A Mating Dance Read Online Free

the cuddling?”
    “I always cuddle with you.”
    Yeah, he did, but it was never in public or even around family or friends. She raised a brow. He took his arm from around her and sat straight. She noticed he cast a glance to Graham, who had sat in an armed chair diagonally to their right watching them.
    Narrowing her eyes and pressing her lips together, she held Graham’s stare until the male looked away. She was so not doing this.  She couldn’t do it. Blaine was enough, all she ever wanted and needed.
    Wasn’t he? Why in the hell did Graham make her want things that were impossible to have?
    She had never really been sure about her future, and entering the mating dance with Blaine at the age of nineteen had only tamed her jaguar a little. She was young and hadn’t wanted to complete the mating bond then. When she went into heat for the first time at twenty-two, she was glad to have him. She got pregnant and was both happy ¬and scared shitless at the same time. Yet, she still hesitated with forming the mating bond with him. Then she lost their child in her fourth month of pregnancy, halting all plans of mating and having a future.
    Uncertainty and fear consumed her, making her withdraw from her mate and the new family she’d found in Ashwood. Well, not everyone.  It was hard to push Blaine away too far. The stubborn male didn’t possess the phrase “back off” in his vocabulary. And her two best friends, Dani and Shay, were impossible to stay away from. About two weeks after the miscarriage, they’d shown up at her apartment with a couple of bottles of wine and forced her out of her depression.
    Cameron was grateful for her friends. Without them she would have left Ashwood and left the pain behind with it.
    Taking a deep breath, she stepped off memory lane and returned to the present. Her gaze landed on Graham. His short blond hair was unruly, as though he ran his hands through it constantly. When his blue eyes lifted to stare into hers, she suppressed a groan as desire threatened to rise. Something about those blues, something in his stare and the way they darkened ever so slightly when he looked at her made her want things she shouldn’t, couldn’t have.
    The damned sexy mountain lion tempted her like no one other than Blaine had.
    Shit. She was in trouble.
    Shay sat beside her, drawing her from her worries. “Care to share your thoughts?” she purred.
    Cameron looked at her and smiled. Her best friend glowed with life like the happy, mated, pregnant female she was. Cam took her hand and leaned her forehead against hers. “Pissing contest.”
    Shay’s smile faded as she peered over at her brother then Nevan’s stepbrother. Then amusement lit up her features. “Oh, man.”
    “Yep.” Cameron sighed.
    Keegan emerged from the kitchen chewing on something and nodded at Graham in greeting. Cameron knew Graham had been in the den for a couple of days now, working with Luna on a new centralized nursery and school. So it wasn’t surprising that Keegan didn’t bother with formalities. Plus, no one came into Ashwood Falls without meeting the Alphas first.
    Keegan sat down on a dining room chair he drug in with him and said, “This will be an informal meeting. I’d like for Graham to explain a little about his relationship with the kids. Then we’ll decide what to do next.”
    Graham cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable as he began to speak. “Isaac, the children’s father, and I were lovers. I met Isaac a few months before Max was born. He was full of life, happy, and content with a seven-year-old Sammie and his human mate about to give birth to a son. Then everything changed after Max was born. Libby grew depressed and started having doubts about raising puma cubs.”
    Graham paused, and Cameron wondered if the pain she felt rolling off him was grief for Libby or Isaac, or maybe the kids.
    He sighed and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. “Isaac found her on the bathroom floor when