Free The Dragon's Mail Order Mate: A Paranormal Menage Romance by Jade White

way to her home, she noticed the exact opposite. People were nice and they were friendly here. Most of them weren’t even flirting with her or being nice to her just to get a chance to check her out. No, they seemed like they were genuinely interested in her. As she stopped in front of the house, her hands on her hips as her chest heaved up and down, trying to catch her breath and cool down, she knew she should take another lap around the block, but she didn’t want to. She paced back and forth in front of the house and looked at it, seeing that it was still dark, full of sleeping souls. She didn’t want to go back in there right now. She could feel the sweat covering her body and slowly trickling down her arms and back.
    She realized how nervous she was for tonight. This was going to be a huge event in the lives of both her and her friends in this house. She felt like she had just gotten used to the dynamic that was waiting for her. Mike and Will had their own lives that they participated in. They both did their own thing and they kind of kept to themselves. They had their own friends and when they came together, it seemed like they came only in the solidarity that they were roommates and that they were both Shifters. The fact that they were living together seemed to have little influence on their mutual friends. If they had mutual friends, she had yet to see any of them. Maybe she would meet more of them in the coming days, but right now, they seemed so separate and distant from each other.
    Feeling her heart pounding in her chest, she wasn’t sure if it was from the nerves or the workout that she had just gone through. She walked toward the door, feeling like she was about to start something scary and intimidating to her. As she slowly walked toward the front of door and climbed the steps to the porch, she tried to calm herself down. It wasn’t going to be the worst thing she’d ever experienced. She was going to be just fine. As she opened the door and headed into the quiet of the house, she stopped and closed her eyes. Be calm, she told herself over and over again. She suddenly felt a chill rush down her spine as she stood there, sweaty in the cool of the house. It was still warmer than she thought six in the morning should be, but it was cooler with her body covered in sweat.
    Climbing the steps to the second floor, she made sure to keep quiet and make her way to the bathroom like she was a ghost visiting the house. Opening the door, she snuck into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She remembered all the looks she would get at the gym, standing sweaty in the middle of the free weight area, her chest heaving, sweat running down her body, and her whole body feeling exhausted. She needed to get back to that. It was work to make men want you and she wanted Mike or Will to want her more than anything else in their lives. She always figured the key to a woman’s role in a relationship was to make sure that she never stopped flirting and that their eyes never wandered. She wanted to make sure that they were always interested in her. If they always wanted her and lusted after her, then they wouldn't wander or want something else. That was the key to every happy relationship. That had to be it.
    Turning on the shower, she smelled the steam filling up the room and diving into her lungs. She loved the heat. She liked absorbing the warmth and holding it inside of her, like she was some kind of cold-blooded reptile, soaking up the rays of the sun before it was ready to get out into the world. She pulled back the curtain and stepped into the shower, feeling the water cascading over her and she tried her hardest not to think about the one thing that was on her mind right now more than anything else. She didn’t want to think about how very soon, she was going to be going on a date with a man that she thought was incredibly sexy and it was going to be her job to make sure that he liked her as much as she liked