Loving York (Warwick Dragons #2) - Milly Taiden Page 0,32

spoke. Josie didn’t dare breathe as she waited for the impending end. There was no way he would forgive her. Yes, she was his mate. He had said he would help her, but Josie wasn’t naive enough to think that they would go on as they had.

Even if that’s what she wanted more than anything in the world.

“Josie,” York finally said, his voice raspy and full of emotion. He slid her off his lap and onto the seat beside him.

York ran his hands through his hair, his legs bouncing nervously as he avoided looking directly at her.

This was it.

Chapter Fourteen

York

“Josie.”

Her name tumbled out of his mouth. There was no way York could focus on what he needed to say when his mate was sitting on his lap. It was impossible to have her so close and not touch her. He needed a second to compose himself and plan out what he was going to say.

This was a delicate situation, and he knew he had to handle it with all of the care and gentleness he had. He reluctantly slid Josie off his lap, and let his feet beat out his nerves against the floor.

Josie was still and quiet beside him as she watched him, holding her breath. He could hear her heart beating a million miles a minute. He knew just how nervous she was as she waited for him to tell her where they stood, now that she had revealed everything to him.

It was a lot.

It really was.

When Johanna had come to him with the possibility of getting a second mate, he had scoffed. When Josie had come into his life, he had been confused, but happy. The woman, with her high heels and her daredevil ways, was as fun as she was infuriating. York was feeling things again. Not just love and lust, but things. His coffee tasted better in the morning. His runs were more pleasant to get through. He had slept. Actually slept. A full night, and he knew he owed that to the fact that they had been tangled up in each other.

Josie soothed something inside of him

Not just his dragon, but the man, too.

He had been lost in his grief, shut down against the world for a hundred years. Josie had come in like a storm, forcing him to take notice of his life. He was an old, grumpy man. That’s how he had been living.

That wasn’t right. He hadn’t been living. Only surviving.

Now that he remembered what life could be like, he wasn’t willing to let it go.

He wasn’t going to let her go.

He had already lost one mate, and he wasn’t going to lose another.

Josie hadn’t lied to him, but she had kept things to herself that could have severe repercussions on their relationship. They hadn’t known each other long, so he couldn’t blame her for being wary of telling him everything. She was being manipulated by one male shifter, so her prudence made sense. The point was, she had told him. She didn’t want to steal from him and his family. He could smell that on her.

York also knew that Josie felt things for him. Her desire for him was always mixed in with her floral perfume. He couldn’t deny that she felt things for him.

“Josie,” he repeated, turning to face her. “You’ve come to mean a lot to me in the last few days. It’s not because you’re my mate, though I’m sure that helps. But there’s just something about you. It’s like my soul is finally coming to life again. I like spending time with you. And I know that it would take me very little time to fall completely in love with you.” He was a shifter, for fuck’s sake, he was already halfway there. But this was hardly the time to get into that. They had more pressing matters to attend to. “I’m not asking you to make a decision about the mate stuff right away. You’ve been under a lot of stress because of all the shit Steiner has pulled. But I wanted you to know who you are to me.”

There. He had said what he had to.

Josie’s face pulled into a tight frown, which confused the hell out of him. “You’re not breaking up with me?” She shook her head, and the rest of her words were said at warp speed. If he hadn’t been a shifter, York doubted that he would have been able to understand a single word out of her mouth. “Not