Wanda

I never meant to kiss her. Tasha had just looked so sad, so vulnerable, and it was such a big change from her usual bold, brash self, I couldn’t help but hug her. I intended to offer her comfort, honestly I did, but when she was in my arms, I forgot all about stalkers and dead rats and threatening notes. When she initiated the kiss, I’d been helpless to resist her.

If I’d had even the slightest doubt about her being my mate, it disappeared the instant our lips touched. It was just like all the stories I’d heard from other supes. We’d kissed and I’d felt completely at peace, while simultaneously battling an intense desire to mark her. I wanted to bring her to my lair and hide her from the world while I made love to her over and over again, which was weird, because I didn’t have a lair, I just had a tiny one-bedroom apartment furnished with thrift store finds. My inner demon didn’t care about details like that.

As the kiss went on and on, it had taken every ounce of self-control to keep from biting her. Marking her as mine. My fangs had started to drop, and it had been the wake-up call I needed to pull away.

As glad as I was that Tasha was feeling the mate bond at least a little, there was no way either of us was ready for a lifetime commitment. Especially not with the stalker ramping things up. That picture was a message. They were done waiting for her to do what they wanted. With a sigh, I dialed into the office. Lois needed to know what was happening, and I needed to get someone in here to sweep for recording devices.

Thirty minutes later Lois arrived with Angie and Martha in tow. Tasha and I waited for them in the foyer. By unspoken agreement, we were both pretending like the kiss hadn’t happened even though every time I closed my eyes I could feel her soft lips against mine.

The elevator dinged, and my coworkers entered the penthouse, all of them practically bursting with excitement.

“Ms. Blue, it’s so nice to see you again,” Lois gushed. Actually gushed. I was pretty sure my boss was physically incapable of gushing like that.

“Please, call me Tasha,” my mate said with a friendly smile.

This was Performance Tasha, as I thought of her when she adopted this persona. She was friendly but distant, polite and the tiniest bit self-effacing. She reminded me of the girl next door who became a princess in the romance books I absolutely never read in the privacy of my home.

Lois introduced Tasha to Angie and Martha. Angie gave her a polite greeting then pulled out her scanning equipment, but Martha grabbed Tasha’s hand and got way too close to my mate for my taste.

“Oh my God Tasha, I’m such a huge fan,” Martha cooed, batting her eyelashes. “You’re so talented. I just love you.”

Before I knew what was happening, my fangs had dropped, and I gave a low growl of warning as I shoved my way between Martha and my mate. Everyone in the room turned to look at me. Lois glanced between me and Tasha several times, and I saw the instant she put things together.

“Martha, go help Angie scan,” she ordered. “Diaz! I’ll see you in the kitchen. Now!”

Tasha looked around in confusion, obviously picking up on the silent conversation we were all having.

“Don’t let us keep you from whatever you were going to do, Tasha,” Lois politely dismissed her. “We’ll give you a holler if we find anything of concern.”

Tasha’s gaze turned to mine again before looking away. “Um. Okay I’ll be in my practice room if you need me, Wanda.”

As soon as Tasha left the room Lois stomped into the kitchen, expecting me to follow her. Of course I did.

“So, she’s your mate, is that it?” my boss growled.

“Yeah, I think so.”

She pinned me with a hard glare. “You think so, Diaz? Either she is or she isn’t. There’s no think about it.”

“Yes, she’s my mate,” I sighed.

“You should have told me,” Lois chided. “But I understand why you didn’t. You don’t want me to pull you off the case, and I get that, but I need to have all the pertinent information for us to plan how to keep your mate safe.”

I appreciated that my boss was taking this so well. Then again, this wasn’t the first time she’d dealt with one of her staff falling for a client.

“You’re right,” I conceded.

“I can’t hear that enough,” Lois said.

I resisted rolling my eyes.

“Now tell me everything, right from the beginning,” she ordered.

Twenty minutes later we convened at the kitchen table with Martha and Angie. My coworkers had confirmed my suspicion that the picture was likely taken with a drone or someone who had accessed the fire escape since there was no evidence of any recording or listening devices in the penthouse. Lois studied the note that had come today.

“This note is different,” she stated. “It’s longer and more descriptive. The tone is almost urgent.”

“Yeah.” I’d noticed that too but hadn’t wanted to say anything about it to Tasha.

“I think you two should consider going out of town,” Lois continued. “Then we can work on a plan to smoke this guy out.”

“My mate was planning on going up to her cabin in the woods next week to write some new songs. Maybe we can go up there sooner,” I suggested.

“Mate?” Martha asked. “Whoa. Is that why you growled at me like that? Because the cute little rock star is your mate?”

I shot my coworker a glare at her calling my mate cute, but then I heard a voice behind me.

“Mate?” Tasha asked. “What does that mean?”

“Oh hell,” Lois mumbled under her breath. “It’s time for us to leave.”

Martha and Angie practically sprang from their seats.

“Good luck with this conversation,” Angie whispered, giving me a pat on the shoulder as she walked by.

Once my coworkers had run away like scared rabbits, Tasha sat at the table across from me, sipping on a bottle of water.

“What were they talking about?” she asked. “Why was she calling me a mate?”

I took a deep breath and met her gaze. “In the supernatural world, there’s this concept of fated mates,” I began. “It’s like soulmates. We believe that if we’re very lucky, fate brings us the one person in the entire world who is perfect for us. We know them the instant we see them.”

“Like love at first sight?” she asked.

“Yeah. We catch their scent and our inner being, the part of us who’s not human, gets excited, kind of like they’re waking up or something,” I explained. “And then when we touch our mates for the first time, even just shaking their hand or something, it awakens a primal need inside us to claim the person, to make sure everyone knows that they’re ours. Our mark is like a supernatural wedding ring.”

“And you felt this when you saw me?” she asked. “This, what did you call it? Primal need?”

I nodded, unable to lie to her.

Tasha huffed out a laugh.

“That’s ridiculous. I mean, I know we’re attracted to each other, but we don’t even know each other that well. There’s no way we can be soulmates. That’s just a myth. Fairy tale crap that teenage girls believe before they find out what the world is really like.”

She looked suddenly sad as she wrapped her arms around her waist, as if to protect herself.

“You sang a song about soulmates,” I reminded her. She’d made me watch the video recently as part of her campaign to convince me that I would like more than just classical music.

“That doesn’t mean I believe that shit,” she said. “I mean, no offense if you do, but you have to admit it’s kind of ridiculous.”

When I didn’t answer she laughed again, although it seemed forced. The sound was like a little knife in my heart. I couldn’t believe that my mate was rejecting me and my culture. We were very different people, and of course I was much older than she was, but I still thought we could make it work. Fate never got it wrong when it came to soulmates. But clearly Tasha didn’t feel the same.

“It’s fine Tasha, really. I’m perfectly capable of putting my feelings aside and doing my job, but if you would feel more comfortable, I could ask Lois to give you another agent.”

If she said yes it was going to kill me. But it was a sacrifice I’d make for my mate. Her happiness was way more important to me than my own was. Tasha shook her head, and I blew out the breath I was holding.

“No, we’ve already sold you as my cousin, I don’t want to have to explain some new person hanging around here now.”

As glad as I was that Tasha didn’t want me to be reassigned, I wished it was because she wanted to be near me, not because she didn’t want to come up with a new story. But for now, I’d take what I could get. My first priority was to keep her safe. Everything else would have to wait.

“The team thinks we should head up to your cabin early,” I told her. “It will be easier to keep you isolated there. Sooner or later your stalker will get twitchy, and hopefully that’s when we can nab him and put all this behind us.”

Tasha looked like she was going to say something, but instead she just nodded.

“Fine, let’s leave tomorrow.”

Tasha’s phone beeped and she pulled it out of her pocket, looking down at the message.

“That’s Chloe. She’s on her way over and wants to talk to you about the package. Can you ask her to come see me in my music room when y’all are done?”