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Mate. Mate. Mate. Shit.
Flying to Brazil was always exciting. There was just something about the atmosphere that made Cora’s blood hum. But this time, well this time she was more than excited.
She’d been sweaty and anxious the entire trip! After her commercial flight, she was surprised to see her name on a sign held up by a private pilot who escorted her to a helicopter.
The second flight was a mere forty-five minutes, but the views had been incredible. The second Cora spotted the gleaming palace or castle or whatever the hell it was called she’d been awestruck.
Like something out of a fairytale it stood among the gray and white mountain. A gleaming stone fixture with turrets and towers, and a real live moat! Okay maybe it was a fishing pond, but it looked like a moat.
She’d eagerly leapt out of the helicopter for the small automobile waiting for her and waved the driver off wanting to journey the rest of the way herself.
It was quite the adventure she’d told herself, wondering if she’d have time over the next week to visit the sandy shores she’d seen while flying overhead.
That was before she’d stepped foot inside the magical estate. The second she did, her nose twitched, her Lynx bolted upright inside her mind’s eye and Cora picked up on one irrefutable fact. Mate! Gulp. Someone inside this castle was hers.
Someone who smelled delicious like smoky hardwood and fresh pine trees. Her inner Lynx tensed, readying for the hunt.
Go. Find him. Pounce, the she-Cat demanded she hurry inside and search for the owner of that tantalizing fragrance.
“Ola! You are from Merlin Banking Solutions? Merda,” a thin guy who looked more like a geek than any kind of supernatural shook his head. He stood just next to the enormous gilt door shaking his head.
She straightened her shoulders, holding her breath for a moment. She was still startled by her discovery and hoped beyond hope that this person was not whom fate had chosen for her.
Shit. She didn’t mean to be an ass about things. Guilt assaulted her immediately. She knew better than to judge any book by its cover, having been judged for being slightly overweight most of her life.
Disappointment flooded her. She just wasn’t ready for a mate. Any mate. Especially not this guy. It wasn’t just his lack of appeal, but the fact he was looking at her like she was a piece of junk mail. Not hatred really, but close enough.
Great, even this guy is judging me!
It wasn’t easy being chubby in a family of super fit Shifters. Iberian Lynxes were endangered in the wild, and the Shifter species was also considered quite rare. Unlike Wolves and Bears, they did not have Packs or Clans, and relied upon their families to teach them what they needed to know about Shifter life.
Like those other Shifters, Lynxes were usually tall, fit, and muscular. Obviously, Cora’s genes had taken a wrong turn somewhere. She was short and plump. Or fluffy like her bestie Stephanie called the BFF trio! She, Steph, and Leandra were all over the normal weight suggested by whatever sick bastard came up with that BMI chart.
You know, the one designed to make every female in the world hate herself. Yeah, well, fuck that guy. Cora was curvy, healthy, and she happened to like herself. Skinny geek boy could just go back to where he came from.
Lynx’s were usually solitary beasts, but because of their small numbers they tended to get together for social events to encourage mating between those of them lucky enough to still be unrelated. Eurasian Lynx Shifters and Bobcats often joined those events as they were similar enough to the Iberian Lynx and suffered from the same population crisis.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how she felt about it at the time, Cora had only attended a handful of the events and always came up empty. Her mother, being a hopeless romantic, insisted she only go to see if her Fated Mate was there. And he hadn’t been. Not yet.
In fact, she’d had no inkling that the universe had even thought about gifting her with her perfect half. Until now. Mate, her Lync insisted. Uh oh.
“Hello? I asked if you are from Merlin?” The skinny young man inquired yet again.
She could see from the look of him, he was not big into his looks. His hair was too long, his glasses were crooked, and his clothes were too small even for him. He could use a little advice.
“Uh, yes,” she answered his question.
The action caused her to breathe and when she did, she exhaled with relief that this was not her one. Especially since he was a normal, and she had no interest in walking on eggshells her entire life.
Normals had proven too fragile for her to date in the past. In fact, some Shifters did as well. Even a chubby Shifter had some serious pack to her punch.
She’d gotten into trouble a few times as a cub for using said punch against normals. Not that she felt too bad about it. After all, Hayden Jones had called her a fatso on plenty of occasions to warrant the punch to the nose she’d given him in fifth grade.
It didn’t matter now. She was a lot more confident than she had been in grade school. Had dated a couple of really nice men who liked the way she looked. Besides, she no longer thought of herself as fat. She preferred to think of herself as curvy. Hey, a girl had to eat and being a Shifter meant she had a pretty large appetite.
Hopefully, whoever her mate was, he would be fine with that. Curiosity and fear warred with each other as she slowly followed the skinny guy down the tastefully decorated corridor.
The castle was even more impressive from the inside. She was momentarily dumbstruck as she looked around. The place was remarkable.
Modern art hung next to classical pieces in perfect harmony. Her heels clicked on the highly polished marble floors, occasionally cut with impressive delicate rugs. The freshly painted walls were a light, airy color not really beige but not white either. Gold moldings marked the ceilings and doorways, she couldn’t tell if they were just painted or real gold.
She had a feeling they were the latter as she marveled at the gleaming finish. Like metal rather than wood. Polished wooden chairs with rose colored cushions and a matching antique sofa were arranged in front of one fireplace. A beautifully finished coffee table sat at the center.
Floor to ceiling windows overlooked the mountainside bringing a rush of green and blue skies, the pristine glass brought life into the castle. Tall vases with freshly cut flowers were spread throughout the space. She even spied a potted tree or two.
It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Wonderfully so, she thought to herself with a wide smile. Whoever had designed this place had done so with a distinct eye, creating a striking and yet comfortable atmosphere.
She wondered for a moment if it was her client. And maybe, just maybe, he was her one? Imagine that? She shook her head of the foolish notion. It could just as easily be a servant or one of the contractors she saw milling about the place.
Was she even ready for a mate? Shifter males were notoriously chauvinistic and tended to think of their mates as little more than property. How was she going to handle this?
True she’d been living a life of work and travel, keeping that little apartment in Weehawken, New Jersey as her home base but having no real life of her own. Someone to love would be nice. But what did mating really mean?
Would she have to live here? South America was awesome, but what about her friends? Her mom? Oh no, she couldn’t leave her mom.
Slow down, Cora. The tasteful opulence of the room she wound up in was suddenly suffocating. Maybe the guy who owned this palace was just some rich jerk? She’d met them before.
Just look at all this stuff, she forced herself to try and find fault with it, but it was difficult. Yes. It was definitely a lot for a middle-class girl from New Jersey. But she had read the file on this guy and knew it was a drop in the bucket of his vast wealth. She swallowed hard.
Crap. If this was her mate, he might think she was nothing but a gold digger. Beneath him in some way.
“Just breathe,” she murmured to herself.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said to the young man and turned down yet another corridor. How big was this place anyway?
He stopped in front of a pair of heavy wooden double doors carved with a mountainous landscape and she wondered for a moment if it was this mountain.
Then the incredibly thin young man opened the doors and the scent was back. Smoky hardwood and fresh pine. Gulp. Cora stilled. Her head turned. Eyes taking a moment to refocus in the brightness of the room, she spotted him.
The air left her lungs in a loud whoosh. Her mind went blank. All she could do was stare. Cora couldn’t help herself. He seemed to attract her complete attention like nothing ever had.
He could utterly ruin me, she thought. Like a moth to a flame. The raw power radiating off the perfect specimen before her was practically tangible. Her Lynx roared inside her mind’s eye. Mate!
The stranger was devastatingly handsome. Tall and muscular, she could tell even from his present position behind the beautiful antique desk with his eyes trained on his laptop. His chair was more of a throne with its velvet cushion and gilded ornaments, but it suited him. He looked regal. Majestic. Completely alluring.
The juxtaposition between such lavish luxury and the simple cotton t-shirt he wore should have been funny, but Cora found nothing humorous. In fact, it only made his impossible masculinity all the more seductive.
Long, black hair tied tightly at his nape, he blew back a few strands that escaped to fall around his aristocratic face.
She wanted to go to him and fix it. To smooth the edges of his harsh expression, but she stayed rooted to the spot. Struck dumb as it were. Until he opened his perfectly ruthless mouth.
“Alameda. Send. Her. Away. And tell them to send a man.”
After a brief verbal fencing, she found herself wrapped in his arms, kissing his lips, ready to give him anything.
Gulp.
Mate, her Lynx hissed.
