Tasha

I always loved coming up to the cabin. I almost always came here by myself, but sometimes I brought Chloe. It was my sanctuary. Nice and quiet and peaceful. I’d had some of my most productive writing times here.

Until now.

I couldn’t write a damned thing. It wasn’t the bears. They were mostly quiet and out of site, patrolling the perimeter and taking turns resting in their trailers. I only saw them for dinner or when they came into the house to have a strategy session with Wanda.

No, the problem was Wanda. We’d been here for three days now. It had been three days since she’d laid me out on my dining room table and fucked me with her fingers and tongue until I was ready to burst, and then pulled away. And ever since then she hadn’t touched me once.

I made a point of initiating contact, brushing by her whenever I could, pressing my leg against hers under the dinner table, or touching her shoulder as I walked by. But there had been no reaction from her, other than a subtle stiffening in her posture or the slight movement of her moving away from me.

A few times our eyes had met, and we’d exchanged long, heated gazes like two people in one of those Victorian period romances about star-crossed lovers. But this wasn’t the lady in love with the stable hand. This was real life.

Wanda was laser focused on her work. I got that. I also understood that I’d hurt her with my reaction to the mate revelations. I don’t know why I’d acted like that. It had just seemed so absurd, like maybe someone was pranking me or something. For a girl who’d grown up always feeling unwanted and unloved, it felt too good to be true.

Plus it all seemed so fantastical. Some mysterious power that determined who your life partner would be. The idea that there was one person who was perfect for you. It went against everything I knew to be true about life and relationships.

I’d been doing some research about fated mates while I was here, and yesterday when I took a walk with Boris I’d asked him about how it worked. In only three days, it felt like Boris was one of my best friends.

Most of the research I found on fated mates was about shifters, not vampires. Boris had explained that fated mates were more rare with Wanda’s kind, and since they were a cooler headed species, they didn’t get as crazy about their mates like the shifters did.

“They feel the pull very strongly,” Boris explained. “But shifters are more in touch with their primal sides, where vampires have more human characteristics than us. But one thing I do know, is that once they mark you, there’s a mating frenzy that happens.”

“Mating frenzy?” I asked.

“Once they are fully bonded, they can’t get enough of their mate. Sexually I mean. That’s when their demon side comes out. They say the first few days with your mate, the building could fall down around you and you wouldn’t notice because you’re too busy having sex again and again.”

Maybe I was imagining it, but I could swear that Boris was blushing a little as he said it.

“Demon side?” I asked in confusion.

“Most supernatural people are two spirited,” he explained. “Me, I have bear inside me as well as man. The vamps have a demon inside. Not the scary demon like in movie – although they can be scary – but a regular demon.”

“A regular demon?” I felt ridiculous just parroting questions back at him, but sometimes when we were talking the language barrier got in the way.

“There are many demons in this world, Tasha. Some are good, some are evil, most are just regular people like you and me, they just have different kinds of powers.”

Later that evening we were sitting around the table eating dinner when I slammed my hands down on the table and moaned, “I need my chef!”

Conversation stopped as all eyes turned to me.

“What is wrong with the spaghetti?” Wanda asked.

The pasta came from a box and the sauce came from a jar, for one, but I didn’t want to be bougie about it. Even though I was totally bougie about my food.

“We’re eating too many carbs,” I complained instead. “Bread, spaghetti, lasagna, rice, I’m not going to be able to fit into my clothes when we get back. Plus, it’s making me sluggish, mentally and physically. I can’t get a damned thing done.”

Of course, I wasn’t sure how much of that was due to being around Wanda and how much was due to carbs. I was hoping it was the carbs, because I really needed to get some songs written for my new album.

“If you’re done with your little tantrum, Princess, we were planning on telling you that we think we should come up with excuses to bring some of your team here one or two at a time,” Wanda said. “Since they’ll have to stay with us or nearby, we can watch them more carefully. Hopefully one of them will misstep and show their hand.”

“And if they don’t?” I asked.

“Then I guess it’s back to the drawing board.”

There had been no letter since we left Seattle, but we all knew it was only a matter of time before another one came. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be anything dead with the next one.

“Great. Start with Monica,” I said emphatically. “She can prep stuff for a couple of weeks for us while she’s here. I don’t care how much extra I have to pay her, I need some decent food before I die.”

I was full on whining now and I could see Wanda resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

“Fine, we’ll start with Monica. Does that make you happy, Princess?”

“Very.”

When Monica came up the next morning she wasn’t alone. Her brother Mark was with her. Mark was part of my regular security team, and he was the one who’d introduced me to Monica when he overheard me talking about needing a personal chef.

I was pretty sure Mark had a crush on me. He was different from the rest of my team. Flirtier. Standing closer to me. Staring at me. Asking personal questions while the others were of the ‘seen and not heard’ variety. A few times Monica had made comments implying that she’d like to fix me up with her brother, but I’d just laughed it off.

It was flattering really, and totally harmless. He’d been with me when I had dates, so I knew that Mark knew that I was a lesbian. Not that anything had happened with anyone I’d gone out with publicly. Before Wanda laid me out on the dining room table, I hadn’t had anything close to sex in several years.

It was one of the things that made me wonder the most if the fated mate thing was true. Normally I just wasn’t very sexual. It took a while for me to warm up to someone, and even longer to have any desire to be intimate with them. But with Wanda, I’d wanted her the second I’d laid eyes on her. I was fantasizing about her like a teenager with a crush. I even found myself making excuses to go down to the dining room to see her when we were both supposed to be working. It was pathetic.

“My God Tasha, this place is fabulous!” Monica gushed as she entered the cabin, her arms laden with bags of food. “I mean, the kitchen is a little basic, but the view is incredible.”

Wanda looked at the large kitchen filled with stainless steel appliances and then back at Monica. “This kitchen is at least twice the size of most people’s. I’ve lived in apartments smaller than this kitchen.”

Monica ignored her. I’d noticed that Monica seemed a little snippy with Wanda and I wasn’t sure why, but I suspected it was the vampire thing.

With Monica spending so much time in the kitchen, we’d had to tell her that my cousin was a vamp. She didn’t ask any questions, but she’d definitely been colder to Wanda since then. And she’d insisted on having Wanda store her blood in a special part of the refrigerator as if it was going to contaminate the rest of the food.

Monica fingered the cross she always wore around her neck, then turned back to me as if Wanda had never spoken. “What would you like to eat first?”

For some reason, my eyes flew right to Wanda.

Our eyes met in another one of those long, heated gazes. When I finally broke eye contact, Monica was looking between us with a sour look on her face that she quickly wiped away when she realized I could see her.

“How about some bean and rice bowls? I brought some fresh cilantro.”