When the MC had called the participants to gather in one section of the bar and she’d sat on one of the bar stools, he’d been able to get a good look at her.
Compared to the other girls at the bar, she was something special. Different. With her pale skin and her beautiful, dark hair, she was already stunning, but the soft curves of her body drew his eye and kept his attention on her and her alone.
The black dress she wore was modest, but he could tell that her body was just as stunning as the woman’s who sat across from him. Full, rounded breasts. Wide hips. Michael hadn’t had a chance to look at her from behind, but he was sure that she had a jaw-dropping butt hugged tightly in her dress.
“Uh, are you listening to me?” the woman sitting across from him asked. “Hello? Earth to bachelor number three?”
“Sorry.” Michael blinked and shook himself of his fantasies.
“You should be.” The woman had crossed her arms and pouted her lips. At least, like that, she was covering her breasts. Michael didn’t want to see them. “There’s something wrong with you, you know that? Maybe you need to leave right now. If you’re not here to land a night with the most attractive woman in this place, why are you even here?”
The thing was, tonight he hoped that he would end up spending the night with the most attractive woman in the bar. The difference was, Michael knew that it wasn’t the woman who sat across from him. He refrained from hurling an insult and chose to let her jab slide.
The brunette in the black dress was the one for him. Speed-dating was moot. The second she’d walked through the door, it was over.
“Are you even listening to me?” the woman asked. “Ugh. Why are the hunky ones always so weird? I swear, it’s like all of you traded your brains for beauty or something. And it totally did you no good, if you ask me.”
Before she could go on any more about how he was defective, the bell rang. The woman stood with a huff and walked away without saying goodbye. Michael was sure he’d just scored a zero on her evaluation, but he didn’t care.
She wasn’t the woman he was looking for.
For thirty seconds Michael waited, hoping with everything he had that the woman in the black dress would be next. In those thirty seconds, the women were given time to make notes and give final scores before they moved on, but the tall partitions between the booths and the layout of the bar prevented the seated men from seeing who their next date would be.
The element of surprise was supposed to be riveting, but for Michael, it was harrowing.
He wasn’t sure that he could take another half hour before meeting the woman of his dreams. If he didn’t get to talk to her, if he didn’t get to hear her sweet voice or get to know her thoughts, he knew he’d go crazy.
All this time he’d dismissed the tigers back home who’d found their fated mates and fallen in love so quickly and irreversibly, but now he understood. The drive was primal and deep-rooted. His very blood called for her. They hadn’t even met yet, but he knew that if his mate were in danger, he’d do anything to protect her.
It was the most idiotic feeling he’d ever experienced, but it was the truest, too. She made him want to be the best man he could be if only so that he could make her happy and see her smile.
And he didn’t even know her name.
Yet.
The bell rang again, starting the new round, and Michael’s heart stopped as the woman in the black dress sat across from him.
His mate. She was his mate. He was fucking sure about it.
“Hey.” The pitch of his voice was lower than he expected it to be, and to Michael’s ear, it didn’t sound like it belonged to him. It was far more seductive and smooth than his usual tone.
“Hi,” the woman replied with a little smile. She folded her hands on her lap, looking at his from beneath her lashes.
Michael took in the splendid sight before him. His alter-beast made a ruckus and wouldn’t be silenced. She was his. The one and only. Everything about her was amazing. Michael’s stopped heart picked up the pace, and he felt heat flooding his groin.
There was something shy and demure about her that he adored. Timid, self-conscious, and mindful. She wasn’t like the other girls he’d met, who were overly confident to a fault or who thought that they were royalty while their men were servants. Michael got the feeling that she treated everyone as an equal.
The fact that she was drop-dead gorgeous was the cherry on top.
“We don’t have much time,” she said. “I um, I guess maybe we should get to know each other, right?”
“Yeah.” Michael wasn’t usually chatty, but face to face with someone so important, he was even more subdued. What was he supposed to stay? “Is um, is this your first time here?”
No matter what he did, he wouldn’t keep his eyes off of her. She’d swept her hair up in a loose bun, but had teased down enough of her hair that it framed her face and highlighted her high cheekbones. The black dress she wore was modest, but it clung in all the right places to suggest her killer curves. Michael knew that if she wanted to, she could pull off a sexy dress just as well as the woman in lace who he’d blown off minutes before.
That she didn’t want to made her better to him. The woman who sat across from him didn’t need sexy clothes to pump herself up because she was already beautiful.
By the way she spoke, Michael got the feeling that her beauty wasn’t only skin-deep. Inside and out, she was a stunning individual.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I’m not really from around here. It’s kind of a coincidence I’m here tonight.”
“Really? Let me guess, your friend dragged you here?’
“That’s so true. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.”
There was silence for a short while. Michael watched as she fidgeted and tried not to be awkward, but he also saw that she kept sneaking looks in his direction, as if it were forbidden to look at him.
Her furtive glances lit him on fire. The tiger in him begged him to lay claims on her and make everyone in the bar know that she was his. Damn. He needed to shift, but he couldn’t do it right now. By the end of the night, he was going to have to go for a long prowl in the woods to shake the wilderness out of his soul. The tiger had never been so vocal before, and Michael found himself unprepared.
As far as he knew, the woman across from him was a human. Without her own tiger telling her that they were fated mates, how was he supposed to win her over?
Romance wasn’t exactly his forte.
“I’m glad for coincidence, then,” he said with a smile, trying to make a move. Her cheeks went red right away, and she looked at her lap to dodge his gaze.
Was that the wrong thing to say? Michael felt like an idiot.
Dating had never been on his radar. The tiger clan he’d left back in his hometown was too hostile for him to ever consider it a good idea. With the scarcity of albino tigers, mates were rare, and there was more than one instance where members of his clan had fought each other to the death over a woman.
Michael wasn’t interested in killing anyone. If that was the price of love, he wasn’t interested.
But now that he’d left, looking for opportunities outside of the small, insular community he’d grown up in, love was back on the table.
Better yet, love was sitting across from him.
“How long are you in town for?” Michael asked, desperate to know a little more about her. If she was leaving, he had no doubt that he would follow her. He’d left his home once to chase better things, and he’d do it again in a heartbeat. Jason was his roommate, but he was sure that it wouldn’t be long before he found someone to take his place. The two of them weren’t very social, but Jason had enough connections that it wouldn’t take him long to fill the void Michael had left.
It felt crazy, but Michael knew it was the right thing to do.
Now that he had felt the connection, he wouldn’t give it up for anything.
“Oh, um, well… That’s kind of up
The way she said it made him think that work was a thinly veiled excuse for coming out to Cub’s Cove. There was a mystery behind her eyes, a kind of sadness that tore his heart right in two, and Michael wanted to get to the bottom of it.
He never wanted her to feel sad, not if he could help it. “What kind of work?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m a writer.” Her anxious laugh followed. “I write stuff. Books, you know? Books with words.”
He found her nervousness kind of cute. “I like to read books, too. Books with words.”
They traded laughs and the tension between them melted away.
In the booth behind them, Jason and the woman in the lace dress were talking, and by the sounds of their conversation, things were getting heated. It looked like now that Michael was off of her menu, she was settling for the next best thing. Jason wasn’t a bad looking guy—he just needed to learn how to dress himself better.
“I’m sorry you have to hear that.” There was no way that his date hadn’t heard his best friend’s very vulgar conversation, and it made Michael feel uncomfortable. “That’s Jason. I’m his friend, and I promise, he’s not usually like that. He’s housetrained, I swear.”
She laughed at his joke. Michael saw her eyes sparkled with mirth. She was sincere. Many times people laughed just to be polite but their eyes betrayed their emotion. His chest ached for her, and the urge to shift became unbearable. He was sure if he wasn’t careful, his tiger would come out right there.
What a sight that’d be.
“What kind of books do you write?” Michael asked. He held her gaze, his heart racing. The air was thick with chemistry, and he was sure it wasn’t just a result of the soul-bond he felt for her.
She parted her lips as though in surprise, and then smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
It took more stamina than he cared to admit to hold back the possessive growl that longed to tear itself from his throat. Michael bit down on his tongue to keep himself in check and felt the sharpened points of his teeth.
She had pushed him to the edge, and it didn’t look like he was coming down any time soon.
“Listen, my name is—” Right as he was about to introduce himself properly, the bell rang.
Was it five minutes already? Michael’s eyes widened in surprise, but so did his date’s.
“No way,” she said. “Already?”
“Ladies, time to move on to your next date!” the MC announced. Other women were starting to rise from their seats—Michael heard the shuffling of feet and easy laughter. “Remember to score the gentlemen you were just seated with so you know who to come back to once the rounds are over.”
“Ah. I guess I’ll see you later,” the woman in the black dress said.
Michael hadn’t even thought to ask her name.
The connection he felt to her was making him dumb, and he hated it as much as he loved it.
She was gone before he could say goodbye, and seconds later a slender blonde took her place. She looked over Michael critically, crossed her arms, and hitched her eyebrow.
“All right,” she said, breaking the ice. “Here’s the deal. My friend you just talked to? What do you think of her?”
Well, that was certainly unconventional. Michael stared at her for a second, but now that the woman in the black dress was gone, he was able to focus and compose himself. His voice had returned to normal.
“Your friend?”
“In the black dress,” she said. “The brunette you just talked to. Do you like her?”
“Yes.” What was this conversation leading up to? Michael pursed his lips. “Why are you asking?”
“The reason is simple,” she said. “That girl is my best friend, and if you hurt her, then me and my friend over at the bar,” she pointed to a pretty girl who was smiling into her phone as she texted. “The two of us will mess you up. And trust me, we will mess you up.”
She didn’t sound particularly threatening, and Michael wouldn’t have taken her seriously if it hadn’t been for the person she was talking about.
“I don’t want to hurt her,” Michael said. “I wouldn’t. Ever.”
“Good.” She stretched back and draped her arms over the back of her the bench she sat on. The high, wooden partition behind her separated her from Jason, sitting just on the other side.
And across from Jason sat the woman Michael couldn’t get enough of.
“What’s her name?” Michael asked, desperate to know.
“You didn’t ask her?”
“No. Time ran out.”
“God, maybe I should just mess you up now.” She shook her head playfully. “My name is Tiffany, and my friend over there is Carmen, and the woman you just spoke to? That’s—”
The bell rang. Tiffany laughed and went to stand up, but Michael reached across the table and latched onto her wrist to hold her in place. “You have to tell me.”
“Abby. Abigail Collins,” Tiffany said simply. She winked and pulled her wrist from Michael’s grip. “And you’d better not forget it, mister.”
Chapter Five
“Oh my God, I’m so glad we came.” Tiffany laughed as she stumbled down the stairs. Abby reached out and caught her before she could fall, and they made their way down the rest of the steps together.
After Team One had made its rounds and courted all of the eligible bachelors, the ladies had been taken to a table and given their drink vouchers. Tiffany had downed her free drink, and then Abby let her have the drink she’d ordered. But drinking wasn’t really all that high on her priority list anymore.
Now that she’d already worked her way through tonight’s men, she didn’t need any more liquid courage.
“This has seriously been the best night ever,” Tiffany slurred. “So. Much. Fun.”
“You had too much to drink,” Abby replied with a grin. “But I’m glad you had a good time, Tiff. Both of us needed it.”
“Mm hm,” Tiffany cooed. “Seeing guys like that? Knowing that they want to date you? I don’t know. It was a kick, even with the gross, old, creepy ones. Like you’re some kind of goddess.”
Carmen had gone on ahead to get her car, and Abby saw it idling on the sidewalk in front of the bar. She directed Tiffany toward it.
“Did you meet anyone you liked?” she asked. Both of them were too civil to talk about the guys in the bar, for fear that any of them might have heard, but now that they were out in the night it wasn’t such a big deal. After the event was over, the MC had taken their score cards and arranged for the top-scoring man on each girl’s card to be given their numbers.
For Abby, that meant bachelor number three had her number. Typically that wouldn’t have mattered, and she’d shrug it off and assume he wouldn’t bother to call her, but she’d been surprised when the MC had given her a slip with his phone number in return.
“Surprise,” the MC had murmured to her. “The men were also able to list their top picks, and you were his. The two of you seem to really have hit it off.”
The slip with his phone number was in Abby’s purse, but she hadn’t even looked at the numbers, as though she was afraid it was actually a joke. The man with the white hair and the blue eyes was easily the most attractive out of all of them, but apart from that, there was something about him that spoke to her on a deeper level.
They hadn’t really talked, and she didn’t know him any better than she knew any other person off of the street, but he was different. Whatever it was, Abby couldn’t explain it away.
She’d written about love at first sight for years, but she’d never really believed in it. Not until that night.
“Well, yeah, I guess,” Abby said as they crossed the sidewalk. She opened the back passenger door for Tiffany and helped her friend get in. Tiffany was sloppy when she was drunk, and Abby wanted to make sure she was buckled and comfortable.
“So tell me about it,” Tiffany insisted. “Was it that guy with the white hair? Those blue eyes? And those lips. Mmm. He really was something, wasn’t he?”
For the first time ever, a prickle of jealousy ran down Abby’s spine and burned in her chest. As soon as it manifested, she tried her best to ignore it. It was crazy to feel this way for a man she’d never even met.
She didn’t even know his name.
“Yeah. He was pretty great.”
“He was more than great,” Tiffany insisted. “He was hot.”
Abby closed the door and sat in the front seat. Tiffany was right behind her, and as Abby settled and buckled in, Tiffany wrapped her arms around the headrest and pulled herself forward as far as her seatbelt would allow.
“He likes you, you know,” she said.
“I guess he does,” Abby murmured. “Maybe.”
“No maybes,” Carmen said. “I saw how he was looking at you when you guys were sitting together. You didn’t do so much talking, by the looks of it, but talking isn’t all that important. What matters is the chemistry, and if the expression on his face meant anything, it was that he was into you.”
It was flattering and frightening to think that a man that attractive was into her. Abby still wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a trick. After what Tyler had done to her, she wasn’t sure she could fully trust another man.
At least, not yet.
“What about you, Tiffy?” Abby insisted. She wanted to redirect the attention of the conversation away from herself.
“Oh, yeah,” Tiffany said. “I mean, your guy was the most gorgeous one there, but his friend wasn’t bad, either. A little weird, maybe, but definitely not bad. He’s a carpenter or something? A construction worker? I’m not sure.”
With that said, Tiffany launched into her recollection of the night and kept the both of them laughing with her stories and her exaggerations. Liquored up, Tiffany was even more vibrant and funny than she was while she was sober.
But the more Tiffany talked, and the more time Abby had to think about their dates and what they’d felt that evening, the more she knew that their experiences weren’t the same. Tiffany liked the men she’d talked with, and there was nothing wrong with that, but what Abby had lived through was something more than simple like.
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