Emins’ Mate(8)

“Ah!”

He looked up to see her holding one hand over her mouth, shocked, staring at the traitorous drink that had just burned her tongue.

He cursed in Belarusian and jumped up to his fridge. He realized that if she really had only lived in the wild then she had probably never had a hot drink before.

Emin cracked an ice cube out of the tray in his freezer and knelt next to her. Without thinking too hard on it, he gripped the back of her neck with one hand and drew her forward to the ice, pressing it to her lips. Glory obediently opened her lips and let Emin press the ice into her mouth.

Now he was the one jumping back as if he’d been burned.

Oooooooookay.

He’d just told himself he wasn’t going to be thinking about those lips right now. He wasn’t going to think about how plump they were. How pink and pouty. How they’d opened for him.

Emin tore his hands through his hair and firmly went to sit back at his seat across from her.

“The tea is hot. Blow before you drink.” He held up his own cup in front of him, showing her how.

She imitated him and the ice cube that was in her mouth flew right out and into her tea. Her face sparkled with humor and happiness as she laughed.

A good laugh, he noted. None of that childish giggling that some women thought was so desirable. No. Glory’s was a real laugh. Right from the center of her.

He couldn’t help but smile back at her.

“I will help you,” he said.

The smile fell from Glory’s face. “To find my mother?”

This was news to Emin, but he felt himself nodding. “Yes. With whatever you need. Tomorrow we go to my family. We will start there.”

“You have family!” she said. “How wonderful. Brothers and sisters?”

He nodded. “I have three brothers. And the youngest one has wife. So she is like sister. And then we have friend. Her name is AJ and she is like sister, too.”

Glory nodded, her eyes concentrating on Emin with almost disconcerting focus. She was absorbing every detail. “And you have both a mother and a father?”

Emin nodded.

“Wow,” Glory said, taking a tentative sip of her cooling tea and squeezing her eyes shut against the sharp flavor. “Mmm. This is good. I always wanted a brother or sister.”

She took another sip of her tea and looked around the cabin some more. “I have so many questions,” she said as a yawn rolled through her. She looked, Emin thought, exactly like a cat.

“I will answer them in the morning. When I take you to my family.” He rose, leaving his tea on the table. “But now we sleep.”

“Oh. Okay.” Glory took another big gulp of tea and set it back on the table like she didn’t want to be done with it but was desperately trying to follow Emin’s lead.

She stepped away from the table and gripped the bottom of her shirt in her hands. She was just lifting it enough for him to see the dark indentation of her navel, the gentle, sloping curve of her hip up to her ribs when Emin grabbed her hands.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice gravelly and heavily accented.

She cocked her head to one side. “Shifting to go to sleep.”

He cocked his head to one side. “You only sleep in tiger form?” He occasionally napped in his bear form, as he had that evening when she’d found him. But he never slept the night in his bear form.

Her cheeks pinked and she let the shirt fall out of her hands. Emin dropped her grip and stepped back.

“I can sleep in my human form,” she said, a slight defensiveness in her tone that Emin wished he hadn’t put there.

He took another step back from her. “No. You sleep how you want. Make yourself comfortable.” He stalked to the bed, giving her his back. If she was going to strip and shift, then he really needed to not be watching. He grabbed one of the pillows off the bed and an extra blanket from the chest at the foot of the bed.

He tossed them on the floor and prepared to make a place for himself there. Emin watched the top of her head in surprise as she stalked past him in human form still.

“I can sleep in my human form,” she insisted again as he laid down on the floor, about ten feet from the bed, and stretched out with the pillow under his head. She hesitated for a moment. And then padded over to him, laying down next to him.

“No,” he said and regretted his harsh tone the second that she jumped. He cleared his throat and tried for a little honey in his tone. What the hell was his problem? He never had trouble being sweet or smooth with women. In fact, he was the king of sweet and smooth. What was it about this one that made him rough? “You will sleep on bed.”

She didn’t move and her cheeks pinked even further. She looked around at the room. “Okay. That?” she asked, pointing toward the bed. “My mother has described them to me but I’ve never seen one before.”