“Wait,” I whisper, beaming and taking a step closer to my mate even as I gesture my head backwards to Jesse and Daphne. “You know about them!?”Mittens wriggles out of my hands and leaps elegantly to the floor, heading back towards the bed.“Oh, come on,” Luca says, smirking at me as he steps into t
“Come on, Shrimpy,” Luca says, quite cheerful for my sake as he puts his arm around my shoulders and gives me a tug towards the door. “Let’s go drink this.” He holds up the bottle of wine still in his other hand and gives it a little shake.I grin up at him. “You don’t even have glasses.”“You can l
“Oh, look who’s talking,” he murmurs, running his hands up my thighs and then sitting up a little as he reaches further back, one hand cupping my ass while the other slides up my back, obliging me to lean a little closer into him. “Miss I dress as a boy every day, never wear makeup, sometimes have b
“Ariel,” he whispers, looking intently down into my face. “I love you so, so much. It almost killed me to come close to losing you like that. I want…I want to go further. Life is so short – we shouldn’t wait -”I still, realizing what he’s asking. But then my eyes flick over his gorgeous form, his t
I gasp, pain flaring in my neck, my wolf howling and scrambling away in my soul as I put my hands on Luca’s chest and shove him away, hard.He gasps too, his eyes flying wide as he falls to the side and I pull myself from beneath him, huddling up against the headboard and staring at him, my hand sla
“So!?” I say, leaning forward in turn and matching his tone, my hand still clamped to the wound on my neck.“So – so we had sex!” Luca shouts, baffled and freaked out and afraid. “So – you picked me! You picked me, Ariel! I gave you my mark because you picked me!”I go perfectly still as I stare at
“Luca,” I groan, shaking my head and getting to my knees, still clutching the blanket to my chest with one hand and reaching for him with the other. “It’s not like that –““It is!” he shouts, turning back to me, fury in every line of him now. “It is like that, Ariel! You – you fucking chose him!”“I
And then I’m screaming and crying aloud as Luca’s wolf fades away, as the sense of Luca’s physical presence fades from my mind – meaning that he’s gone, he’s gone –I turn my face into the pillow, sobbing, physically unable to do anything else, the pain wracking through me.I barely notice the stir