Chapter 9
Monte
I woke up feeling like I had a bad hangover. I tried to open my eyes, but the room was too bright. I moaned and shut them tight.
Damn, that was some dream last night.
The memories of my dreams were so vivid. That didn’t happen often.
I snorted. Zoey Rey was my mate. It was laughable. She was gorgeous, of course, but not my type. At least not in reality, only in my dreams. And man had it been a hell of a crazy dream.
Stretching, I tried to roll to my side, but something was pinning me to the bed.
Slowly I opened my eyes and looked down to find an arm wrapped around my waist and realized there was a soft body pressed against me. Looking around I also realized I was not in my room.
What the hell?
Mate, my wolf growled, and I jumped out of the bed, nearly dragging the woman with me.
Zoey Rey was in my bed. She’d been wrapped around me while I slept.
Mine, my wolf reminded me.
“Shit! It wasn’t a dream,” I muttered as everything came flooding back to me.
She moaned, and I grew instantly hard. What the hell was happening?
My brain was struggling to believe everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. I had a mate, something I wasn’t sure I even wanted, yet here she was sleeping in my bed.
I looked around the room as everything seeped back in.
None of it was a dream. It was all real. Zoey Rey was my mate.
I cringed remembering the horrible comment I’d left on her video announcement of the new Rock Steady climbing gear. At the time I had been frustrated that they had given it to someone outside the community. I’d secretly rooted for her to fail.
My wolf growled angrily in my head.
I knew I had to help her shine now.
Mine, he reminded me once more.
She finally opened her eyes and caught me staring down at her.
As she moaned again and stretched slowly, waking up, I turned and escaped to the bathroom. The last thing I needed was her seeing the evidence of what those little moans of hers did to me.
But once there, I realized that my problem wasn’t just going to go away with her out of sight. Not knowing what else to do, I turned on the shower, stripped, and stepped in. I was so hard it was physically uncomfortable. Is this what waking up with her by my side was going to be like every time?
I groaned as I closed my eyes and let my mind wander to visions of her in bed and the feel of her soft body pressed against mine.
As I reached down to stroke myself and handle the situation without embarrassing her, I let myself really think of her—long blonde hair, big blue eyes, and a body that makes my mouth water.
I shivered as my body strung tight.
My wolf was happy to push images of her into my mind as my imagination slowly stripped her bare. And once she was there with my hand pumping hard, I leaned against the wall of the shower and bit my free-fisted hand to muffle the sounds of my own moans.
Damn, this was bad.
Feeling momentarily better, I washed off and then turned off the shower and stepped out.
I dried off and realized I didn’t have any clothes with me.
Hell, I’d barely packed anything to begin with.
Planning to spend the weekend in my fur or climbing meant packing very light.
Between the snow and having my wolf so on edge and determined to track Zoey down, those plans had been thwarted.
Not wanting to put dirty clothes back on, especially ones I’d slept in, I cracked the door.
“Zoey?”
“Yeah?”
She definitely sounded more awake and not quite so breathy now. I could handle this.
“Um, could you bring me my bag?”
I heard her rummaging around before she was standing there holding it out to me. I was trying to stay behind the door until her head cocked to the side and her eyes glanced down.
Was she trying to check me out?
She’d already seen me in the nude when I’d shifted after our run. Had she liked what she saw?
Deciding to test that theory and throw caution to the wind, I opened the door and stepped into her view with plans to retrieve my bag.
While she blushed, she held her own as she openly checked me out. I was okay until she stared at my dick as it happily grew before her eyes. I was going to need a cold shower this time to keep from rubbing myself raw.
I was frozen just watching her staring at me, bag long forgotten.
A part of me wanted to make a snarky comment like, “My eyes are up here, sweetheart.” Or something like, “You clearly like what you see.” But I knew that if I said anything it would just scare her off.
It made no sense. Zoey Rey was a famous influencer.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what that meant.
By the time she finished her next video, millions of people would be rushing to buy Rock Steady gear and give rock climbing a try.
I had a love-hate feeling about it all, but despite her fame, she was also president of Theta and the most popular girl on campus.
I’d never cared about such things, but I did have preconceived thoughts about her.
I certainly didn’t expect her to be so shy.
That wasn’t quite right—reserved. No, more like innocent.
Zoey had an innocence about her that just seemed out of place with everything I’d heard about her.
I may not be the biggest playboy on campus because that just wasn’t me, but I wasn’t entirely immune to women’s advances. There were plenty of aggressive ones at the ARC, especially within Theta. But Zoey didn’t quite seem to fit that mold.
If she liked what she saw, and she clearly did, why didn’t she go after it? I certainly wouldn’t have stopped her. Yet something told me she wasn’t going to be bold enough to make that first move, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to do that either.
This girl had my head swirling. Hell, I’d just jacked off in the shower thinking of her while she was in the next room. I wanted to kick my own ass for it even though I was trying to be respectful and not embarrass her.
I snorted softly at the thought, but it was enough to pull her out of the lust-filled haze in her eyes as she unabashedly stared at me.
Now I really wanted to kick my own ass for disrupting her.
She gasped and shoved my bag at me as she turned and ran.
I stood there a moment longer as I heard her flop onto the bed with a big sigh.
“Pull it together, Zoey,” she told herself.
I grinned and closed the door.
A second shower may have seemed weird, but I took a quick ice cold one anyway to calm myself down once more. At this rate I was going to rub myself raw before we left the lodge.
*****
When eleven o’clock hit and I still hadn’t checked out or let the front desk know what I was doing, Karla called the room.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Hey handsome. I’m just calling to see if I need to send housekeeping up or if you’re sticking around for the weekend.”
“I don’t know yet. Hey Zoey, are we staying another night?”
“Yes, but I have a room booked for tonight. I just can’t check in until three.”
“She spent the night with you? The lady you rescued last night?”
“My girlfriend,” I corrected. The lie rolled off my tongue with ease. It was only a lie in that girlfriend cheapened the fact that she was my mate.
Zoey’s eyes widened as she stared at me.
“Girlfriend?” Karla asked. “I didn’t think you did the whole girlfriend thing.”
“I don’t, or didn’t, but when the right one comes along even a guy like me caves.”
Karla sighed. “That’s so sweet. She’s really lucky.”
“Nah. I’m the lucky one.”
I winked at Zoey, knowing she was listening in.
“So, the room?”
“She has a room booked for tonight so we can move to that one. Any chance you’ll have one available sooner than three?”
The look on my girl’s face made me want to laugh.
You aren’t getting rid of me that easily, babe.
Karla sighed. “Let me check her reservation. What’s your girlfriend’s name?”
“Zoey . . .”
“Jones. Zoey Jones,” she said, cutting me off before I used her real name. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was really necessary, but Zoey looked calm and collected, yet something had changed within her that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I could hear faint tapping before the line went silent.
“Karla?” I heard a small intake of breath and then she squealed.
“Wait, like the Zoey? Zoey Unboxed Zoey?”
“Exactly like that,” I proudly admitted.
“Holy shit, Monte. How the hell do you know Zoey Unboxed?”
“I told you, she’s my girlfriend.”
Mate, my wolf angrily insisted.
“This is wild. I can’t believe this is really happening!”
“It’s not that big a deal. Do not make a scene in there. She doesn’t like attention,” I grumbled.
That seemed to sober Karla up a bit.
And Zoey didn’t contradict me. She smiled that award-winning perfect kind of smile.
“Now what time do I need to be out of this room?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, let me check.” I could hear her fingers tapping on the keys again as she looked up the booking. “Wow. How the hell did I miss her? There’s a note that says she came in last night.”
“She did, stuck in the snow crowd. The hotel was packed, remember?”
“I remember. Unfortunately, today isn’t a helluva lot better. Though I did have a high-profile guest leave via helicopter early this morning. And it looks like his room was not rented out for tonight. With the road conditions still, this may be the only room available tonight.”
“If it’s best for us to stay here, that’s fine too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, handsome. This is Zoey Unboxed. I love her. I’m not leaving her in that tiny-ass room. She deserves better.”
I could hear the clicking of her keyboard again.
“We’ll be fine,” I tried to tell her.
“Confirmed and done,” she replied. “And the room is ready, so come on down and swap keys with me. While the roads are still spotty at best, it should be clear enough for that lesson we discussed yesterday. Bucky isn’t going to make it in, so can you take it. Pretty please?”
“You hooked my girl up. Of course I’ll do it.”
I hung up the phone to find Zoey staring at me.
“Your girl?”
“That’s you, remember? My mate,” I managed to say. It still sounded like a foreign word on my lips. And I still didn’t know how I felt about it. But none of that changed the fact that she was my mate. “And your room is ready.”
“Wait, it is?”
“Yup. All we have to do is swap keys at the front desk.”
“Wait, swap keys? So you’re really following me to my room?”
I growled at her insinuation, and she held her hands up in surrender.
“Okay, okay. Calm down. You can come. Maybe there will be two beds this time.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t want you breaching the pillow wall again,” I teased.
“There was no pillow wall,” she grumbled.
“I’m aware. Because you slept on top of me all night.”
“I did not.”
“Did too. And you put off more heat than a furnace in Alaska.”
“Yeah? Well, you snore.”
I chuckled. She was cute when she got all riled up.
“Maybe, but you talk in your sleep.”
She gasped. “I do not.”
“Really?”
I was so tired that I had woken up thinking I’d been dreaming. I didn’t hear a damn thing last night. But it could be true. Who knew? But the panicked look on her face told me it just might be possible. Hell if I was going to just let her off the hook now.