by Mandy Rosko
"I won't. I promise," Miranda said quickly.
Anna's voice changed again. She was back to sounding chipper and happy. “Garret says there are two sorts of packs that take in shifters of a different species. Assholes like Dennis's pack who want the muscle, and good packs like this one who just want to help people out. The fact that three alphas can get along in the same space means my brother's a good leader."
This girl definitely had big brother worship, and Miranda thought it was endearing, and maybe a little effective in making her soften to Garret.
She stepped around the screen, showing off Anna had picked out for her. "What do you think?"
* * *
Garret paced the sitting room. Dane sat in a reading chair, picking at his nails with a blade. Jax stood beside the bear shifter, watching Garret with barely contained amusement. "It's not like she left the house. You don't have to be so edgy about it."
Garret growled.
"She's with your sister," Dane said, not looking up at him. "What do you think's going to happen? Christ."
It wasn't about that at all. It was the fact that Garret had his mate, awake and walking around the house, even running out in the trees with him, for almost six hours now, and he still hadn't claimed her yet.
His body was starting to itch. The only thing that kept him from embarrassing himself and walking around with a perpetual hard-on was his superior self-control.
Not that he would ever say that out loud to either of these two chuckleheads.
The omegas were preparing dinner now, and Garret would prefer to have his dessert before he had his supper.
Anna, suddenly and without warning, rushed through the open doorway leading into the sitting room, a wide smile on her face as she dragged Miranda behind her like she was a new toy.
"Hey, guys! Hi, Jax."
Jax nodded to her, though he barely looked at her.
Anna cleared her throat. "Anyway, we finally picked an outfit, what do you think?" She hauled Miranda forward.
Miranda, who was not yet used to using her own strength when others were too rough, nearly tripped. She caught herself quickly, however, so Garret had no reason to yell at his younger sister.
He was too drawn in by the sight of the vision in front of him.
She was in a white top with a V-neck that dipped low into Miranda's ample cleavage, and sleeves that flared out with lace, making her look almost medieval. The bottom of the top also skirted out, ending in more lace, highlighting and complementing Miranda's figure.
Her jeans hugged her thighs, which Garret especially enjoyed, and the heart earrings and locket Miranda wore gave off the impression of a beauty who hardly had to try to look beautiful at all. It looked as if her hair had been curled and styled into loose waves as well.
Anna had been a fine choice to send shopping for his mate. Of course she would care for Miranda properly. Garret should not have worried or let himself become impatient.
Miranda pulled at the wide lace sleeves of her shirt. "Do I look okay?"
She hardly sounded as if she was happy with the choice. Knowing Anna, she had likely lost her patience, forced Miranda to make a choice, and then dragged her down here before she could change her mind.
"You look great!" Anna said. "I told you there was nothing wrong with the outfit."
Ah, confirmation to what he already knew was always good.
"You look lovely," Garret said.
Anna's eyes flew wide. She stared at him as if he'd spat at her feet. "Just lovely? Are you kidding? She's sexy as hell!"
He didn't understand the younger generation, he really didn't.
"Jax, you see it, right?" Anna asked.
Jax lifted his hands and stepped back. "I'm not getting into that."
"Wise of you," Garret replied with a low growl.
Miranda's cheeks were turning an attractive shade of pink.
Anna was right. She was sexy. She was better than sexy. And now that Miranda was dressed in her new clothes, Garret wanted to get her out of them and let his mouth suck on every inch of her.
Especially the fun bits.
He walked over to his mate, smiling down at her as he took her by the hand. "Come with me," he said.
Anna stepped between them. "Whoa, where are you going?"
Garret growled at her. Of course, she ignored him. "Out of my way, little sister."
Her eyes popped wider; then she grinned and turned back to Miranda. "See? Watch, this is perfect, now you can see that you can disobey an order."
Dane snickered. "Jesus."
"Anna—"
"No way!" she snapped. "Miranda just woke up today and is still getting used to everything, and you want drag her away for the mating." Her voice lowered as she made air quotes with her fingers. She was mocking him. "At least give her another day or two to get used to all this."
"Get used to it?" Garret snapped. "How else is she expected to get used to it if we don't complete the mating?"
Anna pointed her slim finger at his nose. "See? That right there is the problem. You don't know how to be romantic, and you expect her to just go along with this?"
It was not helping anything that Anna's wolf ears were starting to poke up through her hair, or that her eyes were glowing as her nose darkened and lengthened.
Garret snarled at her. "I spoiled you all your life, but no more. Go to your room this instant!"
"Oh, whatever," Anna said, and she did the unthinkable when she turned her back on Garret, grabbed Miranda by the hand, and walked out of the sitting room with his mate, smiling cheerfully at her.
"Something smells good and I'm starving. Want to get something to eat?"
Miranda glanced back at Garret, as though unsure of what had just happened. Garret didn't know either, but he was suddenly hating his decision to have his sister make friends with his mate. How was he supposed to take her when Anna insisted on making a pest of herself?
Tonight. Tonight he would have her.
Dane's laughing didn't help. Garret swiped his claws at the man.
Chapter 7
Miranda was partly grateful and amused by Anna's show of indifference to her brother's commands.
She was also partly irritated, worried, and edgy from not being able to obey.
It wasn't just the obeying part either. When Garret had taken her by the hand and pulled her close, then in that low, rumbling wolf voice, practically purred at her to go upstairs with him, Miranda had shivered.
She'd shivered the most pleasurable shiver of her life, and she'd wanted to go upstairs with him, not to satisfy some primal urge to obey, but, come on, definitely for the sex.
And why wouldn't she want to have sex with him? Mate or no mate, Garret was a gorgeous man. She keeping thinking back to how he looked like a movie star, but that was only because it was true. He did look like a movie star. Why the hell wouldn't she want to be taken to bed like that? He'd already proven he could carry her like she weighed nothing at all, and that was always a turn-on, so yeah, she was very interested in the idea of going to bed with him.
When Garret had looked her in the eyes and made the suggestion, something in Miranda's brain had clicked. It was like one of those old, silent films had started to play in her head. Only it was in rich color, vivid detail, and there were none of those dirt smudges getting on the film playing in front of her.
She saw herself and Garret. She was beneath him, naked, her legs in the air and curled around his waist as he pushed his cock inside her body, pounding into her again and again in a way that was animalistic and primal, yet sweet and soft at the same time.
Sweet and soft? Right, as if those two words could exist beside animalistic and primal. It made no sense.
And yet, that's what she saw. That's what she'd wanted, what he'd hoped for, and what she was currently aching for as she sat at the dinner table and tried to pay attention to what Anna was rambling on about.
Anna was a sweet girl, and Miranda liked her, but it was difficult to ke
ep her mind on the conversation when she was horny.
And somehow, Miranda got the feeling that ten other people sitting around the table, all chatting pleasantly with each other, secretly knew it, too.
"So, do you think Jax is cute?"
Miranda dropped her fork on the floor with a loud clatter. Shit.
"I'll get you another one," said a young man whose name Miranda had already forgotten. He'd said he was an omega, and that was all she knew, but she assumed by his quick response and return that it meant he was kind of a servant around here.
"Thank you," Miranda said, then whispered back to Anna. "What about Jax?"
"Do you think he's cute?" Anna asked.
She thought it over. "Jax was the one with the brown hair, right?"
Anna nodded. "Right, the other guy was Dane. You're not good with names, are you?"
"You lose that skill working in a diner," Miranda explained.
"So?" Anna prompted.
Miranda didn't understand the importance, or why she had to grade Jax on his looks when all Miranda wanted to do was think about how she'd much rather be fawning over Garret's handsome face.
But Anna was one of the owners of this house—at least Miranda assumed so since she was Garret's sister—that Miranda was now a guest in, and after she went through all that trouble of buying her so many nice new clothes, she felt she owed it to the other woman to at least make some sort of effort.
Miranda pulled Jax's face into her mind, mentally studying it, then shrugged. "I suppose so."
That was weird, even for her, because Miranda knew herself well enough to say that there was a time when she would have jumped at the idea to impress a guy as cute as Jax.
Okay, maybe she wasn't that guy crazy, but hotties like him, whenever they walked into her diner, they tended to get their coffee refills a little quicker, a wider, more eager smile, and their food came faster.
Only part of all that had been in the hopes of getting a bigger tip, but yeah, Miranda had been that woman who flirted with her customers. Jax would have been one of them. Now… she wasn't entirely sure why, but she just didn't think he was that good-looking. At least not when put beside Garret.
Anna, however, didn't seem the least bit offended by this. She seemed happy, actually, as she dug her fork into her pasta and swirled it around. "When a mated woman says another man maybe, kinda, sorta looks all right, it usually means he's pretty gorgeous."
"It does?" Miranda thought about that. "So, I'm just not attracted to him because I'm mated to Garret?"
"Basically, yeah," Anna said, though she still seemed overly chipper at the thought that Miranda approved of Jax's looks.
Maybe they were dating.
"Does this mean Garret won't think anyone else is beautiful but me?" She thought back to their mini argument, where Miranda had embarrassed herself by breaking down and announcing how fat she thought she was, revealing herself to have body image issues. She was pretty sure guys didn't think that was attractive, a woman who complained about herself right after meeting someone.
"Of course. You're his one and only now."
Garret walked through the door, Jax and Dane trailing behind him. He had his arms crossed. Dane smiled like he was still getting over a hilarious joke, and Jax was the one who looked the most uncomfortable.
He didn't so much as glance at Anna.
Miranda soon forgot about what was going on between the two of them as her focus moved to Garret.
He sat down hard in his seat. He wasn't sticking his bottom lip out or anything, but he did give off the impression that he was pouting. He glanced Miranda's way, and the heat in his eyes was enough to make her look down at her plate of pasta with extra cheese.
Not an angry heat, but the same lust and want that had been in his eyes when he'd touched her in the sitting room, a fire crackling in the fireplace in the background, and asked her to go to bed with him.
She'd wanted to say yes then, and she wanted to say yes now.
Despite the bad mood of the alpha, pretty much everyone at the table chatted with their neighbors and spoke as if they were completely at ease, as if this was the most normal thing to ever happen in their lives.
Maybe it was. At least this had to be a good thing. Miranda was pretty sure she wouldn't feel comfortable if everyone in the room suddenly went tense at the sight of their alpha and started eating slowly, quietly, as if they were afraid of any punishments that would be inflicted on them for being too loud or obnoxious… well, yeah, that definitely wouldn't help Miranda relax or anything.
The fact that Garret was a big, mean-looking… werewolf, and yet everyone around here seemed fine with it, with him, made her feel even calmer. The normalcy in the room was definitely helping.
Miranda lifted her gaze back to Garret. He was still looking at her with that intense stare, the one that made Miranda think of being naked beneath him. She shivered again. Would she ever be able to stop doing that around him?
Whether she wanted to admit it or not, he really did seem to own her. Was he thinking the same things as she was? Was he imagining himself making love to her, or fucking and owning her?
Miranda forced herself to look away as warmth pooled in her belly. Yeah, there was no way in hell she was letting herself get turned on surrounded by so many people. With her luck, they'd all be able to smell her soaked panties.
Christ.
At least she was getting a hot meal that hadn't come out of a wrapper at the local gas station, or was stolen from the diner. Miranda didn't care what anyone said, getting to eat some of the food, especially the food that was considered no good to be sold to the customers, was not theft. It was almost expected that the employees would grab a sandwich from time to time anyway.
But this, hot angel hair pasta with real parmesan cheese grated on the top and the best sauce she'd ever had in her life… it didn't matter that she'd eaten enough to fill up three full-grown men only a couple of hours prior. The food was good, and she said as much.
Anna beamed. "Family recipe. The secret is the moose meat."
Miranda stopped eating abruptly. She swallowed what was in her mouth. There was no way she was going to spit it out, but she had to look at Anna. "Are you serious?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Good, right?"
Miranda looked down at her plate. She'd tasted the meat in the sauce, but had assumed it was ground beef, but better.
She licked her lips and swallowed again. "Yeah, actually. This is really good." She smiled at Anna, then thought about her mother and how she might like…
Miranda's eyes flew wide, and she leaned back in her seat. Her mother. Christ, how could she have forgotten? She'd even forgotten about her job at the diner, and she'd just finished thinking about how she used to be forced to sneak food to save money for her mother's medical payments.
"What's wrong?"
Miranda looked up. It was Garret who'd asked the question. He was staring at her again, but frowning this time in a way much different than he'd been doing before.
"Can I talk to you alone?" Miranda had already pulled herself to her feet.
Garret jumped up, nearly knocking over his chair as he rushed around to the other side of the table, surprising her by taking her hand and walking out of the dining room with here.
There were a few loud cheers, but Miranda ignored them. All she could think about was how warm Garret's hand felt, even when she should have been more focused on her mother.
He brought her to the large foyer, stopping and glancing around, as if to make certain no one was nearby. "What's the matter? You need to calm down."
She opened her mouth to yell at him about how she very much did not need to calm down, but then felt a pain in her gums that made her hiss.
She brought her hand up to touch her cheek, then pulled back when her fingertips felt overly rough. Something scratched her.
Her hands were turning into that strange mix between paws and hands. She had the rough, black padding on the bottom fleshy
side of her hand, and her fingernails were turning into claws again. That sharp pain in her mouth had to be her teeth getting longer, getting sharper as she turned into that animal, fox-wolf hybrid creature. Garret had warned her that her control wouldn't be so great. Was it happening now? Was she losing control?
This didn't help her panic attack. Things were getting worse. Her heart started pounding hard and heavy in her chest. She couldn't control herself. She was freaking out and she couldn't breathe and… and…
Garret's hands were suddenly gripping her shoulders tightly. He stared into her eyes, those bright, beautiful blue orbs turning golden and stern as his face changed into that of the fearsome wolf. "You will look at me and obey me. Calm now. Now."
His harsh voice quickly softened when Miranda snapped out of it. "Let your heart slow. Inhale and exhale through your nose. There, very good. Now, let yourself become your true you. Put the creature away. That's my girl."
It worked. That instinctual need Miranda had to obey his commands worked, and she found her body melting back into what she was used to. Something that looked a little more human.
As Miranda turned back into her real self, so did Garret. He stared at her, his head cocked to the side slightly, as though searching for any more signs of distress.
"I'm… I'm okay. Thanks. Thanks for that."
He nodded. "You're welcome."
His hands were still touching her shoulders, the heat of his body burning hot through the thin, lacy material Anna had put her into. She felt warm and pleasant and at ease, so when Garret leaned down, she met him halfway, pressing her mouth to his.
It was like the first kiss in every romance movie and novel she'd ever seen and read—warm, soft, and perfect. Fated. Meant to be. Stars exploded behind her eyes and every inch of her body tingled with goose bumps and an electric desire.
Her nipples budded, and she was glad she and Garret had started kissing out here, away from where people were eating, because now she was definitely starting to react. She felt herself become wet, and her body ached with need.
