by Zoe Chant
“Can’t wait.” He kissed her quickly and turned back to watch the pancakes.
Soon enough, everything was done, and Jeff piled their plates high with pancakes, eggs, and bacon. Leah realized that she was starving, and fell on the food with an appetite.
She realized after a while that Jeff was watching her with a fond smile. “I love watching you eat my food,” he said. “I’ve been cooking just for myself for years now, and seeing you appreciate it like that...I love it.”
Leah cut herself another bite of pancake. “Well, I love eating your food, so feel free to keep cooking like this. It’s all absolutely delicious.”
“Let me know if you want seconds.” He grinned.
Eventually they were both full, and just lingering at the table sipping coffee. After a few minutes, Jeff set his mug down and leaned forward. “Leah, there’s something I want to tell you.”
Leah couldn’t help the jolt of fear that went through her. Was there something wrong? Had he changed his mind?
Everything had been so perfect so far; there had to be some bad news waiting in the wings, didn’t there?
“It’s about shifters,” Jeff continued. “There are some...mystical things about us.”
“You mean other than the fact that you can change into a snow leopard?” Leah asked. But she relaxed a little bit. Maybe this wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Jeff chuckled. “Yes. Other than that. One of the most important things has to do with how we mate.”
“Um,” said Leah, “I don’t remember noticing anything too odd the other night...”
Jeff laughed, surprised. “No! I didn’t mean that. I mean, how we pair up. Get married.”
“Oh. Okay,” Leah said cautiously. “What is it, then?”
“At least some shifters—people say it’s possible for everyone, but it doesn’t happen to everyone—but some shifters have a single mate. One person who they’ll be with for their entire life. There’s a bond between them, something that they can sense—a connection. And once they’ve met that person, that’s it. Nothing will ever separate them.”
Leah couldn’t decide what to think. “Are you—what are you saying?”
Jeff leaned forward. “I felt that connection yesterday,” he said. “It’s you, Leah. You’re my mate. Can you feel it, too?”
A sense of wonder rose inside of her. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. I can.”
Because she could. She’d felt the strange connection from the moment they met, and it had only been getting stronger since then.
Leah felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. This was it. This was the reason she’d trusted Jeff so instinctively, the reason she wanted to commit to him so badly even though they’d only just met.
“I thought—” she said haltingly. “I thought I was rushing into things. I thought I needed to be careful, not trust my own judgment, because I’ve been wrong before. Even though it felt so right. But it’s not just my judgment, is it? It’s something else. Something...magical.”
Jeff nodded. He still looked serious, and he reached across the table and took her hand. “But I don’t want you to feel like you have to commit to anything, Leah. The mate-bond doesn’t mean we don’t need to talk, and it doesn’t mean we can’t think different things. If you’re not sure...if there’s anything about this that you don’t want? Let’s talk about it. And you can take all the time you need to make a decision.”
Leah shook her head, the smile breaking through and spreading across her face. “That’s what I’m saying. I feel the connection, the...bond, but that’s not all. My own judgment is telling me to go ahead, to grab onto you with both hands, because Jeff, you’re the best man I’ve ever met. You’re kind, and loving, and strong, and you’re wonderful with Emily, and I truly want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Jeff came around the table and took Leah’s hand. He drew her up to stand with him, and looked deep into her eyes. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, too. And I promise you I will support you and Emily. I was thinking last night that I can’t wait to be her dad.”
Leah’s eyes filled with tears, but she swallowed and managed to say, relatively steadily, “Even when she was sobbing her head off at four in the morning?”
“Even then.” Jeff kissed her. “Because that’s what being a dad is about. It means you’re there for your daughter, so that she’s not all alone when she’s sick and upset. That’s the kind of dad I want to be.”
Leah threw her arms around Jeff and kissed him again. She couldn’t believe how lucky she was.
Jeff kissed her back, hotly and thoroughly, and it wasn’t long before Leah was pressed up against him, filled with desire. “Do you have time?” she whispered, hoping desperately the answer was yes.
“There’s time,” Jeff rumbled, and tugged her toward the bedroom.
This time, neither of them had the patience for long, slow foreplay. They tugged at each other’s clothes, getting briefly tangled up when they couldn’t wait for arms to get out of the way.
“Okay,” Jeff laughed. “Separate, clothes off, then bed.”
Leah stripped off her jeans and T-shirt as quickly as possible, but then was arrested by the sight of Jeff’s powerful thighs as his own pants came down. Muscles moved in his shoulders as he tugged off his socks, and she just wanted to watch forever.
This is yours forever, she reminded herself. You can watch him whenever you want from now on. The thought filled her with a delicious satisfaction. Quickly, she unhooked her bra and tossed it aside, then stripped off her panties. She turned to meet Jeff as he swept her up in his arms, devouring her mouth.
Jeff tossed her onto the bed—Leah stifled a little shriek. Passion lit Jeff’s eyes from within as he crawled up the bed toward her, graceful as a cat.
He kissed her mouth, then trailed down her neck, kissing and biting softly until he reached her breasts, where he licked a path down between them. Leah arched under his mouth, moaning softly.
Jeff lifted his head. “I want you now, Leah,” he said.
“Yes, now!” Leah’s whole body was on fire, and she wanted Jeff inside her yesterday.
He found a condom in the bedside table and slipped it on, while Leah opened her legs shamelessly. She felt wanton and sexy—putting herself on display because she knew Jeff wanted to see her.
And he did—when her parted legs exposed her completely, he growled in his chest and ducked his head down to taste her, running his tongue over the length of her pussy, all the way up to the top of her clit. Bursts of sensation spread through her body. He sucked softly, and Leah grabbed at his head, threading her fingers through his hair and pulling him up.
“Inside me,” she insisted.
He kissed her, and she could taste herself on his lips, which made her shiver in uncertainty—she’d never known that could be a turn-on.
“I just had to taste you,” he said into her mouth. “But now I have to make love to you.”
“Do it.” She almost didn’t recognize her own voice. She’d already been wet, and now that he’d put his mouth on her, she was soaked. Her pussy ached with the need to be filled.
When he pushed into her, the pleasure shocked her, her nerve endings sparking with ecstasy. And when he started to move, it happened again, and again, and again, until she was helplessly teetering on the brink of orgasm.
And above and beyond what her body was feeling, there was the mate-bond.
She could feel it. A tether between them, a spark inside her that was answered inside him, a gravitational pull from his body to hers. She knew she’d never be able to describe it physically, but it was there. Jeff was her mate. They were one.
They were joined in their souls...and in their bodies. When Jeff moved again, Leah was rocked to her core. As she started to come, he kissed her so deeply, she could feel it in her entire body, and she gave herself up to the pleasure.
***
Jeff was having more trouble concentrating on work than he’d ever
had in his life.
“Hart!” Cal barked at him halfway through the day. “Where’s your head at! We’ve got real work to do, and you’re staring up at the clouds with a dreamy expression on your face.”
Jeff apologized immediately. “I know I’m distracted today, Cal. I’ve had some...life changes in the last couple of days.”
Cal eyed him. “Is this anything to do with that young lady with the baby?”
Jeff nodded, feeling the grin spread involuntarily across his face. “She’s my mate.”
Cal eyed him harder. “Well,” he said. “You know that this job is just as important as it is every day, mate or no.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jeff. “Won’t happen again.”
“Well,” Cal said again. Then, totally unexpectedly, he clapped Jeff on the shoulder. “You know, the fallout from the storm’s just about cleared up, and it occurs to me that you had pretty much a thirty-six-hour work day this week, rescuing that girl and her baby from the snow. Why don’t you take off early?”
Jeff blinked. “Are you sure about that? I can stay on...”
“As distracted as you are? Not a chance.” But Cal’s eyes were warm. “Get on out.”
Jeff didn’t stick around to be told again.
Huh. He’d always thought that Cal didn’t have an emotional bone in his body. Cal lived for the job, it seemed. But maybe he’d been wrong about that.
He drove home as fast as he safely could in the snow, and let himself into the house quietly, not sure if Emily might be sleeping.
Inside, he discovered a perfectly clean house, a peacefully-sleeping baby, and her peacefully-sleeping mother. When he peeked into his own room, Leah was curled up in his bed.
The sight brought an overwhelming feeling of tenderness. This was his family, and he had a roof over their heads and a job to support them.
Just as Jeff was about to withdraw and leave Leah to sleep, her eyes blinked open. “Hi,” she said, with a sleepy smile.
“Hi,” Jeff said softly. “Don’t mind me. Go on back to sleep.”
“No, no, I just wanted a little nap.” Leah sat up, rubbing her eyes. Her dark hair fell in curls like a waterfall around her shoulders, and she was so beautiful it was almost hard to look at her.
“I must have slept forever,” Leah said, yawning. “What time is it?”
“Only one-thirty,” Jeff assured her. “I got off early.”
Leah smiled happily. Jeff remembered thinking, right after they met, that he wanted to learn how to make Leah smile a real smile, instead of the barely-noticeable one she’d had at first.
He didn’t think he’d ever been prouder of anything in his life.
“Thanks for cleaning up the kitchen,” Jeff said. “You could’ve left it for me. I meant to get to it before I left, but I got...distracted.”
They shared a grin. Leah said, “It was no trouble. And I don’t want—I don’t want this relationship to just be you taking care of me all the time. We’re partners. You cooked, and so I can do the dishes.”
Jeff thought that staying home with a sick baby all day meant that you should be exempt from dish duty, but he understood the larger point. “Partners,” he agreed. “How’s Emily doing?”
Leah brightened. “Much better,” she said. “Her fever broke this morning—I think around when you put her down—and she slept through until eleven or so. She woke up and ate and played for a little while, and then she went back down. I think when she gets up from this nap, she’ll be just fine.”
“That’s great,” Jeff said. “I can’t wait to see her happy again. And I’m glad you got a nap too.” He sat down on the bed next to Leah and pulled her into a hug. She was warm from sleep and felt soft and perfect in his arms. The scent of her hair surrounded him, and he inhaled and felt himself relax all over.
His mate.
“I was thinking,” he said into her hair. “If you wanted...”
“Hm?”
He could feel the vibrations of her voice. “You left home without much. It looked like you must have left some things behind.”
She nodded, and he felt her tense up a bit. “I didn’t plan ahead well enough. I thought my landlord was going to be more lenient, but he told me I had to leave, and so I packed up as quickly as I could. The big stuff had to stay behind.”
“Then maybe we could go get it. With the storm and everything, he probably hasn’t had the time to get rid of any furniture yet. I could borrow a trailer from one of the guys and we could go pick up some things and bring them back here.”
Leah sat up. “Oh.” She sounded quietly shocked. “I never thought...I didn’t think I’d be able to get any of that back. Emily’s crib...her stroller...I mean, maybe he’s gotten rid of it already; he could’ve wanted me out because he had someone else ready to move in right away.”
“Can’t hurt to check, though, can it?” Jeff asked.
“No,” she said, and started to smile. “Can we go today? It’s only a couple of hours away, and I’d rather do it as quickly as possible, just to have the best chance of things still being there.”
“Well, I don’t have any other plans,” said Jeff. “Check your calendar, and if you’re free, then we can go.”
Leah laughed. “Okay, as soon as Emily wakes up, then.”
Jeff smiled. “What will we do until then?”
“I don’t know.” Leah drew him down into a kiss. “I bet we can think of something.”
***
By the time they got back up, ready, and got Emily’s car seat securely installed in Jeff’s car, the baby was awake. Jeff came inside to see Leah just snapping her into a new onesie and putting tiny elastic-waisted baby jeans over the top of it. They were adorable.
“Hi, princess,” Jeff said, smiling at Emily. She smiled back at him and reached for him with both arms.
“Hey, someone’s got a new biggest fan,” Leah said, smiling as she handed the baby over.
“We bonded last night,” Jeff said. “Isn’t that right, honey?” He bounced her on his hip and she giggled.
“Ah ah ah ah ah,” she informed him.
“That sounds right,” he said seriously.
Leah pushed herself to her feet with the dirty diaper in one hand. “I’ll just toss this, and then we can go,” she said. “It is so much easier to do this with someone else.”
Jeff was struck once again by how much Leah must have struggled in the last ten months. She clearly still blamed herself for not holding everything together, but Jeff knew better. Being a single mom was the hardest job in the world.
Together they bundled Emily in the car and set off for the drive to Leah’s old place.
“So,” Jeff said as they pulled away, “we’ve been so busy since we met, I don’t even know what you like to do in your spare time. Not that you’ve had any recently, but before Emily was born, what sort of hobbies did you have?”
Leah’s face lit up. “Oh, I always loved working in the garden,” she said. “I had a job at the local nursery for a long time, actually.”
“Really?” He hadn’t known that, but when he thought about it, it seemed like exactly the sort of thing Leah would do. Something that took patience, and attention, and love. “What sort of things did you grow?”
For the rest of the drive, she talked about gardening, about plants, flowers, vegetables, fruit...how hard it could be to grow certain things in northern Montana, but how surprisingly easy others could be.
“I can’t wait to see Glacier in the springtime,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “The wildflowers, the trees, all of the plants that must be preserved there...it’ll be amazing.”
“It is amazing,” said Jeff. “But most of my knowledge is centered around plants that can be dangerous, or used for some practical purpose, or anything that’s endangered. You know so much about this, I had no idea.” He remembered the gardening books he’d seen in her bags in the car.
“I used to do some gardening on the side for my neighbors,” she said. “I always l
oved it. Do you think there’d be any call for that sort of thing here, once Emily gets a little older?”
“Absolutely.” Jeff thought of all the rangers who were happy to roam around in the wild, but didn’t know the first thing about growing flowers in their own lawns. “You could get a lot of business doing that, I’m pretty sure. And I’ve got a lawn with a garden patch, not that you can tell at this time of year, and not that I ever do anything with it. So if you just want to do it as a hobby for a while, the space is there.”
Leah smiled. “That sounds perfect.”
You’re perfect. Watching her talk about gardening, about flowers, about eating the vegetables she’d grown herself—it was like seeing the whole person of Leah, rather than just the parts she let through on purpose. She wasn’t just practical, careful, and loving, she was also passionate, excited, and joyful. Jeff could tell that everything that made Leah a wonderful mother would make her a fantastic gardener as well. He couldn’t wait to get her some seeds, and gardening tools, and whatever she needed.
He couldn’t wait for spring.
“It’s this next exit,” Leah said suddenly.
Jeff glanced over at her as he took the exit, and was disturbed by the transformation he saw as they entered town.
It was as though all of that excitement and passion was slowly getting squished down again, covered over by the grim, determined practicality that Leah had been wearing when he’d first met her.
He didn’t like this town already.
Leah gave him directions in a toneless voice, and he turned through town until he got to an anonymous, slightly broken-down building near its outskirts. Leah got out, turned to the backseat, and then stopped.
“Can you get Emily?” she asked him.
Jeff nodded and went to grab the baby, who’d been loudly bored for much of the ride, and was very happy to be out of her car seat. He bounced her in his arms and followed Leah up to the building’s door.
She went right in and knocked on the first door to the right. “George!” she called. “It’s Leah! Are you home?”
There was a scuffling sound on the other side of the door, and after a couple of minutes, it opened. “Leah!” said the short, heavyset man on the other side of the door. “What are you doing back?” He eyed Jeff nervously. Jeff drew himself up to his full height.
