Chapter 7
Alice lay in a haze of comfortable bliss, her whole body feeling deeply satisfied.
Whoever this man was, he knew his way around her parts like he had a map, and he was strong and forward and beautiful.
She knew that a mate wasn’t going to be the same happy ever after for her that Amber and Mary had found, but it was wonderful to revel in the sated animal need for a moment. She had the impression from her bear of rolling in sunlit flowers and having every itchy place scratched.
She supposed she should introduce herself, and she did, once she had breath. “So, I’m Alice,” she said, staring up at the cottage rafters. “Hi.”
“I love you,” he replied after a moment, and Alice felt all of her contentment vanish at his words.
“Nope,” Alice said firmly. “Nope, nope, nope.” She sat up, and supposed she should find her clothing, but whatever scraps of dignity she’d started with had been left in Scarlet’s courtyard anyway.
“Look,” she said, trying to find a tone that was firm but still kind, because whatever else she wanted to do, it made her chest squeeze to think of hurting him. But she couldn’t string him along, either.
That would only be worse.
And she had her own life, her own troubles. She wasn’t going to drag him back to that, and she wasn’t going to run away from what she had—her family, a job she loved—to pursue a relationship. She couldn’t see a way that would end in anything but resentment.
“This was... great,” she said. “And I know that Amber and Mary found something amazing with their mates, and that’s awesome for them, but this is just sex, and animal instinct, it’s not destiny or nonsense like that. There’s this romantic notion about mates, but it’s just leftover evolutionary crap or something, it’s not... fate.”
He was sitting up on one elbow now, his whole face scrunched up in a glower.
Alice found his chest incredibly distracting, and had to look somewhere else in order to continue forming complete sentences.
His thick arms were just as bad, and his hard jaw, and his tousled mane of hair.
He was a minefield of places she didn’t dare look.
And he wasn’t helping the conversation much, scowling at her like she was babbling nonsense.
Which she might have been doing, since she caught herself staring at his word-gobbling chest again.
“You don’t love me,” she insisted, wrenching her eyes away again. “I’m a gym teacher from the Midwest and I love my job, and you work at a fancy island resort in the tropics, and you’ve said three whole words to me, and none of them were your name.”
“I’m Gra—Graham,” he said, reluctantly.
His rumbling growl of a voice did nothing to still Alice’s jangling nerves.
“Alice,” she repeated, and she thrust out a hand as if a formal handshake could possibly undo the sweaty, desperate sex they’d just had. “I’m glad to meet you. I am. But that’s out of the way now, so don’t expect a wedding date or anything, okay? We should be honest about this.”
He continued to gaze at her, a piercing look that Alice was sure saw right through her attempt to keep him at arm’s length. Whatever she said out loud, her sated body still hummed for him, and her bear was still insisting that this was theirs, forever.
But her body was wrong, her bear was just an animal at the end of the day, and Alice was where she belonged, back in control of things.
When Graham reluctantly shook her hand, she feared she’d made another mistake, because the feel of his fingers against her palm sent shudders down her spine and made her bear... purr.
Bears don’t purr, she told her animal crossly.
Neither do lions, her bear said smugly.
But clearly, until she’d shattered the moment with her declaration of nope, Graham, and the lion who obviously shared his body, had been deep in purr territory.
He wasn’t now, of course, still scowling at her darkly like he was trying to figure out a puzzle.
Alice hastily reclaimed her hand.
“Oh look, there’s my jeans. I’ll just... ah... get dressed, and go see if I can catch up with Mary and Amber.” Alice crawled un-gracefully off the bed, wondering how he had ever made her feel like her cumbersome body was something to be worshiped. She tugged her pants up with effort, nearly unbalanced, and finally managed to wrench them on.