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Great. This woman was one Fruit Loop shy of a full bowl.
It looked like his first partner had a different idea of what tonight was about than he did. Michael felt bad for her, but he wasn’t hung up on the feeling. The truth was, he was still thinking about the curvy girl in the black dress.
When the MC had called the participants to gather in one section of the bar and she’d sat on one of the bar stools, he’d been able to get a good look at her.
Compared to the other girls at the bar, she was something special. Different. With her pale skin and her beautiful, dark hair, she was already stunning, but the soft curves of her body drew his eye and kept his attention on her and her alone.
The black dress she wore was modest, but he could tell that her body was just as stunning as the woman’s who sat across from him. Full, rounded breasts. Wide hips. Michael hadn’t had a chance to look at her from behind, but he was sure that she had a jaw-dropping butt hugged tightly in her dress.
“Uh, are you listening to me?” the woman sitting across from him asked. “Hello? Earth to bachelor number three?”
“Sorry.” Michael blinked and shook himself of his fantasies.
“You should be.” The woman had crossed her arms and pouted her lips. At least, like that, she was covering her breasts. Michael didn’t want to see them. “There’s something wrong with you, you know that? Maybe you need to leave right now. If you’re not here to land a night with the most attractive woman in this place, why are you even here?”
The thing was, tonight he hoped that he would end up spending the night with the most attractive woman in the bar. The difference was, Michael knew that it wasn’t the woman who sat across from him. He refrained from hurling an insult and chose to let her jab slide.
The brunette in the black dress was the one for him. Speed-dating was moot. The second she’d walked through the door, it was over.
“Are you even listening to me?” the woman asked. “Ugh. Why are the hunky ones always so weird? I swear, it’s like all of you traded your brains for beauty or something. And it totally did you no good, if you ask me.”
Before she could go on any more about how he was defective, the bell rang. The woman stood with a huff and walked away without saying goodbye. Michael was sure he’d just scored a zero on her evaluation, but he didn’t care.
She wasn’t the woman he was looking for.
For thirty seconds Michael waited, hoping with everything he had that the woman in the black dress would be next. In those thirty seconds, the women were given time to make notes and give final scores before they moved on, but the tall partitions between the booths and the layout of the bar prevented the seated men from seeing who their next date would be.
The element of surprise was supposed to be riveting, but for Michael, it was harrowing.
He wasn’t sure that he could take another half hour before meeting the woman of his dreams. If he didn’t get to talk to her, if he didn’t get to hear her sweet voice or get to know her thoughts, he knew he’d go crazy.
All this time he’d dismissed the tigers back home who’d found their fated mates and fallen in love so quickly and irreversibly, but now he understood. The drive was primal and deep-rooted. His very blood called for her. They hadn’t even met yet, but he knew that if his mate were in danger, he’d do anything to protect her.
It was the most idiotic feeling he’d ever experienced, but it was the truest, too. She made him want to be the best man he could be if only so that he could make her happy and see her smile.
And he didn’t even know her name.
Yet.
The bell rang again, starting the new round, and Michael’s heart stopped as the woman in the black dress sat across from him.
His mate. She was his mate. He was fucking sure about it.
“Hey.” The pitch of his voice was lower than he expected it to be, and to Michael’s ear, it didn’t sound like it belonged to him. It was far more seductive and smooth than his usual tone.
“Hi,” the woman replied with a little smile. She folded her hands on her lap, looking at his from beneath her lashes.
Michael took in the splendid sight before him. His alter-beast made a ruckus and wouldn’t be silenced. She was his. The one and only. Everything about her was amazing. Michael’s stopped heart picked up the pace, and he felt heat flooding his groin.
There was something shy and demure about her that he adored. Timid, self-conscious, and mindful. She wasn’t like the other girls he’d met, who were overly confident to a fault or who thought that they were royalty while their men were servants. Michael got the feeling that she treated everyone as an equal.
The fact that she was drop-dead gorgeous was the cherry on top.
“We don’t have much time,” she said. “I um, I guess maybe we should get to know each other, right?”
“Yeah.” Michael wasn’t usually chatty, but face to face with someone so important, he was even more subdued. What was he supposed to stay? “Is um, is this your first time here?”
No matter what he did, he wouldn’t keep his eyes off of her. She’d swept her hair up in a loose bun, but had teased down enough of her hair that it framed her face and highlighted her high cheekbones. The black dress she wore was modest, but it clung in all the right places to suggest her killer curves. Michael knew that if she wanted to, she could pull off a sexy dress just as well as the woman in lace who he’d blown off minutes before.
