He scoffed and pulled her close again, then grabbed her butt hard. “Bullshit. Don’t want no stick woman, Georgia. You look just fine to me.”
She frowned at the thought of what Tessa had looked like. She hadn’t a single curve on her body, but maybe ghosts just looked emaciated. Still, Jason’s interest still baffled her. Sure, she cleaned up nice, but she’d never once drawn men to her with her mud-splattered park ranger uniform. It wasn’t exactly a siren song. “So…you like women with curves?”
“I like women who are nice. Tessa wasn’t nice. Not ever, and I like to think I learn from my mistakes.”
“But you don’t even know me?” Shut up mouth! Why was she arguing his attraction to her?
“I know enough. You just got your car jacked, but you came in here to offer me comfort. You faced your obvious fear of bears to introduce yourself that first night. You ride an ATV, drive a big old jacked-up Jeep, and have a connection with this land most humans can’t understand. You know how to use a weapon safely, and damn woman, you lookin’ sexy is just an added bonus. Stop questioning why you make my dick hard.”
“You have a filthy mouth, Mr. Trager.”
“Mmm,” he rumbled as he nipped her neck. “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
Promises, promises, and her naughty mind flitted to his bedroom. She wondered if his bed was trashed like the rest of his trailer. But no, she wasn’t that kind of girl. “I don’t sleep with men on the first date.” Honest to goodness, she’d rarely slept with men at all. Her job hadn’t exactly been a treasure trove of opportunities to meet potential bedmates.
“Good,” he murmured, smiling against her neck.
Georgia sighed and arched her chin back to give him better access to her sensitive flesh at the base of her throat. “What do I have to do to protect you from Tessa?”
Jason pulled away with a sexy little smack of his lips. “I don’t know exactly. Easton pulled everything of hers out of here and burned it, poured a circle of salt around the trailer, and headed off to dig her up.”
She cringed at the mental image of Easton robbing a grave. “Disturbing.”
“Yeah. But he’s actually trying to help, and for Easton, that’s a big deal. The Gray Backs are a little…broken.”
Georgia couldn’t imagine anything worse than Jason being haunted by the ghost of his deceased mate. She didn’t even want to know what kind of trouble the other Gray Backs were harboring.
“When I’m around, do you see Tessa?”
Jason looked around the room and shook his head. “No. Maybe you being close and taking up my headspace keeps her away. She usually shows up if I’m thinking about her.”
“Do you think about her a lot?” The question brushed past her lips softly, and even she could hear the insecurity in her voice. Jason’s late mate was still very much a part of his life, and Georgia didn’t really know where she fit yet. He liked to kiss her, sure, but the man was keeping a ghost fed on thoughts of her. It was a lot. Perhaps too much.
“Tessa left me.”
“Obviously she didn’t.”
“No, I mean when she was alive. We weren’t together when she died.”
“Oh.” Georgia looked around all the clutter. “But you had all of her things.”
“Tessa wasn’t just my mate, Georgia. She was my maker, too.”
“Wait, you weren’t born like this?”
Jason angled his head, exposing the side of his neck that hadn’t been torn to shreds. There was a faint, circular, silver scar there.
She’d done enough Internet research over the past week to know what that was—a claiming mark. “You used to be human?”
The smile on his face was so sad, it gutted her.
Georgia traced the old scar with her fingertips and sighed. “Oh, Jason. What did you get yourself into?”
“I was in love. More than love, it felt like. Bigger, wider, all-encompassing, complete devotion. Tessa told me she was a bear shifter after we’d been together a month, and by the end of the second month, she’d talked about Turning me so we could be together without her alpha getting angry over the risk of her being with a human mate. I was twenty-one when I got the bite. Never married because the paperwork felt unnecessary after she’d bit me. She’d marked me, and that was all we needed.” His eyes lightened to the color of a clear gray sky morning, and he looked away. “She was sleeping with one of the shifters in her crew by the end of the first year. I don’t even know how long it had been going on. She’d always been mean-spirited, and it pissed me off the way she treated people. Like she was entitled to anything she wanted. Maybe she didn’t see anything wrong with having two mates, I don’t know. I confronted the guy, but he apparently already knew all about me. He didn’t care. Tessa didn’t care. I cared.” He dragged his fiery, sparking eyes to hers. “I wanted to kill them both.”