Free Her Perfect Mate by Paige Tyler

sandwich,” she said. “You want one?”
    His stomach growled at the mention of food. He hadn’t even realized he was hungry. How could he?
    He’d been too busy thinking about what his partner looked like naked under her robe. “Sure. Thanks.”
    “Peanut butter and jelly okay?”
    “That’s fine.”
    Actually, it was better than fine. He hadn’t had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich since his forward
    operating base got a big shipment of care packages in from the States. That had been months ago. Most
    people didn’t think much of peanut butter and jelly, but it was something you sure missed when you
    couldn’t get it.
    He leaned against the counter, watching as she spread peanut butter on a slice of bread. “Can I ask you
    something?”
    She dug more peanut butter out of the jar for the second sandwich. “That depends on what it is.”
    Fair enough. “Well, I guess we won’t know unless I ask, so at the risk of offending you, I’m just going
    to come out and say it. Are you some kind of government experiment, like on X-Files or something?”
    Ivy stopped spreading peanut butter on the third sandwich to look at him, surprised. Then she burst out
    laughing. “No. I’m definitely not a government experiment.”
    He waited for her to continue, but she only finished up with the peanut butter and started on the jelly.
    “If you’re not a government experiment, what are you then? Other than an extremely valuable asset to
    the DCO, I mean?”
    She shook her head, the hint of a smile curving her lips. “The DCO loves their labels, don’t they?
    You’re a norm. I’m a paranorm. You’re valuable. I’m extremely valuable.”
    Paranorm. That sounded like something from the SyFy channel. “What do you prefer to be called?”
    She gave him a smile. She had a gorgeous smile. “Ivy works for me.”
    He grinned back. “Ivy it is then.”
    She set the plate with the sandwiches on the small breakfast bar. “There’s bottled water in the fridge.
    Can you grab a couple?”
    “Wouldn’t you rather have milk? It goes better with peanut butter.”
    She made a face. “I don’t like milk.”
    Who didn’t like milk? He grabbed water for her and milk for himself, then sat down on the stool beside
    her. “You didn’t answer my question. About what you are.”
    She chewed on her bottom lip as if debating whether to answer or not. “I’m a feline shifter.”
    A feline shifter. As in cat. Okay. He’d been right about her eyes then. Shouldn’t she like milk then?
    “Were you attacked by a werecat?”
    She coughed up the water she’d been sipping. “A werecat? You watch way too many movies.”
    Now that he thought about it, the idea was pretty ludicrous. But she’d just told him she was a feline
    shifter. What the hell was he supposed to think? He picked up his sandwich and took a bite. “I’ll take that as
    a no.”
    “I was born a shifter,” she explained. “And no, before you ask, my mom didn’t have sex with a lion.”
    “The idea never crossed my mind.”
    Like hell it hadn’t. In addition to watching too many movies, he sometimes had a very twisted
    imagination.
    Ivy bit into her sandwich, chewed, then washed it down with water. “The scientists at the DCO said that
    somewhere in the past, feline DNA got mixed in with one of my ancestors’ DNA.”
    Landon felt his mouth twitch. “Ah. So, your great-great-great-grandmother slept with a saber-toothed
    tiger?”
    She made a face at him. “No one slept with any saber-toothed tigers. According to the geneticists, there’s
    a little bit of this mixed-up DNA in everyone. Even you.”
    He downed the rest of the first sandwich and started on the second. “Yeah? Then how come I can’t do
    what you can do?”
    “Because the genetic coding didn’t become active and cause changes in your physiology when you were
    a teenager like mine did.”
    “Changes in your physiology. Like claws and cat’s eyes?”
    Her eyes, soft and brown now, went wide. “You