Total pages in book: 203
Estimated words: 199654 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 998(@200wpm)___ 799(@250wpm)___ 666(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199654 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 998(@200wpm)___ 799(@250wpm)___ 666(@300wpm)
49
BAILEY
I wake up under a wall of Jase and sigh happily at the evidence it wasn’t a dream. I’m on my stomach and he’s sprawled almost entirely over me.
And I feel safe. I feel like me. I think I’m more me than ever, thanks to fulfilling Fate’s plan. And I’m both elated and excited, because I really am mated to Jase. And I have a wolf!
What will today bring? We have no plans. Nowhere to be, other than together.
I want more of what we did last night. Lots more of that, though I definitely feel sore today.
And I also want to shift.
We ate our burgers while I went through the Skye Quinn mating basket and drank the mead, which I’ve drank before but never enjoyed as much as last night. Because it’s the honeymooning tradition around here, something I wasn’t sure I’d ever take part in.
I also opened gifts from Jase’s family. His parents gave us a generous gift certificate for a furniture store. I can’t wait to buy new furniture! The card read from Mom, Dad, and “the girls” (I assume she meant all three but know better than to think Sherry had anything to do with gift-giving where I’m concerned). Jase’s parents also gifted us a set of high-end pots and pans, which was nice, though it’s not like I can use them. Taylor gave us a beautiful set of a dozen photo frames with a lovely note about setting up photoshoots so we can fill them with our memories. She’s been hobbying at photography since she had kids and she’s very talented.
There’s one frame already filled. It’s a photo of us when we were kids, me as a toddler in pigtails and a pink dress, extending a melting strawberry ice cream cone in Jase’s direction, offering him some. He’s sitting in the grass with a strand of wheat in his mouth, dimples popping while he looks at me.
“I love this so much,” I said, cradling it to my chest. “Where did it come from?”
And his dimples popped in response. “Mom had that in a photo album. Tay must have snatched and enlarged it.”
And he kept smiling the whole time I opened presents, didn’t want to open any of them himself.
Gwen gave us a beautiful cream and black quilt with matching pillow sham cases with an eclipse pattern on it with Creed embroidered in the corner. The pillowcases read I love you on one and to the moon and back on the other. On the reverse of the I love you says Mrs. B. Creed. Mr. J Creed is embroidered on the other. I know she made this set herself. I have no idea when she started working on it, but I’m sure that she likely finished it after finding out it’s a letter B to be added to the hers pillow.
The Skye Quinn mating basket was beautifully done, and as usual it was jam-packed with her handmade bath and body products as well as another bottle of the honey mead along with a bottle of Andy’s moonshine for Jase. There were half a dozen jars of yummy stuff, including a coincidental apple and cinnamon butter as well as Jase’s favorite hot pepper-infused honey.
After our burgers, I took a shower and Jase slipped in with me, dreamily caring for me, washing my hair, conditioning it, and using the hers washcloth with Skye’s snickerdoodle bodywash.
And when I reached for the his washcloth to return the favor, he stopped me because he had an immense and urgent need to immediately mark me with his scent.
I leaned back against the tiled wall, avidly watching him quickly shampoo and scrub with vigor from head to toes, but he also put conditioner in his hair which made me laugh. Because of course he did. I hear most men don’t bother, or use a three-in-one shampoo, conditioner, and bodywash combination, but this explains why his hair always looks so soft. If I needed glasses to watch that show, they would most certainly have fogged up not just from the steam but also from how hot he is.
After walking me back to bed, Jase gave me a head to toe look that felt like an inspection I had just passed with flying colors.
“Towel off and lay on your back.”
I followed his instructions, squeezing the excess water from my hair into a towel, not loving that the fresh bedding was about to get wet, but since the bed had way more pillows than necessary, I decided I’d toss whatever one my hair drenched out of the way for sleeping. I also noted with an internal squee that I needed to bring my hairdryer over, along with everything else I own.
“I don’t want you to think of this as degrading,” he warned, dropping his towel.
I had trouble paying attention to the next part because my eyes were taking in the miles of muscle and ink in front of me, not to mention the inked Bailey permanently written on his skin.