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“Keep it that way.”

An acidic scent comes across the breeze. Looking back through the window, I find Aspen is looking at a photo of her with Warrick after a football game. I can sense the unease within her. Even though we aren’t mated, we can still get a vague sense of feelings from our mate.

I want to go in there and ease her by inspiring a different sense of feelings in her. I want to watch our mate whimper and plead underneath us as we wring out every ounce of pleasure from her body.

She clambers into her bed and turns off her bedside light. She cuddles down into her comforter and I’m just about to turn away, until I see her hand whip out from under the comforter and open the drawer next to her bed. Leaning closer to the window, I see her pull out something neon pink.What is she doing?

That’s when I hear a click and the hum of vibrations start to come from under the comforter. Her soft whimpers and moans ring out through the air.Oh, fuck. I have to go before I do something.

Jumping down from the edge of the window, her moans pick up and the struggle to leave is harder than I thought. The smell of her slick is perfuming the air and trying to pull me back to her. I release a whimper of my own as I push myself away. Before I leave, I mark my territory to try to calm my urge to break down the door and mark her myself.

With one last look over my shoulder, I look at her cabin and my mate, who is busy pleasuring herself.“One day, Aspen, you will be mine, and you won’t need to do this by yourself anymore.”

Chapter 9

Aspen

Fumbling with my key ring to find the door key to the bookstore, I don’t realize that someone is standing there until I almost bump into them. Their feet come into my view as I let out a sigh.Not again.

“What are you doing here, Warrick?” My eyes pan up from his booted feet to his dimpled smile as he holds another coffee up for me to take.

“Well, you said that I can only be here if I’m a paying customer. So, I’m here to buy a book.” He says it like it makes the most logical sense.

I stare at him. “Showing up before I even open the doors with a coffee in hand…” I let the sentence hang.

He shrugs his shoulders. “Had to make sure my favorite girl had the energy to tackle her day. Plus, it never hurts to get a jump start.”

I just shake my head. Clearly, he isn’t going to go away. Pushing the door open, I flip on the lights and they pulse on. The first moments inside the shop when I watch it come alive are always the best. I enjoy the quiet and the serenity that comes with it. The office lights hum as I put my belongings down on my desk. Not sure where Warrick has gone, I come back out to find him slowly walking down one of the bookshelves, reading the spines of the books.

I walk up silently to have an opportunity to watch him without his guard up. His finger runs along the spines until he pulls a book out and flips it over to read the synopsis. He lets out a quiet ‘humph’ before placing it back on the shelf. When I clear my throat, he spins around.

“I have a new delivery of books that just came in that need to be put away. So, if you are going to be here, then you need to be over there in the lounge area,” I say as I point in the direction of the two chairs with a small table between them by the front windows.

He looks over to where I’m pointing and then back at me. “Do you want some help with the delivery?” He lifts his eyebrow in question.

A mischievous thought crosses my mind.He wants to help, does he?“You really want to help?”

“I’m here. Put me to use.”

“Alright, you asked for this. I don’t want to hear any bitching then,” I say as I turn toward the backroom where I have the boxes of books that were delivered yesterday.

I don’t want to tell him, but having someone help me do this is such a relief. He follows behind me as we walk into the backroom. I have shelves of back stock in here with a work table for sorting the books and scanning them into the system.

“Okay, so these ten boxes were delivered yesterday. I have to scan them into the system and then we have to put them out on the floor. A lot of them are extra inventory, so we will also have boxes that will only be set on these back stock shelves,” I say as I walk, pointing at the shelves. He silently follows behind me.

One glance over my shoulder and I realize that he is taking in everything I’m saying.Let’s see how long he can keep up this ruse.Walking over to the table, I point to the first box. “Will you grab that one and bring it over here to the table?”

Without hesitation, he grabs the box and, with ease, brings it over to the table.

I set out all the books from the box and, while the beep of the handheld registers each barcode into the computer, I glance up to find Warrick quietly standing there. “You know, you don’t have to do this.”

“I know, but I want to be here. If being here means that I grab boxes for you and cart books to the shelves throughout the store, then so be it.” He shrugs like it's not a big deal, but to me it’s the first step in the right direction.

“It seems our mate just wants to be near us, however that may be,” Aisling pipes up.

“It would seem that way. I just don’t know that I can trust it just yet,”I say skeptically back to her.

“Give him a chance to be here for you. I know he hasn’t in the past, but we can’t live in the past, can we?”she quips back.