by Mandy Rosko
Impressive stone work, glistening windows, and plants that grew up the walls made it look like a mansion. The fountain in the center, which she hadn't noticed before, gave off the impression of a modern palace.
And the word palace meant expensive.
"Who the hell are you people?"
Garret smiled. "You'll get to know us soon enough. Do you like your new home?"
She shook her head. "That's not mine."
The last memories of living in any house had been when she was a small child, and even then, the house had been a standard bungalow made for the lower-middle class.
This place looked like servants maintained it.
"It is now," Garret replied.
Miranda was still shaking her head when two men rushed out of the double doors of the house.
"Everything all right, Garret?" asked the man with the sandy-brown hair. It was combed neatly behind his ears. He spoke as if there wasn't a giant wolf creature with a mean-looking snout and long teeth standing on two legs in front of him. He looked at Miranda, but Garret's possessive growl had him quickly glancing away.
Well, good, she supposed. She was still naked and holding her hands over her tits now to make sure no one saw them.
"Everything is fine, Jax. My mate had her first run. She hunted a rabbit all by herself."
Garret sounded proud of her in the same way a parent might be proud of their child for tying their shoelaces for the first time. Miranda was half insulted until Jax barked a laugh.
"No shit, really? Pretty good for a first time."
"I think it makes sense," said the man with the black hair. "She's an alpha's mate. She'd going to take to the life a little easier than anyone else who gets changed."
"There's no actual proof of that," Jax replied. "She could just be talented."
Miranda gently pulled on the hairs on Garret's chest. She hoped it wasn't hard enough to hurt him, but she needed his attention.
He looked down at her.
"Still naked," she reminded him.
Garret cleared his throat. "I'm taking my woman upstairs to my rooms. Do me a favor and get some food ready if you can."
Miranda wasn't looking at either man, but she got the feeling they were suddenly looking at her, curious about her.
"Sure thing, Garret," Jax said. "Does she have any allergies?"
Garret tensed, and it was clear he hadn't even thought of that possibility.
"Um, Miranda, are you allergic to anything?"
It was so weird. These guys looked big enough to be bouncers, or even in the Navy Seals, and yet Miranda was going to give them a menu of things she could and could not eat as if they were servers at the diner she worked at. Worse still, she was going to tell them while not looking at them because she was too busy trying to hide her privates in Garret's fur.
She mumbled her reply. "Nothing with peanuts, please."
"Is it serious?" Garret asked.
The sound of genuine concern in his voice was enough to bring back that warm tingling that had caught Miranda by the heartstrings.
Not a big deal. There was nothing deeper to this, and she wasn't going to start thinking nice thoughts about her kidnappers just because they were cool shifters—she was pretty sure these other two were, anyway—and they wanted to make sure she ate good food and could control this new... thing that was wrong with her.
"I won't full-on stop breathing, but I get hives and breathing does get hard."
"We searched your car; we didn't find any medication for that."
And that was about when the warm sensation became unpleasant, back to embarrassment.
"Can I please just go inside and put some clothes on?"
"Of course," Garret rumbled, walking past his men and toward the doors. "No peanuts!" he called over his shoulder.
Miranda was pretty sure she was going to melt into the floor and die when she was brought back to Garret's room and he saw the mess she'd made of his window screen.
"Sorry," she muttered, trying not to look at it.
He sighed, set her down on the bed, and he melted back into his human shape with ease as he walked over to the window and shut it.
Unlike when Miranda had changed, his fur didn't shed from his skin, but it seemed to shrink back into his pores, which left him completely, deliciously, naked.
Miranda grabbed the blue sheet and yanked it over her body, covering her nudity, as she stared down at the carpet and her toes.
At anything other than how firm Garret's ass was.
She'd gotten a look at it, and now she really wished she hadn't. This was bad. This was so bad.
Garret opened his wardrobe, pulled something out, and then went to his dresser. When Miranda looked up, he was dressed again, doing up the last buttons on a blue shirt.
He must really like the color blue.
"Sorry for the lack of clothing for you. Some will be purchased shortly. Anna is at the malls right now, and she should return before nightfall."
Anna? "Uh, who's Anna?"
Garret grinned an evil-looking grin at her. "Are you jealous?"
"No!"
She totally was, but she was not going to admit it or ask him any more questions in case he got the wrong impression.
She needed something to think about other than how much she hoped Anna was old and ugly. God, she was sounding like a bitch even to herself.
"Thank you for offering to buy me some clothes, but you didn't have to do that. I have clothes in the trunk of my car. You can save your money. It'll probably be easier for you."
And for Anna. Whoever she was. Garret adjusted the back of his collar. "Your clothes are still being washed."
Still? Miranda's defenses picked up. "They weren't that dirty."
So she'd worn them a couple of times each and had to shove her dirty clothes in with the clean ones, and it had been about a month since she'd been near a washing machine, but it didn't take days for clothes to be cleaned.
"It not a matter of dirt, though they were dirty," Garret said. "Your scent was too strongly imbedded into them. You sweated in many of those clothes for days. I would have simply burned them if I could have."
"What?"
He said she was his mate, and then talked about her scent like it was offensive. She didn't get it.
Garret ignored her outburst. "But I didn't want to risk any of those garments being precious to you. I saw several of them had holes and sewing marks. Poorly made sewing marks."
Miranda crossed her arms. "So what? All my clothes have sentimental value. I didn't want to throw them away."
He scratched his nose. "Or rather, you could not purchase new ones, even used, because your checks have been going to your mother?"
Miranda tensed. "How do you know about that?"
"I know that the same way I know you've been living in your car for the last couple of months."
Miranda shot to her feet, not giving Garret the chance to say more. "How the hell do you know about that if you're not stalking me?"
His blue eyes suddenly turned hard and cold, and they glowed unforgivingly. That urge to obey, to back down and cower, returned with a vengeance, and though her knees trembled with the need to back away and lower her head, she locked her legs and lifted her chin instead. Inside, her mind and body was a complete mess, but if she could just pull off the look of being unafraid and not giving in to that commanding stare, then it would still be a win for her.
Garret stared at her long and hard, and Miranda was starting to crack. God, she was already going to crack.
"What?" she asked, just to stop it from being so quiet in here.
He smirked that stupid, sexy smirk at her that reminded her of movie-star good looks.
He was the sexy rogue, the swoon-worthy antihero she'd lusted over in all her favorite movies.
"You can stare at me and lift your chin all you want, sweetheart, but I can see your desire to give in as plain as I'm looking at you right now. That's more than enough for me."
<
br /> Garret stepped away from her, still smiling that stupid smile, as if he were the one to win the argument.
And for some utterly stupid reason, the way he walked away, all confident in his own victory and his command over her and her body, made him that much sexier in her eyes.
He opened the door. "Come now, you need more food for energy."
"I'm not hungry."
Miranda's stomach decided to growl the loudest rumbling noise it had ever made in her entire life just to embarrass her. It was a noise to rival the rumbling grumble Garret made when he was in... that other shape.
He laughed at her. "Woman, stop being stubborn and come eat with me."
He walked out without her, totally confident she was going to follow him, regardless of whether or not she was only wearing a sheet.
Miranda folded her arms and sat back down on the bed, just to be stubborn. Fuck him and fuck his stupid commands.
Woman. He called her woman. What the hell was he? A caveman? Just because he was good-looking and apparently rich didn't mean he had permission to call her that.
It did sort of ease the ache and make it kind of endearing, however. Did that make her a hypocrite? Probably, but she didn't much care in that moment.
Her stomach growled again, and Miranda let out an angry snarl as she stormed to her feet and followed after Garret.
* * *
She was behind him. He knew she would be eventually. He hadn't gone far. His home was a large place, many people lived in it, and she still had no clothing to wear yet because her clothes were still being boiled to remove her human scent from them, so he'd waited at the end of the hall for her. She spotted him immediately, and that adorable, angry blush returned to her cheeks, making her look lovelier than before.
She approached him, refused to look into his eyes, and cleared her throat. "I decided to go with you after all."
"Did you?"
Miranda nodded. "If I'm going to be staying here, I need to learn more about what you all are. What I am. I'm not going to do that by hiding away in your bedroom."
It was their bedroom, but he didn't correct her. Even Garret knew a prideful woman could only take so much teasing before she was genuinely offended, and he was still trying to impress her.
So he let her believe he was accepting her excuse as true, and he led her down the stairs, carefully watching the sheet around her feet so she would not trip.
"Are you sure I can't wear my clothes yet?"
"They are still wet, and they will remain that way for another day or so."
Hopefully, when Anna returned with the new clothes, Miranda would be so pleased with them that she wouldn't want to wear her old clothes ever again, and then Garret could bury them.
The last thing he needed was Dennis tracking her scent here, trying something else against her life.
Dennis was an idiot, but to attack a human woman who had done nothing to him was low even for him. Garret understood as much as the next shifter the importance of fighting and defense. Had Miranda been a warrior woman who attacked first, then it would have been understandable, but she was not a warrior. She had been helpless, and Dennis would have killed her to satisfy an old wrong.
So foolish and stupid.
When they arrived at the dining room, he noted the way his mate turned her head this way and that, glancing up at the crystal chandelier above the long mahogany table. Then her eyes shifted to the wine glasses at each table setting and the fine china.
"Are you sure you're not royalty or something?" Miranda asked.
Garret sputtered a laugh. "Royalty? Hardly."
"Okay, then you're secretly a drug trafficker, is that it?"
He shook his head again. "No, nothing like that." He gestured to the room around her. "Much of this was inherited from the previous alpha, my father. He lived long enough to acquire a decent amount of wealth. The rest came from his father before him. Honestly, with everything put together, it amounts to a little over a billion dollars."
He might as well tell her this now, let her know what he planned on sharing with her.
Miranda's eyes popped wide open. She shook her head. "No, you're not serious."
Garret smiled. "Very serious. Your name will be going on my account, so you might as well know what you have access to."
She sputtered. "You can't give me access to a billion dollars!"
"Why not?"
Her mouth opened and closed. She seemed flabbergasted, like she didn't know how to answer that. "I don't… I don't know, because it's yours, not mine."
It was hers now, but he could sense her discomfort. Garret wasn't an idiot. He knew how money could make people uncomfortable. It was why he didn't like wearing expensive suits, aside from the fact they frequently got ruined when he shifted in them. It was one thing for him to be a shifter, but a billionaire shifter complicated things on a whole new level.
"If it's the inheritances you're worried about, some of it is genuinely mine. The rest of the money comes in and is maintained through a shipping company I run. So don't worry, if I decide I want to spoil you, I'm not spend my great-granddaddy's cash on it. This will be all on me."
She blinked at him. "Wait, you run a shipping company?"
He smiled. "Yes, it's all very anticlimactic, isn't it? My father bought older companies and sold off the assets, and my grandfather was a lawyer, all perfectly normal, boring stuff."
That same cute blush returned to her cheeks. "No, it's not boring or anything. Just different from what I thought."
That was the point, and it was good.
Garret didn't tease her further. He pulled a chair out, noting the increase in color in Miranda's cheeks as she sat and he pushed her chair forward.
Dane walked through the doors, spotting them. "Oh, good, you're here."
He left without another word and returned with Jax walking behind him. They both carried two platters, one in each hand, and they were filled with meats, cheeses, breads, and salad.
Garret heard the grumble of Miranda's stomach at the sight of the food.
"No peanuts?" he asked, just to be sure.
"I checked the packaging and everything," Jax said. "All is nut free. I have to go back for the salad dressing, drinks, and mayo, though."
"Thank you," Miranda said as the platters were set in front of her. Since the table was already set for over a dozen people, all she had to do was grab her fork and take what she wanted.
"I'll come and check on things later," Jax said, and he and Dane took their leave.
Garret waved them off and smiled as he watched his mate, immediately pleased at the healthy appetite Miranda showed when she grabbed turkey shavings, cheese, and bread, and stacked it all together to make a sandwich.
She took big bites, chewed not as much as Garret would have wanted her to, and licked her fingers when she finished.
When Jax returned with the mayo, she added that to her next sandwich, then drank a full glass of apple juice before eating a salad and making yet another sandwich.
"God, that was good, thanks so much."
"Would you like more?"
"No, I'm way too full," she said, even though she reached over to one of the plates, grabbed a cheese cube, and nibbled on it. Garret could tell she was somewhat embarrassed, though he couldn't figure out why.
"Your body is warm. Are you feeling well?"
That dark color rose up her neck and settled into her ears. "How can you tell if I'm warm or not?"
"I'm sitting beside you. I can feel you. I can always feel you."
She shivered.
"Does that bother you?"
Miranda shook her head.
Garret pressed his elbow to the table, leaning his head on his fist as he observed his woman. "Then what troubles you?"
A soft groan escaped Miranda's throat as she squeezed her eyes shut, and only then did Garret realize this might be serious.
"I didn't want you to see me eat."
He blinked. "Why not? You're go
ing to see me eat. You're going to see me hunt and kill something and eat it like you ate that rabbit."
"Oh God, don't remind me of that. I still feel horrible about that."
"So why are you uncomfortable letting me see you eat?"
Miranda pressed her hands together on the chair between her knees. The sheet around her middle was startling to slip down, revealing more of her creamy peach skin, but she didn't seem to notice.
"It's not just about seeing me eat; it's about seeing how much I eat."
"I eat a lot."
"That's different. I'm a woman."
Garret sat back in his chair, arms folding as he turned his head to stare. "That is by far the most foolish thing I've ever heard in my life. You're a woman. What of it?"
She shook her head. "You just don't get it because you're a cool alpha wolf right out of a shifter romance novel. You probably eat ten times a day and never put an ounce of fat on all those perfect muscles you have."
Garret had another moment where he blinked stupidly at his woman. "Is that what you think it is? You think I would see you as being fat?"
"Don't sound so shocked by that."
"You're not fat."
"Can we not talk about this anymore?"
Garret shook his head. "No, of course not. I am the alpha and my woman said something irritating and wrong. That needs to be corrected. You are not fat. I can't believe I'm being reduced to arguing with you about this."
"So don't argue."
"Don't pout and don't call yourself fat." He let his eyes roam over her skin. He didn't see the problem. Perhaps she was not bone skinny like some humans strived for, but he would hardly call her fat.
Now Garret felt a warmth building inside him. He couldn't look at her as he cleared his throat, squirming in his seat like an adolescent. "I enjoy your curves quite a bit."
"Curves is the new polite word people throw around for overweight, which I technically am, and you just saw me scarf down four sandwiches like they were going out of style."
Garret exploded. "For Christ's sake, you are not fat!" He jumped from his chair, knocking it over, and stared down at his woman. He pounded a fist to his chest. "I am a red-blooded male, and I am also sexually attracted to you. I am attracted to your hips and thighs, your thighs especially," he added, because it was true. "I enjoy a good pair of heart-shaped thighs on my women."
