Page 87 of Mate
It was like it was middle school, and I was getting teased by the mean girl once again. “Look, this is like living in a hotel,” I pointed out.
“That has an awesome kitchen,” Kaci agreed additively. “And places to have parties. And places to run clubs. And places to run study groups.”
“Aw,” Ry added, putting his hand affectionately on the back of her neck and rubbing his thumb across it back and forth. “Our little social butterfly. How can you say ‘no’ to this face?”
I frowned. I was being ganged up on. I’d seen this in my old pack when I was a kid. Probably everybody saw it. It was the cross the alpha normally had to bear, because he was often a co-mate with his beta. My situation was not unique there. “This isn’t even an important conversation right now,” I said stiffly.
As he finished soaping himself off, Ry grunted and told Kaci, “He’s trying to sweeten the pot the only way he knows how. By buying it.”
Kaci gave me a look that seemed exhausted. “Most guys try dating me before buying me a house, but okay.” She shrugged her shoulders, but her eyes were teasing. She seemed to be getting it, that this wasn’t a normal thing. That we didn’t live normal lives. That we weren’t human.
I grinned and leaned forward to wrap my arms around her. Then I leaned down slightly to kiss her neck. “When everything goes back to normal, you’re going to get lots of dates,” I promised with a chuckle. “Lots of normal.”
“Sort of. You’re still the president of my school, and there’re two of you, so Mom and Dad ain’t gonna be so happy with any of us. But sure.Normal.” She suddenly raised her eyebrows.“Speaking of my family, I need to see if the guys brought back my sister yet.” She hurriedly washed up in the shower, then seemed very keen to quickly get down the stairs.
I was dressing, trying to decide if I was more in the mood for my Halloween socks, or the ones with Jessica Rabbit on them. Then I figured it might be quite a day, so I went bold with Jessica Rabbit.
She was dressing herself at the same time and looked over at them, then looked at me, and just shook her head at me for a moment. It had me grinning at her.
Ryker didn’t seem to like her wearing panties, because when she was dressing herself, he looked pained. “I don’t know why we’re rushing,” he grumbled.
“We’renotgonna fuck again this morning,” she decreed firmly, his complaint not going unnoticed by her. “I feel sore all the way up to places I don’t even know the name of!”
Ry grinned as I chuckled. “That sounds so sexy the way you say it, sweet cheeks,” he told her seductively as he leaned in, buttoning up his shirt over his large chest.
“Oh, stop it,” she said and left the room. I was quick to escort her, since I also wanted to make sure the house was in good condition and there wasn’t some sort of rogue-caused bloodbath going on downstairs. Stranger things had happened.
The blond, curly haired girl was talking to the witch. Honestly, it looked like an angel-meets-demon poster I had on my wall once when I was a teenager, only these girls were way more clothed.
When they saw us, the room once again broke out in applause.
We blushed, but Kaci took it good-naturedly. “Shut up, dicks.”
“An uplifting response from our new queen,” Hunter announced teasingly in response.
“You guys were hella loud!” the blond announced, putting her hands on her hips.
Kaci immediately walked up and tackled her sister into a hug. Beau did a surprising reach out and kept the girls on their feet while drinking his coffee. His eyes were on the blond one.
His eyes were really, really on the blond one.
Fuck.
When the girls pulled apart, her sister’s eyes widened as she quickly saw her bite marks. “What the living fuck happened to you?” she cried. Kaci’s marks couldn’t have been anything but teeth; anyone could see the outlines, and they were deep. Not bleeding, but deep.
“Long story,” Kaci said in a soul-balming way that made me think that she didn’t mind, or she did mind, but her life descending into chaos was a small nuisance. It made me think of how she was going to act in the future every time things went off the rails: she would keep calm. She would think rationally. For an alpha female, that was imperative. “They look pretty baller, huh? But I think they’re gonna heal up real soon. See how noticeable they are then.” She smiled one of those smiles that she’d used to get popular in the first place. “But there’s nothing to worry about, and I’m fine, Mace.”
She was also going to make the best fucking PR person for this university anyone had ever seen, I realized.
“That’s what I say all the time,” Wendy suddenly laughed, pushing a saucer of coffee in front of the cat. “You know, whenthere’s something to worry about, and I’m lyin’.” She looked over at Kaci and waved her hand, “Cher, we’ve been talking two hours now, and she knows the heap of trouble. Good lookin’ mating marks, though. Very… what’s the word?” She looked over at her shadow on the wall, the one sipping coffee when she wasn’t.
“Symmetrical,” offered the deep-voiced shadow. “It’s important aesthetically.”
“And these are the wolf-men who bit me,” Kaci introduced, pulling her sister around. “Ryker and Caelum,” she gestured at me. “And this is my sister, Macy.”
The blond girl pushed her round glasses up her nose and then smirked as she looked us up and down. She looked at her sister. “Nice.” She bumped her with her hip and whispered in her ear, “They good in the sack?”
“We don’t have to always do it in the sack,” Ry said more loudly, making it clear that whispering was a waste in this house; we heard everything. “We reserve the right to lay pipe whenever or wherever the need arises. But yes,” he raised his freshly poured coffee cup in salute, “we do that quite well.”