I love you, Javier... my mate.
Chapter Fifteen
Javier held Heidi against him until she shivered, and then he told her to get dressed. After pulling on the pair of jeans from the tent, he glanced at the cloud cover and decided the rain would hold off a little longer, so he built a fire in the small pit he’d fashioned a few days earlier and brought down the cache of scavenged foods he’d raised into the tree limbs overhead.
“Where’d you get all this stuff?” she asked, huddled in her damp jacket, warming her hands over the fire.
“Here and there.” He handed her a package of cookies and a can of cola.
Heidi narrowed her eyes at him, and he grinned.
“You’re a thief.”
“Where I am from, jaguars are considered wily, not thieves. Sit here.” He positioned a piece of deadfall close to the fire.
She sat without another word and tore into the cookies’ plastic wrapping. After she consumed a couple and popped the top on the cola, she said, “I was really pissed when I got here and saw the tent and fire ring.”
“I...heard you.” He opened his own can of soda and sat on the ground next to her.
“Why didn’t you show yourself then?”
He gave her a sheepish grin. “You are rather formidable when you are angry.”
She shoved his shoulder and laughed. “It’s good to know I can put the fear of God into my mate.”
She sipped the drink. “My brothers have never been scared of me.”
He took her hand in his and brought her fingers to his mouth, kissing the backs of each one. “Your brothers have never lived in fear of you rejecting them.”
She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and laid her cheek against the top of his head. “I told you, in your hotel room, I didn’t want you to go. How could I ever reject you?”
He sighed in contentment. His woman. His mate.
“We didn’t use protection,” she said softly.
He tensed. She did not want to have his children? He’d been so sure. “No, we did not.”
There was a long stretch of silence, in which he tried to decide how to continue the subject. This was something they needed to discuss, and he’d do anything in his power to convince her to try to have children with him. If it didn’t work, he was open to adoption, so long as she was there by his side. He would never let her go, of course, even if she rejected both ideas, but it would hurt. Knowing there was hope, even if it were slim...
“My period came the day after you disappeared,” she murmured, and then she slid off her seat and onto his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck after she set her soda can on the ground. “I cried. I had so hoped that a miracle happened that one night we weren’t careful.”
“You want children,” he said, gazing into her amber eyes, willing to lose himself there forever.
“Almost as much as I want you.”
“Then why the condoms?”
She nuzzled her nose against his neck and sighed. “I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”
He chuckled and squeezed her tight. “Oy, chata. You are a wonderful, crazy woman.”
With a frown on her face, she leaned back and looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He just grinned. “I will do everything in my power to impregnate you.”
“I’m sure you will.” She sobered a little and her face grew wary. “Um. There’s...” She cleared her throat and patted his shoulder. “Shit.”
“What is it?” he asked, worried at her change. “What is wrong?”
“Axel.”
“Ahh.” He nodded. “Yes. I must admit he has crossed my mind.”
“You didn’t exactly ask his permission to claim me.”
Javier raised one eyebrow, which made Heidi laugh.
“What are we supposed to say to him? He’s going to be pissed, you know that, right? He’s the family alpha.”
Javier cupped her chin. “Heidi.”
She raised her eyebrows in question.
“He is not your alpha any longer. I am your protector now, your mate.” He held his breath, waiting for her response.
A smile tilted her lips, and she placed a soft kiss on his cheek. “I know. I am yours. But I’m going to be far, far away when you tell my big brother that.”
He hugged her hard, crushing her body against his, and laughed.
“I do have a couple of questions.” She pushed back to look him in the face again and then straddled his lap, making herself more comfortable.
“Anything, my love.”
She touched the scars at his throat, then on his stomach and sides.
“Is the Russian snow leopard...”
“Dead.”
“Good. So we never have to worry about anything like that again?”
“I pray that is the case.”
She huffed out a quick breath. “What about Isabel?”
“I do not understand. She has been gone for two years.”
Heidi swallowed hard and set her hands on his shoulders. “When you first came here, you dreamed about her. The first time you kissed me, you were half asleep, and you said her name.”
“I am sorry, Heidi. I was...not myself.”
“I know that. I understand. You were on a lot of medication. What I need to know is...” She bit her bottom lip, her brow furrowing.
He touched her cheek with his fingertips, her concern evident in her inability to speak her mind easily. “What do you need to know?”
“Can you love me like you loved her?”
“Oh, chata.” He pulled her into his arms once again and pressed his cheek to hers. “I love her. I will always love her. And at times I am certain I will remember her as I do my brother Juan. But she is my past. You are my present and my future.”
In his time here in Heidi’s glade, he’d come to realize that Isabel had loved him as he had loved her.
If she were the one still alive, he’d want her to find happiness. He had done what he set out to do.
Isabel’s murder had been avenged. Now it was his time to live, to love again.
Heidi breathed out a slow sigh and relaxed against his chest. “Good. Because I’d fight her ghost for you, you know.”
He smiled into her damp, mussed hair and breathed in her sweet scent. “That, my little cougar, I am sure of.”
“One more question.”
He dropped his hands down her back and cupped her sweet, round ass. “Go on.”
“What does chata mean?”
He barked with sudden laughter, tumbling backward and pulling her with him.
“What? Why are you laughing so hard?”
“It means you are my sweet funny face.”
Heidi gasped in indignation and tried to get off him, but he banded her to his body with his arms.
She smacked his shoulders. “You think I look funny?”
He rolled her beneath him and pinned her arms and legs, all the while still laughing. “It is a word of affection where I am from. You have the cutest little nose.” He kissed her adorable nose. “When I awoke in that cage and saw you there, even though I was furious and in pain, your beauty, your charming face... I felt affection for you.”
Heidi’s expression of anger slipped into a grin. “Don’t you ever tell my brothers what it means.”
He kissed her on the nose, the cheeks, the chin. “Never, chata. It is my word for you, and you alone.” He kissed her again, and again, and again.
Two months later Heidi stared at her reflection in the mirror and couldn’t believe the woman who looked back. The gown was new, purchased on a whirlwind shopping trip to Seattle with her sisters-in-law. When she found it in a store that sold vintage clothing, she’d snatched it up, much to Beth’s and Dakota’s dismay. They’d wanted her to buy the traditional white gown with a flowing train, lots of lace and a ten-foot long veil. Overly dramatic in Heidi’s opinion.