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I never make it past my living room.

My front door rattles, then metal groans as someone breaks apart my doorknob. A moment later the door bangs open.

I only have enough time to call the siren to the surface.

Instead a familiar form comes storming in.

I clutch my chest. “Crap, Eli,” I say, my voice ethereal, “you scared me.” And then I realize Eli just broke into my house.

I glance back at the door. “Were you … waiting for me?”

He doesn’t respond, and there’s an intensity to his features that makes me tense up.

He crosses the foyer, his attention focused wholly on me. Without speaking, he closes the last of the distance between us and pulls me into his arms, kissing me hard.

“Whoa,” I say, managing to break my lips away. The rest of me is still crushed to him. “What’s going on?”

My mind is having trouble catching up.

Eli’s my home. Eli’s holding me.

“I had to see you, baby.” He’s back to kissing me, and I am so confused.

I rip my head away to glance at the calendar I have up.

The full moon …

“Eli, you shouldn’t be here.”

It’s only been a day since the full moon, and the closer to the full moon it is, the more a shifter’s human side gives way to the animal. It’s dangerous for non-shifters to be around them.

“I couldn’t stay away.” His lips are back on mine, and I’m trying really hard not to freak the fuck out, but his hands are shaking and I can feel Eli fighting to keep this form.

“Why didn’t anyone stop you from leaving?”

“No one gets in the way of mate business,” he says, doing everything he physically can to get close to me.

Mate business.

Mate. Business.

Nope.

Nope, nope, nope.

I think I’m beginning to hyperventilate. All I wanted was to go for a swim, and instead … this steaming pile of horseshit.

“But I’m not … I’m not your mate,” I say. I’m not even his girlfriend. Not anymore.

I can hear him growl low in his chest. “I was going to ask. Once I got back, I was going to ask.”

Uh oh.

“Ask me what?”

Please don’t ask me what I think’s on your mind.

We’d been together a whopping six months. I’m still getting used to the fact that he has a toothbrush in my bathroom.