Dalton, Tymber - Fire and Ice [A Triple Trouble Prequel] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (19 page)

She couldn’t any more than he could.

Her scent reminded him of cold, wet spring on a moor in Scotland. When he shook her hand, he had to fight the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her right there. No woman had ever affected him like that before.

The only thing that kept him from doing it was the fact that they were in public, and that he suspected whatever she was, she had the power to fry him where he stood.

He eventually opened his eyes, resigned to walking around in discomfort all day.
Tonight. We have dinner tonight. Then she’ll either be mine, or she’ll kill me in my tracks.

He started the truck and backed out of his parking space.
Either way, I will get rid of this boner tonight.

Chapter Two

Callie spent two hours trying to decide what to wear. Another hour trying different hair styles and colors until she went back to the purple streaks.

If he doesn’t like it, fuck him.

Although she strongly suspected she would be fucking him tonight. And well into tomorrow, if she was lucky.

She hoped he didn’t get some silly wolf idea about her being his mate, or whatever the heck it was those wolves did.

Although, if she was truly honest with herself, she realized she might not have a choice. She’d never reacted to any man, human or not, the way she’d reacted to Daniel Blackestone. The flaw in the slaw, so to speak, was the fact that she sensed he was a full-on Alpha wolf, not a man to be dominated. One thing Callie had learned in all her years was she belonged in the driver seat. She didn’t care what Baba Yaga said. She wasn’t looking to get hitched.

This could be interesting.

Her stomach tensed as she drove to the restaurant. A little out in the country, but a homey place with excellent food and a hangout for locals. She sat in the parking lot and tried to talk herself out of this.

I could call his cell and cancel.

Even as she tried to make herself do just that, thinking it the perfect answer to her problem, she grabbed her purse, got out of her car, and locked it before heading inside. Scanning the dining room, she spotted him in a corner booth, his back to the wall and facing the door. He raised his hand in greeting. Totally ignoring the hostess, Callie felt like her feet drifted a few inches off the floor as she coasted over to him.

He stood at her approach and offered a hand. “I’m glad you made it.” His playful smirk told her more than she needed to know. He felt something, too, and he thought he was running the show.

“Thanks.” She shook with him and it took every ounce of will she had to finally disengage her hand and sit in the other side of the booth.

He sat after she did and leaned in across the table. His scent filled her nostrils. She barely managed to choke back a hungry moan.

“Would you like to do this the easy, non-bullshit way?” he asked. “Or do you want to dance around the subject?”

She swallowed, hard. He’d made her. She nodded, not trusting her voice to not squeak.

He smiled. Damn, her panties were already soaked, and she hadn’t even kissed him yet.

I’m sooo going to kill Babs for this.

* * * *

Daniel studied Callie as she walked across the dining room to join him at the booth. He just hoped she didn’t see his throbbing erection straining at the zipper of his jeans when he stood.

Fuck it. Time to cut to the chase.
Whatever she was, she knew it, and he wasn’t going to waste precious time or loss of blood flow to his brain pretending they weren’t what they were just to uphold social norms.

He wanted his cock deep inside her pussy, and he wanted it now.

Fortunately, she agreed to his suggestion to quit wasting time with a tentative nod.

He smiled and prayed she didn’t think she was prey. He glanced around before lowering his voice. “What are you?”

“That’s complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it.”

She shook her head. “You first. You’re a wolf.”

“Give the lady a prize. Now answer my question.”

She glanced down at the table. He got the impression she was not a woman used to feeling outnumbered or overpowered. “Do you know who Baba Yaga is?”

He snorted. “Let me guess, you’re her?”

She shook her head again. “Her younger sister.”

That stopped him in his tracks. He’d always assumed Baba Yaga was a myth.

Then again, so were shape-shifters.

“Her younger sister?”

“You might know me as Cailleach.”

Now
that
name he knew. His Scottish grandmother had scared him by invoking her plenty of times in his youth, a good hundred and fifty or so years earlier. When he’d wish for warmer weather, she’d say,
“Daniel, ye ken better than that. Don’t make the Cailleach angry by wishin’ her away too soon, now. Ye hear me, laddie?
”

“But…” He looked at her, dumbfounded. “What?”

Now she smiled. “Yes, I’m Cailleach. Or the Cailleach. Callie’s fine.”

“But you’re human.”

Before his eyes, her hair changed to ginger. “So are you. Just consider me a different kind of shifter.”

He sat back, appraising her with a new eye. “I have to be honest with you—”

“Yes, you do.” She smiled.

“As I was saying, I think you’re my One.”

“You think, or you know?”

“I know.” He leaned forward and dropped his voice. He could smell how wet she was, how much she wanted him. Her cool-as-winter act wasn’t fooling his lupine nose in the least. “I’m going to take you home, fuck your brains out, and mark you.”

He watched the beautiful muscles in her neck work as she swallowed hard.
Good.
Her composure was on shaky ground.

He suspected that was the only advantage he had over her.

“What exactly do you think you’re going to turn me into?” she asked.

“What you know you are. What you already feel. I’m going to make you my mate.”

“I belong to no man.”

“I’m not a man. I’m a wolf.”

* * * *

Unfortunately, she couldn’t argue with that logic. And she also couldn’t argue with the fact that, if it wouldn’t get them thrown in jail and irrevocably emotionally scar some of the children and adults in the dining room, she’d fuck him right there on the table without a second thought.

Wasn’t the kinkiest thing she’d ever done in her existence, but it would rank somewhere in the top fifty.

“True. But I’m not your average woman.”

“I never said anything about you was average,” he quietly shot back.

Callie suspected the verbal Ping-Pong match would have continued had the waitress not returned to take their drink orders. Alone again, Callie once more leaned in close. “If you think I’m just going to go home with you and submit to you and be a good little wifey, think again.”

He matched her tone and posture. “If you think I’m going to let you walk out of my life without a fight,
you’d
better think again.”

She sat back, her throat dry. She took the opportunity of the waitress returning with their drinks to slip out of the booth and practically sprint to the bathroom. Fortunately alone, she locked herself in a stall and turned, closing her eyes.

She opened them in Babs’ kitchen. Babs sat at her counter, in her maiden form, a vintage
Vogue
magazine from 1968 before her.

“What the fuck is going on, sis?”

Baba Yaga didn’t look up from her magazine. In fact, she flipped the page. “You’ve just gained yourself a wolf for a mate.”

“Argh! I don’t want a ‘mate.’ A fuck, a fuck buddy, hell, a friend with bennies, sure thing. A one-night stand, no problem. I don’t want, or need, a ‘mate.’”

That’s when Baba Yaga looked up, her eyes burning. “You said you’d help.”

“Yes, I did! Brighde and I both helped you with the ritual. But this—”

“This is helping. He and his kind are needed. You are an important part of the prophecies. Without you, evil will reign.”

Callie let out another scream of frustration and irritation. “What if I don’t fucking
care
?”

“But you
do
care.”

“You made me fall in love with this guy—”

“No.” Baba Yaga shook her head emphatically. “I didn’t do that. That was Fate. He is as much your mate as you are his. Your perfect match. There is one small issue, however.”

“‘One small issue’?” She looked incredulously at her older sister. “Only one? Because falling in love with this dude was not on my life plan for today!”

Babs smiled. “When you mate with him, you must submit to him. Willingly. He cannot and will not take you otherwise. It is their way. And if you don’t have him, you will spend the rest of your life miserable, as will he. Not to mention—”

“I know, I know! The whole end of the world, blah, blah, blah, problem.” She heavily sat on one of the barstools. “What is it about him?”

Baba Yaga shrugged. “It’s love. What can I say? It makes us all crazy.” Her older sister’s face clouded with deep pain. “If it’s any consolation, if you mate with him, you are fated to be with him longer than even I can see.”

* * * *

Unless she slipped out through the kitchen, there wasn’t a back door to the restaurant. Daniel sat there, considering if he should follow her or not. When he glanced out the front windows, he could see her car still sat in the parking lot.

So she hadn’t run…yet.

The thought of giving chase to her set his blood boiling in a good way and made his already throbbing cock so hard it almost hurt.

Although he suspected if she truly wanted to disappear, she probably could.

He tried not to glance at his phone every thirty seconds to check the time. He could still smell her scent in the other side of the booth. He knew he wouldn’t be able to force her to become his mate—she could probably kill him where he sat if she wanted to—but he could tell from her scent she wanted him, even though he could also sense she was as shocked by that revelation as he was.

Time to burn my little black book.
He’d never had a relationship last more than a few months, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to go a couple of years without a girlfriend. He had his work, pack obligations, and…

Well, work. In his younger days he’d been a wild pup, running crazy with some of his friends. Partying hard, playing harder. He finally realized finding a woman who could keep up with his sexual appetites wasn’t in the stars, which made every encounter he had even more emotionally empty than the last. He had a lot more fun going out to dinner and sitting there, talking for the whole night than he did from most of his sexual encounters lately. He was lonely.

He could not care less about sex. If he wanted to get off, he could always rub one out. What he truly wanted was a mate.

He fought the urge to drum his fingers on the table. After seven minutes and twenty-four seconds, Callie returned from the bathroom, a morose look on her face.