Chapter 10
ATTEMPTED brEAK-IN
brother and cousin are so amusing to gus.
pass the popcorn please!
— gus
In the morning, I decide that what looks like love when you’re half asleep could easily be disregarded as indigestion when you wake up the next morning panicking that you’re a prey shifter quickly falling, well, prey to the mating instinct.
Whether Ash can feel the bond or not, there’s no denying that we’re in the middle of the mating dance. It’s just that—as the only living half of this pairing—I’m experiencing all of the urges while he gets up with the sun, looking absolutely perfect.
Me? I nearly screech when I get a look at myself in the bedroom mirror.
My hair is a tangled mess, my dark circles are even more prominent than usual, and I bet my breath stinks, too.
Not that he can smell it, but still. I hop out of bed, heading to the bathroom after a quick popover to my closet while doing my impression of the roadrunner, leaving nothing but dust and a visibly confused ghost in my wake.
An hour later, I’m feeling more like myself.
I grabbed a fresh tee and jeans to change into after my shower.
Like always, it’s all black, but this shirt has a raccoon holding a knife while saying “I REQUIRE SNACKS”.
It was either that or my raccoon shirt that says “LET’S DO CRIMES”.
I figured, just in case, it might be safer going with the first one, and if my cheeks heated up a little when Ash read the letters on my tits and murmured that he’d be happy to feed me any snacks I wanted if only I’d let him, I stuffed a grocery store muffin in my mouth to stop my brain from giving the go-ahead to utter the improper thought that had just popped into it.
It wouldn’t be appropriate to tell my gentlemanly librarian that he has something I wouldn’t mind putting in my mouth—and that it isn’t food—would it?
Damn it. Sleeping in bed next to Ash might’ve meant that I could sleep, but I’m one horny raccoon the next morning. So I took the edge off in the shower. I’m still twitchier than I usually am as I gather up my keys and my phone and tell Ash and Gus that it’s time to head over to the bakery.
And if I’d rather find out if me being able to touch Ash means that I can touch him everywhere…
cool down, Roxy. There’s far more at stake than your libido having to be patient.
We’re still waiting for Penelope to show up, dealing with the growing crowd of nosy patrons who visit the bakery to request another batch of brownies—hell fucking no—or to see if we put out some other charmed chaos-makers, and watching Ash to make sure he stays with me.
As far as I can tell, as long as he stays with me, he doesn’t fade much.
It’s only when he hovers away, either to check out something or because he thinks he needs to give me space, that he loses even more of his color.
Together, we decide that Faith has a point.
There’s some element of forced proximity going on here.
From that moment on, I tell Ash to stick by me, and I try not to show how pleased I am when he easily agrees.
That means he’s my shadow at the bakery.
On the trips back to my store. When I’m sitting behind the counter in my shop, waiting for customers, or chatting with them, trying to talk them into paying for some of my merchandise.
Both Ash and Gus get a kick out of joining me on a dumpster dive, though Gus is the only one to climb among the trash bags with me; no surprise that the ghost of Ash isn’t too keen on putting himself into the garbage like someone did after they cursed him.
On the plus side, he doesn’t judge me, and he even insists on hovering in the bathroom when we go back to my place and I shower.
Do I have the urge to throw open the shower curtain and invite him in?
Of course I do. My raccoon doesn’t understand why my mate is right there yet we’re not actually mating.
Try explaining the concept of a soul on the loose to a stubborn raccoon.
I tried. It didn’t go over well, and though I’m used to getting any male I set my sights on, this is too important for me to fuck up.
What if I move too quickly and ruin any chance I have with him?
No.
I’ll behave—as best I can—until we can get this cursebreaker here to fix Ash.
After that, we still have to figure out who did this to him in the first place.
As much as I’m beginning to find some begrudging respect for Riordan Lobo due to how much effort and wolfpower he’s putting into tracking down whoever hurt Ash, he hasn’t made much progress yet.
I know he wants to close this case before Honey and Max return in a week and a half. Same. Me and Honey… we’re friends now, and I don’t want to hurt her by having to be the one to introduce her to the fading ghost of her cousin if this isn’t all cleared up by the time their honeymoon is over.
I just hope that this Penelope witch gets here before long—and that she’s able to help Ash. Otherwise I might be spending the rest of my existence with a ghost for a mate, an incomplete matebond, and the worst case of blue balls a female raccoon can have.
Olivia assured us that Penelope would be arriving in Moonburrow by the end of the week. Well, it’s Saturday, we have less than a week until Max and Honey return to town on Friday, and even Riordan is getting itchy that the coven witch hasn’t been able to make it to Maryland yet.
By the time we close the bakery for the afternoon, my feet hurt, Gus is curled-up and asleep on top of the empty display case, Ash is reading one of the books he grabbed from the shop (with me turning the page for him in between customers), and I’m seriously considering committing a few crimes after all if one more customer asks me for those magical love brownies’.
One jaguar shifter actually slipped me a fifty and winked. A fifty. Like I’m some kind of supernatural drug dealer, and if he bribes me enough, I’ll pull Grandma Jean’s recipe book out of its hiding spot in the kitchen.
To be fair, I almost respect the hustle and the nerve. And, because he slipped it to me, I took the fifty and told him to come back in a week and I’ll see what I can do.
Sorry, Honey. She can send the jaguar away, and if he gives her any trouble, Honey can sic her Alpha/sheriff mate on him.
Way I see it, that’s a little perk of bonding with the most powerful shifter in Moonburrow.
Me? There’s something about watching Ash purse his lips primly as he devours another page before giving me a puppy dog look that means he needs me to turn it to the next that revs my engine.
Shit, Rox. Whoever thought that you’d fall head over paw for an opossum?
But I have. It’s so bad that I’ve even started to get along with Gus because I can’t help but wonder if that’s what Ash looks like in his fur.
How can I poke fun at Honey’s sidekick when my raccoon wants nothing more than to roughhouse and tumble with Ash’s opossum?
Gus is beginning to look adorable to me, and if that change also started to happen once I discovered he thinks of me has as his cousin…
well, it’s not like Roxy Kane doesn’t have a heart.
I do, and in the last week, I’ve passed it over to a ghostly male who has no idea that he has it tucked in his nearly transparent hands.
While I clean up, Ash sets his book aside, floating into the kitchen to keep me company.
Gus wakes up from his nap out front, shuffles behind us to the back area, and curls up into the industrial mixer’s bowl.
Ash and I keep up a casual conversation—today’s topic is whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie after I made him watch it with me after dinner last night—as I make quick work of cleaning up the kitchen.
We both agree that it is before moving on to discussing our clan’s traditions for the holidays.
Does it matter that it’s the middle of May?
Nah. It’s so easy to talk to Ash about anything and everything, and as he drones on about the history of Christmas trees that he read about in one of his books, I’m smiling as his soft voice washes over me.
Fuck, it’s cozy. I always knew that mating meant an emotion connectional and physical desire.
I was prepared for that. But cozy moments while I mop and he excitedly tells me that the first documented decorated Christmas tree by humans was in Riga, Latvia back in 1510, with shifters adopting the habit shortly after, I’m stunned by how much I like this.
I like his company.
I like him…
Fated mates are special. Fate says this is the one soul meant for you, who you can stomach spending forever with, who you can eventually procreate with.
I knew it would be easy to love him because that’s how it works for shifters.
I just never expected I would like Ash so much—or that he would find all my raccoon quirks charming rather than distasteful.
Like how I’ll rescue items from the trash because I think they’re pretty and shiny rather than valuable.
Or how I don’t sit anywhere normally. I plop, I crouch, I perch.
Hell, just two nights ago, he drifted out of the bedroom we’ve been sharing to find me sitting cross-legged on my kitchen counter, snacking on a bag of chips so that I didn’t get crumbs on my floor.
Raccoons in the wild have a tendency to wash their food constantly.
I do that, too, in a way. Rinsing my fruit and vegetables, over-cleaning my dishes, and scrubbing my hands so much that, if I didn’t have supernatural healing abilities, they’d be cracked to hell and back.
Ash mentioned once that I like to be clean, I took it the wrong way and asked if he thought that all raccoons are filthy, and instead of backpedaling, he just explained that he likes to be clean, too.