Mates Since Birth (Half-breed Shifter Series) by Miranda Stowe Read Free Book Online Page A

buy that old thing? I couldn’t remember where it came from, but I do remember after we moved here, she used to carry it around everywhere. I can’t tell you how many times I had to sew its tail back on.”
    “Are you talking about my stuffed animals again?” Ari’s voice rose from the doorway in a teasing scold. “I swear, Mother, if I didn’t have such a healthy self-esteem you’d reduce me to timid jitters with all your tales about what I used to do with that stuffed cat.”
    Dane jerked his face around to look at her. Back in Locks Hollow, he’d never produced one inappropriate thought concerning Ari, not even when puberty hit. She’d been like a beloved little sister to him. But all these years later, halfway across the country, and with so much time between them, every thought was loaded with sex. She was so sensuous, beautiful, feminine.
    His.
    He shuddered with longing at the same moment Jaycee pressed two fingers to his wound. She cooed in sympathy and snapped her hand back, probably assuming his tremble came from pain instead of desire. “Oh, you poor thing. This looks nasty. Ari, get my medical kit from the bathroom, will you?”
    When his mate disappeared from the doorway, he almost whimpered with want, needing her to return to his presence. He felt so much better with her near. More alive, more settled, more content.
    More aroused.
    Beside him, Jaycee pushed to her feet and followed her daughter out the door, calling to him over her shoulder, “I’m going to get a wet cloth to clean you up. Be right back.”
    Left alone in the room, Dane closed his eyes and soaked in Ari’s lingering essence. His wounds would be fine after a while; all shifters healed fast. If he wanted to be a big boy, he’d heft his ass up and take himself off. But the cat in him so loved to be fussed over and pampered. Stroked and caressed.
    Besides, he liked to be surrounded by Ari’s things. Dangerous as that might prove, her scent was too intoxicating to abandon. A balm that banished everything bad.
    He winced, reminding himself that was not why was he was here. He would not fall into the rut of needing to be with her all the time. Never again. And with all the sexual heat brewing between them added on top of all those old feelings of compassion, the need would only be a millions times stronger if he let her back into his life this time around.
    No. He couldn’t do it.
    “You wanted to tell me…what?”
    He sucked in a breath and lobbed his head on her pillow toward the voice.
    “Ari,” he rasped. She stepped into the room, hugging Jaycee’s old medical kit to her breasts, a kit even he remembered. Her black hair swept over her shoulders as she approached him, her gaze straying to his exposed naked back.
    He grew hard—or rather harder—watching the interest in her gaze. But shit, it didn’t matter if she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He was never going to sink his dick into the delectable Ari Roland— Fallow’s —precious cunt. Not if he wanted his freedom.
    The injustice of it made him gnash his teeth.
    She sat next to him, right where her mother had settled herself a second ago. But he hadn’t been aware of every follicle in Jaycee’s being the way he was aware of Ari’s heat and smell. And arousal.
    “Before my father pummeled you, you told me you weren’t done talking to me,” she reminded him. “So what else did you need to say?”
    He stared up at her a moment, craning his neck to keep eye contact before he murmured, “I won’t hold you.”
    She frowned. “What?”
    Closing his eyes on a soft sigh, he let his face drop back to her pillow. “That’s what I came to tell you. Despite the bond, I won’t hold you to it. What I did in my innocent youth wasn’t fair…for either of us. I didn’t even know what I was doing, really. I just knew you were hungry and marking you was the only way I could honestly supply you with any kind of sustenance. I had no idea it would bind us as it did. So,