A Mate's Denial(11)
She shook her head again, but then gave him a shy smile. “How do you eat like that?”
“What do you mean?” He’d eaten quickly, but he’d kept his manners.
“I mean…” She hesitated. “How do you eat so much and stay so… fit.”
Trager shrugged. “I don’t know. I run a lot, I guess.” His wolf required many calories.
“Oh. You’re a runner? I never would’ve suspected that.” She almost looked disappointed as she returned to picking at her food.
Trager eyed her as he finished off his fries. Sip water. Stir salad. Sip water. Tiny bite. Rinse, repeat.
“Why aren’t you eating?”
She frowned. “I am.”
“Hardly.”
Carefully, she forked another tiny bite and swallowed it. But her movements were awkward, stilted. Trager remembered the barista’s rude comment and wondered…
But no, his mate was a very confident woman. When they were talking in the café, she’d seemed so sure of herself. Was she… was she ashamed of her body? How could she be? Didn’t she realize how beautiful she was? The whole damn morning, he’d had to be careful not to stare at her chest. Surely to god, she knew she was beautiful.
“Please quit watching me,” she murmured, still moving the food around her tray.
“Why?”
“Because it’s rude.”
Trager reached across the table and snatched the fork from her hands. When her head snapped up, he said, “I watch what I want to watch. And right now, that’s you.”
Her eyes narrowed as her head tilted to one side.
“Another thing I want, is for you to stop thinking about whatever it is you’re thinking about, and eat.”
“Tell me, Trager, do you always get what you want?”
“Mostly. If I’m lucky.” Without waiting for her to respond, he scooped a big chunk of pulled pork onto the fork and held it to her mouth. “Open.”
She rolled her pretty brown eyes. “Don’t be silly. I can feed myself.”
“Open.”
As his mate stared at him, he could see the conflict in her eyes. The shock at what he was doing, the desire to not comply… the submission, when she finally parted her lips. He watched intently as she closed her full lips around the morsel, and took what he offered.
The wolf growled his approval, but Trager managed to keep it quiet. Feeding his mate, what a wonderful indescribable feeling.
“More,” he murmured, readying another bite.
She hesitated. “I can take it from here, really,” she said, quietly.
“No. I want to feed you.” Damn wolf. But Trager couldn’t fault that part of him. This was too fantastic, much too satisfying. So he let her see a bit of his wild side. “Open your pretty mouth. Now.”
She gasped, but complied, and took his offering.
He leaned across the small table and fed her bite after bite until the meal was finished. With his thumb, he wiped the sauce from her bottom lip and then licked his finger. It wasn’t lost on him how close that was to kissing her lips. Close, but still not close enough.
They stared at each other for untold minutes, her eyes dazed. His, he knew, were on fire.
Finally, she broke the connection to gulp from her water bottle, and his wolf calmed a fraction.
“Feel better?” he asked.
She nodded, a slow smile creeping along her cheeks. “We should get to shopping, I think.”
And shop, they did.
In her purse—which was more like a tote, or maybe a small suitcase—she had eight cloth shopping bags, and they filled every one of them to the brim.
“You know,” she said as they were walking back to the café. “I’m not sure how I’m going to get all these bags home.”
Trager yawned. After all the walking and the not-sleeping, he wasn’t sure how he was going to drive home without passing out.
“You look tired. Are you okay to drive?”
“Yeah. I’ll make it.”
“You sure? How far is it to your place?”
“Oh, thirty minutes or so.”
They were almost to the café when she stopped walking. “You need coffee. And not the crap they sell at the café. You need real coffee. So you can drive home safely.”
His eyes drooped but he had to grin at her concern. “What do you suggest?”
She adjusted her bags and pursed her lips. “How about this, you drive me and my groceries home, and I’ll make you some real coffee. Then you can get home easily, and crash. Sound good.”
Go to her place? Where she lives and sleeps and bathes and… god. No, it didn’t sound good; it sounded wonderful. And maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly, but he couldn’t see a single reason to say no.