, I’m available to you any time you want to make use of my body. Until then, we can just watch a sex movie, and maybe you’ll let me get you off with my mouth before we go to sleep. I’m dying to taste you again.”

  “You don’t have any internal filters, do you?” she asked.

  “None at all,” Zane admitted with a grin. “So, shall we eat and watch a sex movie, or would you rather I just eat you before we watch a sex movie? I’m good either way.”

  Lexi laughed. “We should eat, but no porn. Neither of us needs to get any hornier.”

  “We can always help each other out with the horniness,” Zane suggested. “I already told you I’d like you to come on my tongue.”

  “As tempting as that sounds, I think we need to slow things down some.” Lexi almost laughed at Zane’s perplexed expression.

  “Why would we slow things down?” he asked.

  “How about because we just met?” Lexi was still trying to figure out how she’d gone from ending things before they got too complicated to just slowing things down. Zane seemed to have a knack for getting his way with her.

  “But we’ve already been intimate, and you’re my mate,” Zane said, not sounding annoyed or argumentative.

  If he’d sounded pushy, she might be angry with him, but Zane merely sounded confused by her reluctance, and she wondered if things normally moved this quickly with shapeshifters. Considering how things had started with them, she couldn’t blame him for thinking all her relationships normally moved that quickly. She needed to keep in mind that Zane wasn’t human, and that meant he probably saw relationships differently than she did. She needed to explain this in a way that didn’t involve following human rules about dating, especially since they weren’t exactly dating.

  “I just found out that I traveled to the future,” she began with a nervous laugh. “Seriously, I have had some crazy dreams, but this reality beats them all. Then I find out I’ve had sex with a man who can change into a lynx the size of a small horse. How the hell is it even possible for you to change into a lynx?”

  “I can show you,” Zane offered. “That might help you understand it better.”

  “Maybe later,” Lexi said. “Okay, definitely later. I’m not going to pretend I don’t want to see something that incredible. Why were you in lynx form when you were in bed with me at the hospital? I didn’t really understand the explanation I got there.”

  “I didn’t like the idea of leaving you alone,” Zane told her. He’d moved closer to nuzzle her neck as he explained. The man seemed incapable of keeping his distance from her. “You were so confused when we brought you there, and I wanted to offer you any comfort I could. Connor insisted I stay clothed or in lynx form. At first, I figured I’d just stay mostly dressed, but I decided to change for a while because the clothes were bothering me. Your breathing was more even and relaxed when I cuddled up to you as a lynx, so I decided to stay in that form.”

  Zane barely knew her, and he was giving her more than most people had in her entire life.

  “Why are you frowning, angel?” he asked, kissing her furrowed brow.

  “I’m just trying to work through all of this,” she admitted.

  “And having me buried deep inside of you while you come completely undone in my arms will interfere with you working through this?” he asked with a mischievous twinkle in his amber eyes.

  “You are a very naughty kitty,” she scolded, deciding Zane wasn’t going to listen to reason. She was also just plain tired of trying to push him away when she really didn’t want to.

  Zane’s grin lit his entire face. “Let’s go upstairs, where I promise to do my best to behave. We can eat our food a
nd watch a movie.”

  When Lexi raised an eyebrow, he chuckled.

  “It doesn’t have to be a sex movie,” Zane assured her. “Of course, I’m willing to watch one if you decide you want to.”

  “We are not watching porn together. Something tells me you aren’t very good at behaving,” Lexi said as they gathered up their food, and she let Zane lead her upstairs to find a movie to watch.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Talon had just opened a portal to watch Arawn’s daughter again, even knowing he really should conserve his energy. Having been interrupted by Carmen earlier, he felt cheated, and he deserved this time to observe the woman he would soon own. That glimpse of her leg had him curious, and he was hoping to find her naked to see if his suspicions about her toned body were correct.

  It took longer to bring up her image, and Talon was left wondering if he’d somehow made a mistake and focused on the wrong woman when he finally saw her. His pet should be alone, crying her eyes out or terrified of her circumstance. He’d even imagined her locked up because those stupid vampires thought she was some sort of threat to them. Kyleigh was away, so no one would recognize Arawn’s bitch daughter. His spy had recently learned her name was Alexa—a lovely name for his new pet. It enraged him to see his pet curled up on the lap of a man he’d never seen before.

  “Stupid slut!” he growled. She’d only been in this time a few days, at most. How could she have found a man already? Not that he really cared how many partners she had, but it made it harder to grab her if she was being watched. It also made his plan to offer to help Connor in exchange for having Alexa turned over to him harder. Oh, yes, he was willing to betray Carmen to get what he wanted, and he was certain Arawn’s frightened mutt of a daughter would be easily influenced. Convincing her to go to the Fae realm with him would have been simple. Now, he’d have to come up with another plan.