“What are you doing here, Jasper?” I asked with a sigh, my hands automatically going around the coffee, wanting that bitter brew and all the resulting lovely mental clarity that would come with it. He shot me a sidelong look as he caught me in the act and then smiled.
“You know why I’m here,” he replied, picking up a copy out of the box and flicking through the pages, before glancing back at me. “We came here to find our mate. We found her. Now we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to make her ours, up to and including coffee dates and any and all kinds of sexual gratification, with no pressure to reciprocate.”
“Because you have to,” I said, snatching the book from him, which wasn’t called for, but he just grabbed another. I took that one, then the next one, the bloody man just grabbing copy after copy until finally I was forced to set my pile down on the desk. He grinned slowly at that.
“I don’t have to do anything,” he replied. “We came here because we wanted to, wanted to find her, the other half of our soul.” I snorted at that, but he just moved closer, clasping the paperback to his chest. “We’ve been waiting for that our whole lives and now we’ve found her.”
“You dreamed of finding a beta, who’s also a single mother?” I cocked my hip and shot him a sardonic look. “I’m sure your parents are going to be so pleased.”
“My dad makes Logan look like a sweet little teddy bear,” Jasper replied, his chin lifting as the words came out. His gaze was steady, not looking away for a second. “He lost his brothers, but he seems to forget we lost our dads. I don’t think he’s found a single thing that makes him happy since the day they died and that includes us.”
He swallowed then, shaking his head before looking away.
“Mum will be ecstatic. She loves books like this, so the fact you run a bookshop will only put you in higher esteem in her eyes. But seriously? Evie or no Evie, she’ll love you. That’s what omegas do. They’re the glue that keeps everyone together, that keeps the love alive.”
“She sounds amazing,” I said, much more politely. “Perhaps you should be looking for the same kind of relationship. Crowe Corporation does that, don’t they? Helps alphas find their mates. You could—”
“No, I can’t.” The book in his hand was placed on the desktop and that hand reached out, my eyes tracing the ropey veins and finely-made shape of his fingers, right up until he took my hand in his. It was warm, dry, strong, and he shifted it so that his thumb could brush across my knuckles, once, twice. “This would be easier if you were an omega.”
Fuck, another gut punch. I went to jerk my hand away, but his grip tightened, keeping me exactly where I was.
“You’d know I was the one for you, just as I know you’re my mate.” His voice was low and gentle now, pinning me to the spot by his words. “You’d take one sniff of me and want to touch me. Our eyes would lock and you’d find yourself walking towards me. You’d need me to touch you more than you need your next breath, feeling a deep, hard longing setting up low in your belly the moment we caught sight of each other.”
My eyes slid upwards and I saw those already pale grey eyes had turned silver now.
“But that’s OK, Lily. Nothing worth doing is easy. We’ll make you see, even if it requires drowning my brother in a bucket of his own piss, the miserable bastard.” I snorted at that, the small laugh doing something to crack the hard shell I was locked down inside. “Logan is, and excuse my language, widely known to be a grumpy cunt. We put up with him because we have to, and I’m too pretty to go to jail for homicide.”
OK, fuck, I was really smiling now and when I did, Jasper mirrored the expression, obviously delighted by it.
“This isn’t ideal, because instead of instinct telling you we’re the ones for you, we have to rely on good old-fashioned wooing.” He let out a sigh then, his smile faltering. “With one brother who’s a bastard, one who’s completely and utterly emotionally unavailable, one who probably shouldn’t be allowed near sharp objects and another who holds himself aloof from the rest of the pack. Then there’s me, the sane one.”
The grin was back and he pushed my coffee towards me, watching me take a drink with what seemed to me to be undue interest.
“You don’t have to accept us as your mates,” he said. “The others probably haven't said anything about that, so I will. You can still find some nice, normal beta to settle down with and let him be stepfather to our cub.”
He was trying, really trying, I could see that. His brows knotted as he said the words, but Jasper plunged on.
“But we won’t ever find anyone else as a mate. Our wolves let us know who he or she is, and it's you.”
“There has to be a way to fix that…” I began to say, but he shook his head slowly.
“We’ll never find out if there is,” he said, leaning closer now, and I couldn’t seem to find the need to pull away. “We don’t want to. We just want you.”
And right when his lips hovered in the air inches from mine, the bell on the door jingled. The two of us jerked apart to see a cheery Mrs Fiddler and her cronies in tow.
“Is thatThe Vixen’s Pleasure?” she asked excitedly, seeing the box of books. “See girls, I told you it would be in! It’s a spicy one, this one, and the lass, she gets it from five men, sometimes all at the same time.”
“She doesn’t, Mavis!” a woman said, trying for shock, but the way she hungrily eyed the stack of books said that shock might have been performative.
“I have a couple signed by the author as well,” I said in my best sales voice.
“You got Verity Mitchell to sign her book!” the older woman bustled over, subtly elbowing Jasper and the other women out of the way. “I’ll have a copy. Make sure it's not dog-eared mind, nor creased. I’ll have a non-signed version for reading as well, thanks, love.”
I got the woman’s purchase ready and as I did so, Jasper thought this was a fine time to start making conversation.
“So, this girl…” He peered at the blurb of the book. “Sapphire Jones. She finds her five mates?”
“She does,” Mrs Fiddler said, puffing up now we were onto a subject close to her heart. “It wasn’t something my Richard would’ve entertained back when I was young, but if I was a pretty young omega…” She sighed. “To have all those studly young men falling all over themselves to see to your every need.”