I’d been dreaming about my mate for as long as I could remember. And to finally know the feeling of her wrapped around me, to feel her love and her heart beating against mine… it would be heaven.
“Where am I?” she asked, her hands clenching into fists at her sides as though she couldn’t decide if she needed to fight her way out of here or not.
She was pale, and obviously still in shock.
I wasn’t sure how to approach her. We wanted her to stay, not run from us. But how to do that?
“You’re in the Woodlands. I’m Taylor.”
I poured some cold water into a glass and pushed it across the bench.
“Here, have a drink. You fainte
d.”
“I fainted?” she asked, coming forward and frowning as though she didn’t believe me.
“Yes. At the hospital.”
She put a hand to her forehead. “I kind of remember that. I was talking to a man about his father and…”
“And you fainted.”
“So why am I here?”
She looked at me expectantly and suddenly our reasons for bringing her back here didn’t seem so straightforward.
And they certainly wouldn’t make any sense to a human.
What was the best lie I could come up with, that was kind of close to the truth?
“Ah… you were talking to Dex at the time, and he kind of panicked and decided to bring you home to make sure you were okay.”
Her eyes narrowed with anger this time, the bright blue irises flickering with fire.
Something inside of me cackled with delight. She was a feisty one. Good. She was going to need that heat if she was going to live out here with us.
“Why would he do that? I was at the hospital. They would have taken care of me.”
I needed to cut off this conversation until Dexter returned. I was liable to stuff everything up and then where would we be? With a mate who didn’t want us.
“Dex will explain everything when he gets back. He won’t be long. But for the moment, I should introduce myself. I’m Taylor.”
I held out my hand and began to move around the island bench so that I could touch her for the first time. Would she faint on me as she had with Dexter? Or would she continue to stare at me with the fear I saw in her eyes?
“Taylor, this all sounds very dodgy. Are you sure I’m not dreaming? Because this isn’t making any sense.”
I kept my hand out and waited. “I still don’t know your name, Doctor.”
Her shoulders dropped a little as though she was letting down her guard for the first time. “It’s Claire.”
She reached out and shook my hand, and electrical currents of sensation coursed through my arm.
Claire’s eyes went wide and then her eyes slid shut. She began to fall to the floor and I dove forward with both arms out.
I caught her just before her head hit the coffee table and swung her up into my arms, loving the feeling of her weight against my body.
The front door slammed shut behind me and I turned towards Dexter and Jay, who were still naked and panting hard from their run.