Snow Leopard's Lady (Veteran Shifters 1)

Mavis felt dizzy. She pulled herself together to say, “I think you’re overestimating me. I don’t always succeed at keeping my fears away from Nina. I try, but it’s hard. And staying with Daryl...it was the only thing to do. I couldn’t do anything else. So I pulled myself inward. Like a turtle, or a snail. Put all the vulnerable parts of me inside a shell, and made sure that Daryl only saw the shell. Taking them out again, after Nina got in contact with us, was hard, and it hurt, but I’m so happy to be a whole person again, instead of just a—wall.”

“I’m happy, too,” Wilson said. “I would have been disappointed not to be able to meet you as you are.”

“You wouldn’t have known,” Mavis pointed out.

“Oh,” he said, and his eyes were warm, “I think I would have known.”

Mavis leaned forward, drawn in by those beautiful eyes, and he met her halfway in a kiss.

It was the sweetest, softest kiss Mavis had ever experienced. His lips were gentle against hers, and he drew her carefully into his arms, so that she was held in a pure state of warmth as he kissed her like time had stopped.

Mavis sighed against his mouth, caught up in this feeling of bliss, like she’d come to a place where, at last, she could relax and enjoy this oasis of pleasurable calm. A place where she wasn’t being careful, wasn’t conscious of her own failures and worries, but could just let herself float away on the feeling of Wilson’s mouth, lean into the support of his arms around her, and tha

t was all.

After a long, long time, he drew back. She smiled up at him. He was looking at her with an expression she couldn’t quite parse, but it had a hint of...wonder?

“I wasn’t planning on doing that,” he said after a moment. “I thought I might offer to take you out tomorrow after the wedding, and perhaps I’d kiss you then. It seemed inappropriate to do it when you invited me up here to tell me something so private. But I feel for you so deeply already.”

“I feel the same,” Mavis murmured. “I’m not sorry at all. I thought, when I invited you up...this isn’t the sort of thing I do very often, inviting men home.”

“I didn’t think it was,” he assured her. “And I didn’t take it as anything other than an invitation to talk, I promise you.”

“That’s what it was,” she said. “But I thought...I thought that it would be all right if something happened. I can’t explain it, but I feel such a connection with you.”

“Yes,” he said. “Like we’ve known each other for a long time, even as we’re just getting to know each other now.”

Mavis nodded. “With you, I feel...” She hesitated. “I feel safe. As though I don’t have to guard myself. And if you knew how long it’s been since I felt that...”

Wilson’s face contorted in some sympathetic pain, and he pulled her into his arms again. Not for a kiss this time, but just to hold her tightly. Mavis marveled once again at the feeling of safety. Like all of her guilt and pain just melted away at the feeling of him holding her.

Maybe it was because he’d felt some of the same guilt and pain, in his own past. Mavis was always aware, as she got to know people, of this gaping hole in her past, seven years of suffering that no one could possibly understand.

She talked around it. When people asked why she’d moved to northern Montana, she said she wanted to be close to her daughter, and people accepted that. If anyone pressed further, she mentioned she was going through a divorce, and that usually got a sympathetic face and no further questions.

Even with Nina, she was on her guard, because like she’d said, she needed to keep her own problems inside her own skin, and not draw Nina into them. She needed to have the relationship that was best for Nina, and that meant paying attention to Nina’s needs over her own.

She’d never wanted to tell someone else, someone outside the family. But with Wilson, she’d somehow needed him to know. And hearing that he’d gone through something similar...she could let go of that constant guardedness. She could just be Mavis, who’d lost her daughter because she couldn’t stand up to her husband. And that wasn’t all right, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

Like Wilson had said, it was time to turn her face to the future.

She wished the future could be with him. She wished he could stay here instead of going back to Washington.

But she wasn’t going to think about that. She was just going to think about how wonderful his arms felt around her.

Eventually, they parted in a way that felt completely natural; Mavis was happy to go from feeling Wilson’s arms to looking into his eyes.

“You’re trembling,” he said softly. “How long has it been since someone held you?”

Mavis felt sudden, unexpected tears prickling at her eyes. “A long, long time.” When was the last time she’d felt safe in anyone’s arms? The only person she’d hugged in the last several months was Nina, of course, and that was a different kind of happiness, tinged with a fierce protectiveness, a determination that nothing would ever take her daughter away again.

Before that...had she ever felt safe in Daryl’s arms? She didn’t know. Before Nina had left, there hadn’t been much terrible fear in her life. She hadn’t had anything she needed to feel safe from.

Daryl, of course, had never been the type of man to comfort others. He was too impatient, too caught up in his own view of the world. If he was all right, everyone else should be too, and anyone who wasn’t was just wasting his time.

Back when she’d been graduating college, with lofty ambitions about how she was going to make a place for herself in the world of finance, Mavis had admired that. Once she’d started to understand what was really important—family, friends, connecting with people and making their lives a little bit better—she’d been less and less appreciative of Daryl’s attitudes.

Even before Nina left, she and Daryl hadn’t spent much time holding each other, that was for sure.