Page 33 of Fated Moons
“Now that I can’t say in mixed company.”She swallowed.“And you shouldn’t be thinking about me like that in front of my father.”
“It’s all I’ve been able to think about since I woke up with you in my arms.”He smiled.“This would be a great way to communicate if your cheeks weren’t five shades of red and your fairy dust wasn’t flying out of your pores and racing?—”
“I feel as though I’m intruding on a private moment.” Her father kissed her cheek. “I’m going to shower, and then I need to call a car service. Trask granted me permission to use my flying powers to get here, but he doesn’t feel it would be a good idea to use them to return in broad daylight. We’ll work out the details of your relationship and how to handle it later. Chaz is expecting both of you at the farm in a couple of hours.” Her father disappeared into the other room.
Before she could collect her thoughts, Jackson closed the gap and lifted her from her seat. He wrapped his arms around her body and heaved her to his chest. “You have to know I literally can’t help myself.”
“Yes. You can.”
“No. I can’t.” His hot breath tickled her skin. “And neither can you.” He pressed his mouth over her lips in a tantalizing kiss. A deep rumble filled her throat. “Whether or not we believe in this Fated Moons stuff, I can’t deny my wolf heritage or that I’ve claimed you and that you’ve accepted me.” He held her gaze. “Are you going to try to reject me now?”
“I can’t think about this,” she whispered, clutching his biceps. “I need time to process what happened and what it potentially means for my future.”
“That, I can respect.”
8
Jackson took Amanda’s hand and squeezed. “Are you okay?”
“Nope.”
He leaned closer and kissed her cheek. The more time he spent in her presence, the stronger the pull. Some of his wolf friends had described imprinting as a promise of a future. Others as a stake or a claim.
But every wolf he knew described mating as an uncontrollable need. A thirst that could only be quenched by one person.
Both were sudden. Shockingly violent to the wolf core. And regardless of the species the wolf mated with, they would feel the same adrenaline rush roar through their system. They might not know exactly what it meant. But their need to fulfill their purpose, their role, it would be too strong to deny.
This wasn’t quite like that for Jackson. He understood that someone had fucked with his aura. His soul. And that affected his ability to connect with his mate. But he thought once Trask banished the spell, then all should be right. That he should have this overwhelming sense of duty and admiration for his mate.However, while his feelings for Amanda grew stronger by the second, the sudden rush to be her everything hadn’t happened.
Yet.
Why he wanted it to, he had no idea.
“Are you nervous about being here?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’ve always maintained that there’s nothing special about me as a royal or an actress. I’ve thought signing my name across an image for a fan was weird. I didn’t understand the excitement. Or why anyone would wait hours in the cold before a witch coven or red-carpet event to get a glimpse of me. It seemed ridiculous. But now I get the hype.” She glanced up at him with excitement beaming in her eyes. “There are no pictures of the wolfairies. Or of Trask’s little one.” She pointed her finger toward the massive house nestled in front of the woods in Vermont. “There are only paintings of this place. My sister, Arianna, she once wrote an article about a wolf who painted the most gorgeous picture of this farm. It’s hanging in some obscure out of the way gallery in Saratoga Springs. The wolf won’t give interviews. He’s some recluse of some kind. Once, I traveled with Arianna to see that painting.” She fanned herself and chuckled as massive amounts of pink and blue fairy dust floated toward the sky. “It literally took our breath away. We had to step outside for fresh air. It was spectacular.”
“Does seeing it in person have the same effect on you?”
“It certainly seems to affect this stuff.” She wiggled her fingers. More fairy dust glided across the air, landing on Jackson’s hands and circling his arms and upper body. It made a faint whisper of a noise. Almost as if it were giggling.
He gathered it between his palms and tried to toss it through the breeze, but it boomeranged back to his chest and danced around his body. “I guess it likes me.”
“How many times have you been to the farm?” she asked.
“I’m required now to come four times a year since accepting a role as alpha,” he said. “I was scared the first time five years ago. But I was summoned. I worried that my father had done something in prison and Titus and the council were going to have to punish my family for it and somehow it would ruin my life once again.” Jackson leaned against his Jeep, tugging her to his chest and wrapping his arms around her waist. Fairy dust floated from her thick lashes and landed playfully on his nose. “I have to know if you feel the pull. The connection to me. I need to know if it’s real.”
Her hands dropped to his shoulders and she tilted her head. “I’m obviously attracted to you.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” He tucked a thick chunk of hair behind her ear and gazed into her big blue orbs. He could get lost in there, and that thick emotion made him more confident that she was his, and that thought filled his blood with the purest rush of adrenaline a wolf could experience.
But it also terrified him because she was a witch, a fairy, and now his mate.
If the Legend of the Fated Moons was true—his life as he knew it was over.
And she and her sisters were about to change the world.
“The spell that prevented me from mating with you has had a lingering effect on the way I—as a wolf—am responding to you.” He took her hand and pressed it against the center of his chest. “It’s there. I know it is. I sense it. But I wonder if I’m broken and unable to fully do what I’m supposed to as a wolf because of the black magic that was used on me and stuck with me for so many years.”
