Page 11 of The Bookish Girl’s Guide to Mating with a Werewolf (Mate Hunted #1)

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ABBY

I stared at the building in front of us for at least three minutes. Nico didn’t say a thing. I wasn’t sure what was going on with him, but if he didn’t want to bring it up yet, I wasn’t going to either.

I was too busy staring.

Because the house he had mentioned?

It wasn’t a house.

It was a cabin with large windows that looked like it was built to fit into the forest. The siding was painted a gorgeous dark green, framed and decorated with modern but rustic-looking wood.

There was a large, cozy front porch with a gigantic swing on it, and I could see a big, roundish lake behind it through the trees.

“This is your house?” I finally asked.

“Yeah.” Nico’s voice was more gravelly than I’d heard it before.

I looked over at him. “Are you okay?”

He jerked his head. His face was stonier than I’d seen it, and something in his eyes looked sort of wolfy.

“You don’t look okay.”

He grunted.

That was lovely.

Maybe he was going to murder me after all.

I definitely shouldn’t have let him drive me to his house in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t blame my stupidity on sleep deprivation anymore. Only horniness. And possibly my obsession with fictional characters.

But hey, there was no going back now. I wasn’t going to escape him. Might as well see if the inside of his house was as gorgeous as the outside.

I held out my hands for my keys, just in case an opportunity to escape arose. He gave them to me.

Then I unbuckled my seatbelt, and slipped out of the car.

Nico followed silently.

His front door was unlocked when I reached it. At least if he was going to murder me, the police would be able to get in easily to find my body. My friends and I shared locations on our phones for safety’s sake, so they’d be able to tell the cops where to look.

I opened the door and found…

A normal house.

I could see a lot of it from where I stood.

The flooring looked like real wood, stained in a neutral shade somewhere between light and dark.

The walls were a soft, creamy color that felt comfortable.

The few frames hanging up featured gorgeous photos of wild parts of the forest. I couldn’t imagine that anyone without paws could get to those places.

There were a few signs of life—a couple of dishes in the sink. A blanket left haphazardly on the couch. A stool pulled out a few feet from the kitchen’s island.

Nothing was incredibly fancy, but it was all nice. Pretty. Comfortable.

Nico disappeared into the bedroom long enough to swap the towel he was still wearing for some clothes

While he was gone, I opened the single shut door off to my left and peered inside. The room was empty, but I didn’t think that was recent. It didn’t smell like paint or anything.

I heard his quiet footsteps on the wood as he came back.

“I was going to turn that into an office, but I’ve never needed one,” Nico explained.

I tried not to snoop too much, but my feet carried me across the room. I leaned over the windowsill, staring out into the forest.

There were no other houses in sight.

Just trees, and dirt.

Suddenly, I didn’t hate the dirt as much.

I opened the closet door, and my eyebrows shot upward when I took in multiple massive stacks of fictional books. There were no bookshelves, but I spied classics, fantasy books, and even a few paranormal romances.

“You collect books?” I looked back at him.

“I… guess. I was drawn to the bookstore every time I went into town over the past few years. I never read them, but something said I needed them. Guess I was nesting without realizing it.”

“Nesting?” I looked back at the books, dragging my fingertip over the spines.

Some were new, but most looked like they’d been read and appreciated already.

I loved that. As much as I liked seeing the gorgeous photos of perfectly-posed bookshelves on social media, mine were always packed to the brim and overflowing.

I cared about the stories, and was shitty with style.

“It happens to werewolves before they meet their fated mate. They collect things. Toilet paper. Non-perishable food. Money.”

“And books.”

“Apparently.”

“Well, I approve.”

A soft rumble deep in my throat said that the wolf inside me did too.

Nico was waiting stiffly in the doorway when I made it back out. He followed behind me as I looked around his entire house, peeking in cabinets and closets too.

I didn’t find any weapons. Or any more books.

Just normal things that any human—or werewolf—would need.

The house was beautiful, though. A twenty-eight-year-old woman’s wet dream. My friends and I had drooled over pictures of furniture and houses as gorgeous as Nico’s since we met, and I’d done the same thing on my own before that.

When I made it out to the back porch, I froze just outside the door.

I’d stopped so suddenly that Nico’s chest met my back. His hand grazed my hip before he pulled away.

The porch was stunning, with a massive hammock, a huge couch, and fireplace that fit the rest of the house’s vibes too. I instantly pictured myself curled up on the furniture with my kindle in my hands and a few paperbacks at my feet.

The view was what really fueled the fantasy.

The porch had an almost-clear view of the lake, with a few trees basically framing it.

Sunlight glittered on the surface of the water, and the forest wrapped all the way around the perimeter.

I could see parts of a few other back porches around it, but they were all plenty far away.

“This is stunning,” I admitted, taking a few steps onto the porch before sitting down on the couch.

It was as comfortable as it was gorgeous.

I had been lusting after a sectional like that for ages.

I leaned against the cushions, and studied Nico.

He was still standing in the doorway.

And he still looked uncomfortable.

I wasn’t completely oblivious. It had been pretty obvious when he put walls up between us. The man wasn’t exactly sly.

“Do you want to talk?” I asked.

“No.” His answer was immediate. And he still sounded different.

“Let me rephrase that: we should talk.”

He didn’t disagree, and his expression was neutral enough to hide whatever he was thinking.

“We obviously have different perspectives on the sex thing. Considering that we’re different species—or we were different species—I don’t think that’s insane. Do you?”

“No,” he admitted. “I can understand why waiting for your mate would seem insane to a human.”

“And if you and your wolf know you have a fated mate, I can see why you would wait for them,” I agreed.

“I don’t personally think there’s only one possible soulmate for someone, but I do think that if fate pairs two compatible people, they can learn what each other want and like both in bed and in the rest of their lives. ”

Nico nodded, looking slightly more at ease. “I wouldn’t want you more or less if I’d been with other people.”

I didn’t necessarily agree with that, but who was I to tell him he was wrong?

I hadn’t lived his life. I’d never been raised a werewolf. Maybe they experienced relationships differently than the rest of us. And maybe that was okay.

Regardless, I could accept that I’d been insensitive at the very least, if not cruel. To both Nico and to myself. Telling him he’d only enjoyed screwing me because he hadn’t been with anyone else was fucked up on so many levels. All of which I probably needed to work through.

“I believe you.” My words were simple, but his shoulders relaxed immediately. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“You were taken by surprise. I understand that.” Nico finally stepped away from the door and sat down on the couch with me.

He left a few feet between us, but that didn’t surprise me.

I deserved it, and he still didn’t look completely at ease.

“My wolf is fighting me. He never does this,” Nico said.

My eyebrows lifted. “Because of me?”

He nodded. Frustration flickered on his face before his expression went neutral again. I got the impression that he was pretty good at hiding his emotions, if not just ignoring them straight-up.

“Well, what does he want?” I checked.

“I don’t know.” The admission sounded painful.

“What do wolves usually want?”

“Attention. Acknowledgment. Appreciation.”

I blinked.

That was kind of a lot.

“Physical affection,” he added reluctantly.

That was easier than the other options.

I scooted across the couch and swung one leg over his lap, straddling him and wrapping my arms around his neck as I sat down. “Like this?”

His hands were on my hips in an instant, his grip tight. “If you’re comfortable with it.”

“I basically jumped you in my apartment’s bathroom, Cucumber. I think we’ve established my comfort level.”

“You never finished your thought about sexting.”

Ohh.

Right.

“A cucumber is one of the things people use to represent a cock.”

Nico’s eyebrows lifted. “So you’ve been calling me Cock?”

“No. You introduced yourself by saying you needed to grab a cucumber. I couldn’t help but associate you with the word.”

He snorted “I did, didn’t I?”

“Yup.”

“Why didn’t you walk away?”

“You were obviously a werewolf. I was looking for a werewolf.” I looked down at our laps pointedly. “And you have a very nice cucumber.”

His lips stretched in a reluctant grin as he pulled me with him, leaning back against the couch a bit to make himself more comfortable. Whatever tension had remained in his shoulders was gone. “Finally, someone appreciates it.”

I laughed. “Definitely. I appreciate your house, too. This place is gorgeous.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. Living here would be a dream. Reading a book in front of a fire while birds fly around the lake and the forest? I’m definitely not opposed. It’s too bad my job’s an hour away. There’s no way I’d be able to wake up early enough for that commute.”

“We could live there during the week and here on the weekends.”

“We could.”

Or I could take that online teaching job I’d been itching to accept.

I wasn’t going to bring up that option, though. We weren’t there yet. There was still a chance he could try to murder me.

The likelihood of that was seeming smaller and smaller, but still.

On top of that, my friends were opposed to me taking it.

So, the situation was complicated.

I’d just have to figure it out.

“Tell me about your friends,” Nico said. “You know the basics about my pack. You can meet them tonight, if you want. We usually have dinner together.”

“You saw all of them at the restaurant. Or your wolf did, I guess. It’s going to be an awkward conversation when you meet them in human form and I tell them you have the same name as the wolf.” I made a face.

“It’ll work out.”

“Fingers crossed.” I held mine up, and he did the same.

Then put his hand back on my hip.

“I’m closest with Jade. She teaches Biology 101.

She hikes with Stella a lot, so they’re pretty close.

I do things with everyone else too, though.

” I rattled off their names and what they taught, and Nico listened like it was more interesting than it was.

“Stella teaches art. Emmy teaches elementary education. Maya teaches cooking. Zoe teaches math. Some people are closer than others, but we all hang out in a group a lot of the time.”

“They’re your pack,” Nico said.

“I guess so. I’ve never really had a pack before, so it’s been nice to have them. I don’t want to lose that if we end up being mates.”

“We are mates. And that’s not going to happen. You’re not going to lose your friends because of me.”

“Here’s hoping.”

Nico stood up, lifting me off the couch with him. “Do you know what we need?”

“No…”

“Cookies.” He carried me back into the house and to the kitchen, setting me down on the countertop. “My grandma makes cookies for everything. She says they make the hard times easier and the good times better.”

“Then she sounds like a good grandma.”

“She is.”

I asked him questions about his childhood while he added ingredients to a stand mixer easily enough to prove he’d done it dozens of times before.

He asked more questions about mine.

The conversation was easy.

Lighthearted.

Genuine, but playful.

I loved every minute of it.

When the cookies were done and our stomachs were nearly bursting after downing all of them, we slipped out onto the porch.

Nico coached me through another shift, and though the pain was still brutal, I tried to do what he said and let the wolf take over. It went a little faster than before, and the pride in his eyes made my wolf preen.

She took off into the forest while he was still in human form. His laugh followed her into the trees, and it was only moments later when his wolf caught her.

He tackled her playfully, and they tumbled in the dirt, then in the mud. Running around the forest, they spent ages just having fun together.