16. Cookie dough solves all problems
COOKIE DOUGH SOLVES ALL PROBLEMS
Have they figured it out now?
— gus
The first thing I do after kissing Riordan Lobo is apologize.
And, okay, that’s probably not the normal response when an extremely attractive man kisses you against the side of his cruiser after using the curse that has tormented him for fifteen years to make sure he can never accidentally take your choice away again.
When I kissed him, he had to know that I was all in… until I remembered he has a mate.
I don’t profess to know everything about a shifter’s mating habits.
As a witch, I’ve had lovers from time to time, but I also wasn’t raised in the belief that Hecate would grant me one soul to be my fated mate the way that shifters get given theirs by the Luna.
From what I’ve heard, some shifters play around, but once they find their mate, that’s it.
Whether they’re bonded or not, even looking at another person is akin to cheating—and shifters?
They’re supposed to be hardwired to the point that cheating is impossible.
You’re the bonded mate of a shifter? Especially a predator?
You have his bite on your skin? Yeah. There’s no divorce.
It’s a ’til death do you part kind of situation, and though a kiss doesn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things, when Riordan realizes he let his relief carry him away and that he cheated on his fated mate with me…
he’s going to go back to the guarded, stoic chief deputy he’d been when I first met him all those months ago.
I don’t regret kissing him, but I’ll feel terrible if I put a wedge in whatever relationship there might eventually be between Riordan and some unknown female that I’m, once again, super fucking jealous of.
Somehow, during the kiss, I clenched my fists in his silk shirt. I hurriedly release him. “Oh, Goddess.” When my first instinct is to surge forward again and resume our kiss, I have to back away so that I don’t. “I’m sorry.”
The softness that was in his expression disappears in a heartbeat. “For what?”
How can he ask that? “For what? For kissing you!”
His face closes off. “If we’re being technical, I kissed you, Pen. So if anyone is at fault here, then it’s me. Maybe I should be the one to apologize.”
“You know what? Maybe you should! Riordan, you have a mate! You have a mate that you’re in love with, and you just kissed me. What were you thinking?”
To my surprise, his lips curve upward in that half-smile I’ve grown to adore.
Me? I take another step back, horrified that he looks more amused than guilty. “Did you forget about her? Oh, my Goddess. I’m a home-wrecker!”
“Pen—”
I point at him. “You seduced me!”
His almost-smile becomes a full smile. “Guilty as charged.”
“This isn’t funny, Riordan! One day, I might actually get to meet her.
If I’m still in Moonburrow”—here, his smile dips a little, but I forge on, determined—“I might have to talk to her. And while she’s standing there, showing off your mate mark when she finally realizes that no one could ask for a better male, I’m going to be so guilty, I’ll throw up on her shoes!
Do you know how embarrassing that’ll be? ”
He stifles his burst of laughter. “Pen… sweetheart. That sounds like something you have firsthand experience with.”
True, but that’s not the point. “I mean it! We… okay. We take it to our graves. We forget it happened.” I slash my hand through the air. “We tell no one—”
“I’m sorry, Penelope. I can’t do that.”
Right. Because Max is the prime example of what happens when an alpha wolf shifter thinks he knows best and tries to keep secrets from his mate.
Eventually, his future mate might ask him if he ever kissed that broken witch while they were investigating those murders in Moonburrow and he’ll have to say yes—
“I can’t do that. Keep our kiss a secret?
After months of obsessing over it, I finally got my mate to trust me enough to not only let me use my curse against her, but she kissed me.
You kissed me, Pen. You’ll be lucky if I don’t take out an article in Moonburrow Gazette so I can tell the whole damn town that I finally found out what my mate tastes like. ”
My brain screeches to a halt. For the first time in a long time, it’s empty. I have no thoughts. Riordan’s off-handed comment is enough to knock them all out of my head.
If only it lasted…
He kissed his mate.
He kissed me.
Ergo, I’m his mate.
That’s what he just said, isn’t it?
Mate? I’m his mate?
I gape up at him.
Looking a little sheepish but also undeniably unrepentant, he nods. “It’s you, Penelope Willows. It’s always been you.”
Again, my brain stops working for a moment before everything rearranges itself at once and I finally see the events of the last few months with clear eyes.
The way he looked at me when we first met.
His wolf. His reaction to me. The way everyone in Moonburrow seems to exchange knowing looks whenever Riordan gets too close.
Honey insisting that I cast the locator spell despite knowing perfectly well that asking me to perform ordinary magic is generally a terrible idea.
Riordan coming back.
Riordan staying.
Riordan sleeping downstairs because he refuses to leave me alone while there’s a murderer targeting witches.
My sweet witch.
Oh.
Oh, Goddess.
“You knew,” I whisper. “How… how long have you know?”
Riordan braces himself as though he’s sure I’m not going to like his answer.
“Since the moment I walked out of the sheriff station and saw you standing there. I caught a whiff of your scent, saw the wonder in your pretty blue eyes, and I nearly fell flat on my face. That is when I knew that you were meant to be mine.”
I blink. “You knew the whole time?”
“Pen—”
“The whole time? And you never once told me. Not before you left—”
“I know. And I’m sorry—”
I don’t think I’m ready to hear that again. “And you did leave. How can you leave your mate? If that’s what I’m supposed to be, how could you walk away from me for two months, Riordan?”
He sucks in a breath. “How? It’s easy when you use a curse on the gentle witch that’s supposed to be your mate and she looks at you with both fear and hatred.
It’s easy to convince yourself that she’s better off without you.
And now she’s in danger just because she’s a witch, and even if she never accepts you as her mate, you’ll die before you see anyone hurt her. Never again.”
What makes it so much worse is that I… I get that. I really do. And if he’d explained his curse, waited with me while it wore off, and listened to me while I told him what happened, told him that I had nothing to do with Olivia’s ‘death’, we could’ve started over.
Instead, he kept something huge from me. Something about me.
“You should’ve told me!”
“I know.”
“You let me talk about your mate. Do you know how jealous of her I was? Jealous of myself? We were getting so close, and then you let me think there was another woman—”
“Because I was afraid.” Riordan scrubs a hand down his face.
“It’s the truth, Penelope. I was fucking afraid.
You’re right. We were getting so close, and there were times I thought: maybe.
Maybe I could show you that not all wolves are feral monsters.
That you might get over your fear in time…
that you might trust me. But the longer we’ve been together, the more terrified I’ve become that this is it.
This is the most of you I’ll ever have. I’m a selfish bastard.
If this was all the time I got with you, I was going to take it because if you knew you were my mate…
if you rejected me… that was it. We’d be over before we began.
If being your friend was all I could have, I was going to take it gladly. But what if…”
There’s no confidence in his expression now. No teasing almost-smile. For the first time since he came back to Moonburrow, Riordan looks as scared as he admitted he was.
“What if what?”
“What if I told you and then you’d look at me and see that wolf again?
The one who tried to take your choice away?
” He swallows. “I did that to you once, Pen. I gave you an order without thinking, and your body obeyed me. Then I’m supposed to tell you that you’re my fated mate and the only way to break that same curse is for you to choose me? ”
“You should’ve trusted me to decide what that meant,” I say softly.
“I know,” he repeats.
“Do you? Do you realize what you’ve done? You took the choice away from me anyway.”
He flinches.
I wish he didn’t because now I feel guilty, and I’m the one who’s angry, though I have every right to be.
“I know,” he says again. “I handled it wrong. I knew I was handling it wrong, but every time I thought about telling you, I remembered what you looked like in that cell.”
I look away.
“I wanted you to choose to be around me without knowing what Fate decided. I wanted you to trust me because I earned it. To love me because it’s just that easy. And if you never wanted anything more than that, I would’ve lived with it.”
“Even if it meant staying cursed.”
“I’ve never wanted to find my mate because I gave a shit about the curse.
I just wanted to find her… to find you… because a fated mate is the only way to make a shifter whole.
” He reaches a hand out for me, but before he can actually touch me, he fists it, pulling back.
“Please don’t think I lied because I didn’t want you, Pen.
” His voice drops. “I didn’t tell you because I wanted you too much. You. My sweet witch.”
The sad thing is, somewhere along the way, I discovered I wanted him, too.
But now?
I slowly back away from Riordan. From the cruiser. From the weight of his expectations…
“Penelope?”
“I… I need to go. I need to think.”
I need to be anywhere else but where he is…