“Thank you, Chef Keenan,” Maisie said, stifling a giggle.
“Have fun, you two,” Shane said, slapping Zach’s back as he walked away.
“Oh my God,” Maisie said, covering her forehead with her hand.
“Was this your bread?” Zach asked. “It’s delicious.”
Maisie started giggling. “Yes. That’s my bread. I’ll have to get used to doing business with one of my idols.”
“You’re cute when you’re blushing,” he said.
Everything about Zach turned her on and electrified her. It seemed to fill that empty place inside her heart that had been yearning to be filled for so long.
When they were done with their meal, he left a generous tip and they walked out onto a private section of the patio to look down at the view of the lake under the moonlight. It was cold outside, but they were dressed warmly in their winter parkas, hats, and gloves.
She looked up at Zach under the pale glow of the moon and the yellow porch lights. Their breath puffed out from their mouths. Zach turned to her and smiled, the moon making his hair shimmer around him like a halo. He moved closer, bending down to whisper in her ear.
“I love this moment,” he said.
It made her heart stop. She slid her hand down his arm and cupped his hand. He wrapped his arms around her, looking intently into her eyes.
She held her breath as his warm breath met her lips. His lips settled softly onto her mouth, the wet heat of his kiss already blazing inside her.
Their tongues met briefly, one flick of his over her lower lip. Then he pulled away, pressing his lips to her forehead.
“We should take it slow,” he said, his cheek resting against her temple.
“Why?” she breathed.
“A shifter’s pheromones can be too powerful for a human mate. Sometimes things get complicated. Especially if you go too fast.”
He was right. She’d felt drawn to him the moment she’d seen him. Then when she saw his picture, the memory of his face became imprinted on her mind.
“Okay,” she said, not sure if she really wanted him to stop kissing her.
Chapter 7
Zach felt like he was trudging through quicksand as he pulled away from Maisie’s lips. Kissing her for the first time felt like he’d just learned the answer to the meaning of life.
He knew Levi was right, though. Taking it slow was the best way to avoid making a mistake with Maisie.
“I should get you home,” he said, holding her just a little while longer before he pulled away.
They walked hand in hand back to his truck. Zach helped her inside, catching sight of her curves as she sat in her seat. How was he supposed to hold himself back when she was so goddamn beautiful? Zach closed the door and went around to the driver’s seat.
When he got inside, Maisie smiled up at him in the dim light of the cab. Her perfect red lips plumped up in a pucker as she looked at him. His inner polar bear growled to pull her into his arms and claim her on the spot, but instead he started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot.
Driving across town, the beast huffed inside his head, pacing back and forth. He and his bear usually agreed on everything. He rarely held back from his instincts. This was the first time in a long time he had to tell his bear no.
He parked in front of the bakery and walked her up to the front door. She unlocked it and stood in the doorway.
“Do you want to come up?” she asked.
“I do. But I can’t.”
“All right, next time…”
He crushed his lips to her mouth and wrapped her in his arms. Feeling her curves under his hands, he pulled her to him. In all his life, he’d never felt anything so good. He walked her backward into the doorway and kissed her hot mouth.
He kissed her deeper this time, tasting her sweetness as she met his passion with her own. Zach ran his hands over her hips and pulled away, letting out a ragged sigh.
“I’ll see you on Sunday for our date,” he said.
“All right,” she said, rubbing his chest as he stepped back. “Goodnight.”
She turned to walk up the stairs and Zach watched her legs in that sexy little dress she’d worn. He loved a girl in heels.
“Goodnight,” he said, walking back out to the street.
On the drive home, he couldn’t help wondering why he was waiting to move forward with Maisie. She was his mate. His one. Why stop when it was natural to let go to your instincts? But deep down, he knew it was right to wait. They needed to get to know each other before he let his animal take over. He had to make sure that she understood what it meant to be a shifter’s fated mate. That could take time.
When he got back to his cabin, he was too wound up to relax. He did a full workout in his living room until he’d worked up a good sweat.
Zach wiped the dripping sweat from his brow and chest. Even the intense workout wasn’t enough to calm him down. Maisie’s curves were still firmly at the forefront of his mind. How was he supposed to do this? Levi was obviously a stronger man than he was.
He growled at himself and went out into the cold night air, still dripping with sweat. It began to chill on his skin, cooling him quickly. Zach slid out of his trainers and his shorts, walking out into the snow.
He roared up at the night sky, his polar bear scratching closer to the surface with each thought of Maisie that crossed his mind.
He shifted in a quick burst, his mind going blank. His massive white paws hit the ground. Dangerously long claws sank into the frozen soil. Zach’s polar bear roared and panted in heavy puffs.
The bear wanted to gallop all the way to Maisie’s door. The man inside him was just as needy for his mate as the bear, but he couldn’t let the animal have its way this time.
He forced the beast to head out to the forest to run off the need inside him. Zach ran into the cover of the woods, far away from human eyes.
He knew that Shane and Lily often ran these woods, but he didn’t smell their scents tonight. He was on his own this time. His beast would have to find his own way in the wild.
Zach tore through the trees, feeling more and more agitated with each foot fall. Galloping through the forest, he smelled the small animals under the cover of winter. He wanted to hunt, taste blood. The animal yearned to dive deep into the sea for a fresh meal. But the sea was miles away, and Zach needed to taste his kill right now.
It was the only thing that would calm him enough not to drive to her door. The great white bear came to a halt and sniffed the air. There was a den of rabbits nearby, but hunting rabbits wasn’t the type of challenge he was after. He needed to use his power and strength, to prove to himself he still had it.
He sniffed out the scent of a buck in the woods. It was mature and ready to rut. Exactly the meal Zach needed to prove his prowess. He followed the buck’s trail on silent feet, hiding his scent downwind from his prey.
Slowly, he came upon the buck in a thicket. He quietly padded around to the entrance. The buck shot out of the thicket, and Zach took chase. The deer was fast, but he was faster. He sped into a charging gallop and gained on the buck, smelling its fear and desperation.
The force of power that rolled through him the moment he’d found his mate filled his veins and overflowed inside him. He caught the buck with the smack of his huge paw, toppling the animal on its side. The tangy scent of blood filled the air, and he could taste it rising from the buck. He lunged forward, sinking his teeth into the animal’s neck, biting hard.
As he felt its life slowly seep from its body and fill his mouth with its life force, Zach began to calm.
Zach’s beast let go of the animal’s neck with a grunt and backed away. He sat down in the snow and studied his kill. The polar bear wanted to eat the whole thing in one sitting, and that was exactly what the animal decided to do.
Zach threw up his arms at the back of the animal’s mind and went to sleep. When he was conscious again, he found himself inside a snowy den, his stomach stuffed full of deer mea
t.
He pushed himself out of the dugout cave and shifted in the snow. It was cold and he was naked, but he was done with his bear for now.
He padded through the pink snow, through the forest, and back to his cabin. He burped as he walked up the front steps. Damn. He didn’t even like venison.
He grumbled as he trudged into the shower. This was not how he imagined this morning going. He had lessons for most of the day and usually got a good night’s sleep before work.
He got into the shower and washed off the dirt and blood from the night before. When he got out of the shower, he saw a text from Maisie on his phone.
“Can’t wait to go skiing on Sunday.”
He smiled, feeling a little better. Part of him still wasn’t sure if Maisie would ever like him for who he was. She was a sophisticated lady, and he was just a ski instructor who lived and worked at Levi’s lodge.
Chapter 8
After their date, Maisie walked up the stairs to her apartment, leaving Zach at the front door. She had no idea what was going on. Maybe she had wanted to bring him upstairs.
As she opened the door to her apartment and sat down on her couch, she knew that she wouldn’t have regretted bringing him upstairs. But she also knew that doing so would mean a lot to him. Probably more than it would to her.
She was attracted to Zach. And who wouldn’t be? He was gorgeous and perfect, maybe too perfect. Maisie just didn’t know if she could keep up with him. Why would Zach want to be with her when he could be with anyone? Sure, she was supposed to be his “fated mate”. But what did that even mean? She knew a little bit about it, but from what she had experienced in her own dating life, most “fated mate” stuff seemed incredibly hard to believe.
Now she wished she had learned more about shifter culture. As involved as her mom had become with shifters over the last six years, it didn’t reflect how Maisie had grown up. She’d always been up to date with current events and culture around the world. As far as shifters went, she just hadn’t caught up.
For so long, the world had been so divided between shifters and humans. She had grown up in the worst days after the Great Shifter Council had brought shifters out of hiding. There wasn’t a day that passed during her childhood when she didn’t see new stories about riots or killings from one side or the other. The entire country had been in turmoil for years.
After the war, shifters were suddenly open and interesting and everybody was getting along. That was great, but her subconscious mind simply couldn’t let go. The prejudices of the past had only gone underground, for everyone.
Now that she had been matched with Zach, maybe there was a small part of her that knew, at the bottom of her heart, that she was the fated mate of a shifter. He seemed pretty sure they belonged together. Maisie, on the other hand, was unconvinced.
The way she felt when he touched her and kissed her could not be denied. But he had already explained those feelings to her. Knowing that you belonged with someone for the rest of your life was more difficult to explain.
She didn’t want to hurt the man or mislead him. She just didn’t know if she was ready to commit to what Zach seemed to want. Maisie picked up her cell phone and did a Google search for “fated mates”. What came up on her screen surprised her.
There were millions of results, including articles from many well-known magazines and newspapers. In that moment, she realized that she had been purposefully avoiding the subject altogether.
She thought back over the last several years of her life. When the subject of dating shifters had suddenly become a hot new trend, she’d refused to read a single article or blog post about the subject.
Maisie put her hand to her forehead, feeling like a fool. She’d been resisting the very thing she was involved with now. Her mom’s suggestion to join Mate.com had somehow broken her resistance at the very last moment.
But even if she hadn’t joined the dating site, she and Zach probably would have met on Fate Mountain. The whole train of thought left Maisie feeling dizzy and breathless. This whole fate business was new to her. It was all just a bit too much.
She stood up from her couch and went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of Pinot. She brought her wine back into the living room but didn’t sit. She paced back and forth instead, thinking about what lay before her. She could let fate take her by the hand or she could try to intervene. The term fate meant something that was absolute. But did every fated mate couple end up happily ever after in the end? That couldn’t possibly be true.
She did a new search, asking Google if every fated mate couple ended up happily ever after. That’s when she started reading in earnest. Fated mates didn’t always end up happily ever after. Sometimes they came together just to have children and then parted again. Sometimes one of them died after experiencing the deepest most meaningful love of their lives. Sometimes the couples just couldn’t overcome their own personal dramas. Those were the most tragic.
With that understanding in mind, Maisie continued her study of shifters and fated mates. She learned a lot of things she couldn’t have possibly imagined.
For one thing, shifters could turn humans into shifters. She read the stories and statistics of tons of human women who’d been turned into shifters by their fated mates. The fated mate hormonal attraction was powerful and real.
When fated mates saw each other, they were both completely blown away and wanted nothing more than to make love. That seemed to be a universal experience. Of the couples who were able to overcome their initial personal issues, the great majority ended up living wonderful lives together. But sometimes the hormonal attraction would be so intense it became frightening for human women.
Overpowering animal need for sex and mating was not something that human women were accustomed to experiencing. That instinctive drive could feel disorienting and almost involuntary. That could lead to a great many problems for human women and male shifter relationships.
When Maisie read about that, she knew that what Zach was saying waiting was true. But she also understood that happily ever after wasn’t guaranteed. Maybe they had this animal attraction to each other now, but when they found out that they really weren’t compatible, they’d end up like the tragic couples who couldn’t get it together.
The next time she was going to see Zach, they were supposed to go skiing. Maisie had never been skiing before in her life. What in the world was she supposed to wear? She looked at the time and realized it was getting late. She had to be up at four in the morning to start baking and was going to be operating on little sleep as it was.
She forced herself up from the couch and went to her bed across the room in her studio apartment. She didn’t mind living in a studio; it was all she really needed. She’d lived in smaller places in Paris. But part of it just didn’t make her feel like a successful business owner. Someday, Maisie wanted a big house where she could raise a family.
As her head hit the pillow, she reminded herself that she needed to find an apprentice. She needed someone highly competent who she could rely on. Eventually, she’d hire more people so she didn’t have to work twenty-four-seven, but right now, all she needed was one person.
She fell asleep thinking of what to say in her Craigslist ad. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep, and she woke up to her alarm at four a.m. sharp. With a groan, Maisie got up and got ready for the day.
She was pushing her earring into her ear as she walked down the steps to the bakery when her mind wandered to the night before with Zach. She remembered the feeling of his lips against hers and his hot breath on her ear.
She finished hooking on her earring and let out a low, moaning sigh. With everything else she had to think about, at least her thoughts of Zach’s kiss were hot and exciting. She trotted the rest of the way down the stairs with a smile on her face, feeling ready for the day. Maybe she would just focus on who Zach was as a person instead of all of the fated mate nonsense.
If she had just met Zach as a person and not as a fa
ted mate, she would have enjoyed spending time with him. He was fun and cute and happy. She liked everything about him.
She opened the bakery door, wishing she had not agreed to go skiing. She had been too eager to say yes when he offered a second date. She wanted to impress him, but she feared she would do exactly the opposite.
She went into the bakery and started her day, baking her bread and pastries. During her short break, just before she opened the shop, she clicked on her laptop in the kitchen and browsed the internet for ski clothing.
She found an adorably feminine ski outfit at an outdoor store and purchased it with five minutes to spare before she had to open the doors to the shop.
The days passed by in anticipation of seeing Zach again, and when her snowsuit arrived in the mail, she quickly tried it on. She looked in the mirror and her mouth dropped open. She looked like a pink marshmallow.
The billowy pink fabric of the puffy snowsuit was the opposite of flattering on her curvy frame. The matching ski boots were clunky and heavy. Maisie sat down on her couch and crossed her arms over her breasts that puffed out in front of her under the puffy snowsuit.
She was supposed to go skiing with Zach tomorrow, so she didn’t have time to return it or shop for something else. She couldn’t just put on a pair of skinny jeans and her fur-lined parka. At least this horrendous outfit would keep her warm. If Zach was no longer interested after seeing her in this snowsuit, then she would have an answer and wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.
Chapter 9
Zach came to Maisie’s door on a bright Sunday afternoon, holding a bouquet of yellow roses. She opened the door wearing a puffy pink snowsuit that made her look like the cutest little snow bunny he’d ever seen. His inner bear growled.
Bunnies were soft and sweet, like Maisie. He handed her the flowers, and she took them in her manicured hands. Her nails matched the suit. She couldn’t be any cuter.