Perfect Mate Read Online Free PDF Page B

was here, proclaiming he’d come for her. A hundred years after she’d needed
     him.
    But it was tempting to lean against him, to let him take her weight. She’d carried
     so much weight on her shoulders for so long.
    Nell started to pull away. Cormac tightened his arm behind the small of her back and
     pressed her closer, his mouth coming down on hers for a searing kiss.
    Cormac knew how to kiss. Knew how to tease her lips open, how to soften on the corners
     of her mouth. He gently drew her lower lip between his teeth, tugging it a little,
     a hint that he could take her with wildness if he let himself go.
    The cubs on the porch cheered. Nell jerked away. She took a step back, missed her
     footing, and started to fall. But Cormac’s arm was there, keeping her on her feet.
    Peigi looked a little more concerned than the kids she took care of—none of them hers,
     because she’d never conceived with Miguel. Reid simply watched with his enigmatic
     expression.
    “Do you and Cormac have the mate bond, Aunt Nell?” Donny asked.
    Nell suppressed another growl. She didn’t want to talk about the mate bond, or mate-claims,
     or mating
at all
.
    She yanked herself away from Cormac. “Don’t even try to follow me,” she said, and
     marched away down the green.
    Behind her, she heard the cubs asking questions in concern, and Cormac’s rich voice
     rumbling in answer.
    He
didn’t
try to follow her. Now why was she disappointed?
    Screw this.
Nell kept walking, going nowhere, her feet taking her there fast.
    ***
    Joe started stalking the bear Shane by going to another bar. This one was called Coolers,
     popular with Shifter groupies—humans who wanted everything from the opportunity to
     gaze at Shifters to multiple-partner sex with them in the parking lot.
    Not all groupies dressed up with fake Collars or wore fake cats’ ears or whiskers,
     thank God. Many looked normal, and Joe pretty much blended in.
    Joe was good at blending in. He’d observed the people who came here, and had bought
     clothes they’d wear—in this case, jeans from a higher-end shop at the mall and a Harley
     T-shirt.
    He knew from careful observation that Shane came to this bar quite often. Sometimes
     Shane left with a woman; sometimes he left with his brother or Shifter friends; sometimes
     he worked here as a bouncer. Only a matter of time before Joe would have the chance
     to corner Shane, maybe when the bear snuck out for a bit with one of the groupies.
     A drunk groupie woman could be taken out with a mild tranq before Joe tackled the
     harder job of tranquing and hauling away the bear.
    Hardest of all would be lugging the bear carcass someplace out into the desert to
     dump it after the kill. He’d slay the bear in one of his cabins, which he’d already
     prepared, complete with plastic for keeping the blood off the floor and walls.
    The Shifter paying the bounty said he’d take the head as proof of death. Joe would
     make sure Shane was in bear form when the bullets went into him. He knew a taxidermist
     who didn’t ask questions, so he could get the bear head stuffed before he tried to
     drive it across the border into Mexico. Less messy.
    Shane walked into the club while Joe was going over his plans for about the hundredth
     time. He’d come with his brother, plus another bear Shifter Joe hadn’t seen before
     and a dark-haired Shifter woman who didn’t look too happy.
    The table next to Joe’s had cleared out moments ago, and Joe kept his gaze on his
     beer bottle while Shane and friends approached that very table. Shane’s brother peeled
     away to go to the bar, and the Shifter woman sat heavily on the chair that the third
     Shifter man pulled out for her.
    Joe took up his beer and concentrated on two sexy human women in tight red dresses
     gyrating on the dance floor, pretending not to notice the bears at all.
    “I don’t even know why I’m here,” the Shifter woman was growling.
    “Because Cormac wanted to see the