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He may not be able to smell her animal side, but he could smell her desire. She wanted him. Her nervousness was tangible, though, and he couldn’t have that. She needed reassurance. He wanted her to melt into his embrace.
He cupped her cheek, watching as she leaned to smell him. He smiled and lowered his hand to grasp hers.
“Come with me.”
Magnus felt her fingers tighten around his own as she kept pace with his long strides.
“I’ve never done this before,” she said nervously. “Been to a sex party.”
A sex party? She’s never been to a shifter masquerade? That’s odd. But between the pull of the moon and his desire for her, the thought was fleeting in his mind. When he glanced down at her once again, he found himself smiling.
She was incredible, and more than anything, he wanted to spend the night buried inside of her. But first, he wanted to get to know her. Which was very unlike him.
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Okay.”
He knew she figured they were off to bed, but he wanted to enjoy the anticipation that came with their coupling. What was it about this woman that drew him in? No one had ever done that before.
“What’s your name?” Magnus asked.
“Alexis.”
He walked with her around the grounds, leading her to the lake a distance from the mansion, lit only by the full moon. Black trees were reflected in the surface of the water. The air was warm, and as fireflies flickered above the water, Alexis laughed softly.
“I love those bugs. Especially when there are so many of them, and it looks like hundreds of little lightbulbs going on and off. When I was younger, I used to put them in a jar and try to use them as a nightlight, but my mom would always let them go before I woke up in the morning.” She looked up at him, having to crane her head back to make eye contact. “So they wouldn’t suffocate.”
He loved this story. He wanted more. He wanted to know every detail about her childhood, her life now. He wanted to know what made Alexis tick.
His deep baritone echoed off the trees that surrounded them. “What do you do, Alexis?”
“Oh, um, I developed my own line of skincare products a few years ago. All natural. Absolutely nothing gross in them. No carcinogens. Healthy, healthy. I actually make a really good living off my products, and I’m always looking to expand and develop more. Right now, I’m working on an acne cream without salicylic acid.”
Impressed, Magnus paused. He liked a good businesswoman with a mindset like his own. Someone who worked hard and understood the responsibilities that came with running a company.
Genuinely curious as to what she had to say, he probed further. “Why without salicylic acid?”
She lifted a brow in skepticism. “Do you really care?”
“I genuinely do.”
She shrugged a thin shoulder. “It’s banned in Europe. I follow the EU Cosmetics Regulations closely. Which is basically a list of what cosmetic products cannot be contained in Europe, and I base a lot of my developments on that. It’s been a passion of mine since I was young, and I love what I do.”
She stopped talking as they continued walking around the lake. The sexual tension grew as the silence enveloped them in a comfortable but tense grip.
The smell of cherries wrapped around him like a whirlwind. He could die, surrounded by her scent, and be perfectly okay as long as his last moments were spent in her arms.
This bizarre attraction had to be due to the haze of the full moon and the masquerade. After all, that’s what this night was all about. Sex. Fulfilling the most primal, carnal urges of two people seeking release.
A massive willow tree that was bowed from its many years on earth offered both privacy and romance as they entered into its feathered branches. Alexis leaned against the trunk, a smile on her porcelain face as she looked up at him.
Her eyes, darkened slightly by her desire for him, moved lower until they rested on the tenting of his pants.
“Are we going to do anything about this … attraction we feel for each other? Or are we just going to keep yapping about our jobs?”
He grinned wickedly. Both his hands came out to rest on either side of her head, ensnaring her in the confines of his arms.
“What do you have in mind?” he growled, his lips an inch from her own.
