His to Protect: Book 1 in the Bound to Him Series by Sandra Antoni (the reading list TXT) 📗

smiled as I thought about that. What she didn’t have in stature, she made up for in personality.

She had a big heart and an even bigger laugh, and her smile was a permanent fixture on her face. But man could she talk your ear off. My friends had all thought I had the “cool” parents…at least, when I was younger. She used to take me and a friend on random day trips, just to get out of the house.

Neither the friend nor I would know where we were headed. Just mom and the other parent knew. It was always a surprise. One trip was ice skating at Crown Center and then shopping, and one was to Worlds of Fun. I loved amusement parks.

But the older I got, the more it seemed my parents hovered. Maybe they had always been like that and I just never realized it until I got older. It was like they didn’t want me to spread my wings and fly, but I needed more freedom.

I sighed and looked into the living room at my father. He was my mother’s polar opposite. Quiet and reserved, soft-spoken and laid back. He was the strong one who held this little family together, and he gave the best hugs.

I could count on him for quiet talks and fatherly advice. When I had a problem that I couldn’t solve, he wouldn’t tell me how to solve it. He would talk me through it until I felt confident in my solution. The two of them were all I had, and if calling them every day on my vacation made them feel better, then that was the least that I could do.

“Thanks mom. Of course, I will call every day. Besides, I need to hear every day that you love me,” I told her, and she grinned up at me.

“You mean the world to us. You know that, Chelsea, right?” she asked, and I nodded. “Okay then, help me get this food to the table,” she continued as she grabbed the turkey and turned towards the dining room.

Ezekiel

“Hey, Zeke! Give me a hand over here, will ya?” Brady called. I walked around the corner and saw him unloading supplies from his truck. Expanding the master bathroom in my home had been a huge project, but now it was almost done. At least Brady had agreed to help.

He liked this type of work as much as I did, even though it was my house. Of course, I had just finished helping him build a new deck on the back of his place, but that had been a whole lot easier than this project. It helped that I had gotten to use his new hot tub a few times as well.

“I guess I need to get a truck, just for hauls like this, huh?” I asked him. He grinned back at me. I had been considering it, but Brady had always volunteered his truck when I needed it. Since it was just me, I really didn’t see the need for two vehicles, but the truck would come in handy.

“Nah, I don’t mind. Especially when you let me borrow your Porsche. Emily is going to love the ride tonight,” Brady replied with a grin.

Brady and Emily had been together almost a year now, but I knew that she was it for him. They were mates, and that was just how it worked with us shifters. Once we found our mate, it was for life, with or without a ring. Although, the females tended to like the ring. I already knew that Emily would be getting one soon. Brady was planning it for Christmas. What a romantic.

Working on this bathroom had worked out some of my frustration over the last couple weeks, but maybe after Brady left, I’d let my wolf out for a run. My house backed up to the Santa Catalina Mountains, and that was why I had chosen it. Sure, I could afford it, but the location was everything to me.

This location was private, and I loved the mountains. My wolf could run free. It was my life blood. Now, if I could only find my mate, my life would finally be complete. I was almost thirty years old, and that was the only thing that was missing.

Once we got the truck unloaded, we headed back inside with the last of the tile. The tile I had chosen looked like sandstone and matched the landscape around the house. It was just my style, and I could not wait for the bathroom to be finished. I hated having to go upstairs for a shower, and the half bathroom on the first floor was getting a little crowded with toiletries.

The master bathroom in this house was already huge when I bought it, but I wanted it bigger. The shower was now its own room, and the jetted tub could easily hold four people, although, I was not quite willing to try that out. I had never had a woman in here before. Sure, I’d brought women home in the past, but for some reason, I’d always used one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Girlfriends usually did not last long because of what I was, and humans could never discover what I was. For that reason, I kept relationships short, a couple months at the most, but I was a man after all. What man did not want a soft female body under him.

However, my bedroom I had always kept off limits. It kind of seemed like a sacred place to me. It was my personal space, and I did not want to share that with anyone except my mate. Call me old fashioned, but that was how I was.

Brady and I made good progress on placing the tile before he had to leave. The sun had already been down for over an hour, and I waved goodbye as he drove away in my Porsche. Brady loved that car almost as much as I did, and I grinned as