Holding my hands up, palms toward my gorgeous mate, I murmured, “Relax. You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Relax?” she yelled, her eyes narrowing as she pointed her index finger at me. “I don’t know you.” Her middle finger joined the first. “You just carried me out of my best friend’s boyfriend’s house while I was kicking and screaming for you to put me down.” Her ring finger got in on the action before she waved her hand in a small circle. “You brought me to another house, locked the door before putting me down, and you’re standing in front of it to block my exit.” Her hand dropped, and she pressed her fists to her hips. “Don’t you dare tell me to relax after doing your best to scare the crap out of me.”
Knowing she was afraid of me was like an arrow to my heart. I wasn’t about to let her escape until I had the chance to explain who she was to me, but I could at least give her access to the door since I was fast enough to catch her if she somehow got past me. Taking a few steps to the left, I apologized, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Her gaze slid to the door before returning to my face. “You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right? How else did you expect me to react to the stunt you pulled? You can’t just go around kidnapping people and then act all surprised when they’re afraid.”
“It worked for Zeke,” I grumbled, wondering how my beta had gotten Allegra to accept him so damn quickly.
“I’m still unclear on exactly what happened between my best friend and Zeke last night, but I’m pretty sure you can’t compare him rescuing her from a car accident to you carting me off in the middle of a conversation you weren’t even a part of.” The cutest little wrinkle formed in the middle of her forehead, and I wanted to brush my lips across it. “He was acting like a hero, but what you did was more along the lines of a villain.”
My wolf almost went berserk at the possibility of my mate preferring Zeke over me. I held still, forcing my beast to remain within my skin until she was ready to meet him. Once he was no longer ready to tear across the street to rip Zeke’s throat out, and I had him back under control, I prowled closer to my mate. My lips curved up in a satisfied smirk when she held her ground, refusing to back down from me. There was only the slightest whiff of fear in her delicious scent. No matter how scared my mate thought she should be, she felt the pull between us the same as me, and it was stronger than her uneasiness with the situation. “You can kid yourself all you want, but Zeke would’ve done the same damn thing with Allegra if he’d had to.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” she scoffed with a frown. “He’s the freaking sheriff. It’s not like he’s going to run around kidnapping women when his job is all about upholding the law.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and my smile widened. “So what if he’s the sheriff? I’m the mayor of Timber Ridge, and that didn’t stop me from taking you out of his house.”
Her blue eyes widened as her gaze swept down my tall body to take in the flannel shirt and faded jeans I’d put on after my run earlier. “You’re the mayor? You’ve got to be kidding me. Is this why I never heard much about Timber Ridge even though I moved to Stewart three months ago?” She paced back and forth in front of me, waving her hands in the air. “With you at the helm of this town, there are probably all sorts of illegal things going on that you need to keep quiet.”
I barely held back the chuckle that rumbled up my chest at her rant. Pressing my lips together, I shook my head. “Nope, there’s no illegal shit going on in Timber Ridge that we need to hide.”
We didn’t need to add crime to our collection of secrets. The fact that we were a town full of people who could shift into animals was more than enough to keep on the down low from the human world.
“Oh, really?” She quirked a brow at me and tilted her head to the side. “What do you call kidnapping me then?”
“I wouldn’t call it a kidnapping, that’s for damn sure.” I grinned when she parted those plump lips of hers to argue, hurrying to add, “And based on the lack of reactions from the sheriff and your best friend when they saw me carry you away, they didn’t think so either.”