Chapter Twelve
Casey
“This is ridiculous.” I slammed the refrigerator door and turned to my mate, hands balled into little fists at my hips. “We’re going into town. We’re buying groceries. That is that.”
Our lack of groceries was every bit as much my fault as it was his. Every time we said we were going, something happened to distract us. Fine, the something that happened was always wanting to get naked together, but still, we were thwarted and were at the point where there was nothing left aside from one more box of cookie mix, and a beagle couldn’t live on cookies alone.
He laughed, eyes warm. “You are freaking adorable when you’re mad.”
“I’m not mad—I’m hangry. There’s a difference.” Not much of one but a difference nonetheless.
“Well, you’re adorable when you’re hangry, too. And yes, we need to go to town. We should’ve gone long before now, but I’m a selfish dragon and wanted to keep you all to myself.”
“You still can,” I said, walking past him, “just…with food.”
I grabbed the keys and walked out the door, my mate following right behind. If we stayed inside much longer, the odds of us getting naked instead of getting groceries were only going to increase. There was time for that…later.
The drive to town was shorter than I thought it’d be. Not quick enough for oops-we-forgot-milk or an onion-would-elevate-this-dish type of errands but not an imposition either. It was definitely more of a plan-a-day-trip sort of errand location.
The town was small. Like, small-small or find-it-on-a-post-card small. It was quaint and resembled every small town in a cozy mystery. There was one coffee shop/café, a diner, a post office that doubled as a town hall, a hospital that looked more like a tiny elementary school than a full medical facility, a junk store, and a real estate office. That was basically it on the main strip we passed through on the way to the grocery store.
“Should we stop for coffee?” I asked.
“No,” he replied immediately. “Sam makes the worst coffee. They’re cool enough, and their baked goods are decent, if you hit them on baking day, but the coffee? We’re better off at home.”
“Sam a friend of yours?” I’d been under the impression my mate had spent all of his time here alone. I was happy to hear him talking about someone else.
“Sam’s everyone’s friend,” he said, flipping the blinker as we approached a stop sign. “One of those people who knows everyone in town. Also, he’s a hedgehog. Cute as can be when he shifts. Not so much in person.”
“Why not?”
“It’s the haircut.” My mate was obviously amused, and I didn’t get the sense he was being mean. More that he was giving me facts while filling me in on local gossip.
I blinked. “What do you mean, it’s the haircut?”
“I mean, he watched some YouTube video on how to cut your own hair…and now he does.”
“Ohhh. Yikes.” I cringed. “I was that person in high school. It resulted in me getting my head shaved after spending far too much time trying to fix it, only to make it worse.”
“I bet you looked great.” My mate saw me as a much better-looking person than I was. I didn’t mind, but it made him not fully understand the stories I sometimes told.
“And it was ugly.”
“That bad?”
“It was so bad.” I laughed just thinking about it. “And not related, but next time we come to town, we’ll make sure it’s on baking day.”
“Monday or Thursday it is,” he said. “Nothing worse than old baked goods.”
“I can think of a few worse things. But yeah, stale pastries aren’t on my wish list.”
The grocery store was small. Smaller than anything I was used to, anyway. But then again, the pack shopped in bulk, hitting wholesale clubs and dividing our purchases. The alpha even had a little spreadsheet system that paired people interested in purchasing the same items for shared shopping trips. It worked, but it also meant I wasn’t particularly skilled at grocery shopping when I had to do it solo.
We grabbed a cart and worked our way through the store from one end to the other. I wasn’t used to raw dogging something like this, and it slowed me down. We didn’t need a house full of impulse purchases. Unless they were red licorice. If that was the case, I could probably let it slide.
I picked up fruits and vegetables for the week, not wanting to get more than that, since most of it would go bad. Except apples. Apples lasted and were my favorite. I bought three different varieties.
“I love tuna. Especially fresh.” I pulled a ticket at the counter.
While I wouldn’t call anything in this fish case “fresh,” it was frozen at sea, which was close enough. We got tuna and shrimp then headed to the meat counter and loaded up on a variety—plus some extra-thick bacon I couldn’t wait to devour.
“For a small town, they’ve got a lot here.”
“They do,” he agreed, tossing a bag of tortillas into the cart. “We should probably think about getting a chest freezer. That way, we can make bigger runs, stock up on meat.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. The only problem was…our cabin wasn’t exactly massive. Adding a chest freezer meant it’d wind up in the living room the way things were set up now. Maybe adding an addition wouldn’t be the worst idea—eventually. After I got more settled into my job and knew more about what was going on with my beast.
We left the store with an overflowing cart that took multiple trips to unload once we got back home. After the last bag was put away and I shut the freezer door with a satisfying thunk, I turned to find him right behind me.
He pressed me back against the freezer, hips pinning mine, not even trying to hide the arousal straining against his jeans.
“I get to keep you here,” he growled, voice thick with want. “Just for me.” He scented me deeply, and my knees nearly buckled. He had no right to be that sexy.
“Oh no,” I said, eyes wide, voice dripping with fake innocence. “Whatever shall I do?”
“I was about to ask you that very question,” he murmured, nuzzling against my neck.
“My suggestion? Me.” It was a no-brainer.
“Me? I’m confused. How is that a suggestion?”
“Think back. You asked me what I wanted to do and I said you. That seemed pretty clear to me.”
I yelped as he scooped me up and carried me, giggling uncontrollably in his arms, toward the bed, heart racing as the rest of the world faded away.
There was no holding back today. I was going to do Nolan, just like I said I would, and I could hardly wait. He was the best mate ever, and I vowed to show him how much I appreciated him every single day.