Wild Magic Three: The Shade of the Earth- a M/M fantasy shifter romance

21- The Cottage

***** I hope you enjoy, peeps :)*****

SAMI—

I thought my mate was happy. I thought I was pleasing him, and that he was beginning to see how we were meant to be together, how well we fit. For many days since my mate finally claimed me, I'd thought he was happy and would move past his embarrassment and shame of mating me with time. He just needs time, I thought. He needed me to be patient, just like I'd been when he'd had to accept that he was mates to a male bobcat shifter.

I suppose I'd been wrong, huh?

My mate told me he had a surprise for me after he left his duties for the night, which was how I ended up here, staring at the cute little cottage next to the lake I enjoyed swimming in when the days got real hot. My mate gestured to the cottage, smiling a weird sort of happy-embarrassed smile.

"It's... this is your home now, Sami. Do you like it?"

I turned from my mate, out to the setting sun just past the lake, the colors of the sunset like paint spilled into the waters. It was very pretty, and somehow that just made me angrier; sadder.

I held back the annoying tears that threatened to spill, my confusion high. I had been pleasing him. I knew I had. So why... why did he want to hide me away here, so far from his home? Would he come to visit me? I had known my mate was embarrassed by our relationship, because he always wiped me from his skin and he never told anyone I was his mate. I was still just Sami. He was shamed by me and by how prevalent my cat was— how feral I was— but to go to this extent to hide it from his friends, from the other humans?

Maybe I truly had made a mistake, pushing him the way I had. Maybe I should'a kept my hands to myself.

"Do you like it, Sami?" my mate asked again, and the hope and hesitation in his voice made me flinch.

I turned to him and smiled, making sure my face was clear of tears before I did. I couldn't let him see how much he hurt me, or he may give up and make me leave. And no matter how much it hurt to be with him and how lonely I would be here in this place, hidden away, it was better'n not having him at all.

"I like it," I lied, going to my mate and falling to my knees, reaching for his breeches, to try to hide my reaction to his pushing me away. I'd been excited when he told me he had a surprise for me; I'd thought it would be something sparkly or something to eat.

"Wait, Sami," Robert said, pushing against my shoulders and grabbing my arms, pulling me to my feet. "What's wrong? You're upset."

My mate didn't want me. Not really. He was ashamed of me and his attraction to me, because if there was one thing I'd learned while among the humans, it was that I didn't belong.

I wanted to cry, because I didn't understand what I could possibly do to make my mate happy, and to make him keep me. He was gentle when we mated, he never complained about the bruises and even the cuts I inflicted on him in my desperation to get closer, feel more, taste him fully, pull him inside me as deep as he could go. I had even seen him gazing in the little looking-glass he used to shave in the mornings with a gentle smirk on his lips, fingers caressing a bite mark on his neck. But then he chose this home, where he could keep me out of sight of the other humans, embarrassed he had given into my advances, and my confusion grew.

What was so wrong with me, that made my mate feel shame enough to hide me away?

ROBERT—

Things moved along the same as they had for the next week or so after I finally gave in to Sami's courting, with a glaring difference.

At night, and in the mornings, Sami proved again and again that we were as compatible sexually as it was possible for two people to be. We fucked in so many positions and for so long each night I gained the illogical fear I may actually fuck my dick clean off. Sami's tight ass and wicked tongue proved to me I had been missing out my entire life without him. Some of the things he did to me... gods, I blushed just thinking about them.