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“Instinct,” she whispers the word to herself.
More thunder rolls in, coming in waves that plunge us into momentary silence as we listen to nature narrating our turmoil. Of course we’re having this conversation with the weather beating down on the house around us.
What if I’m scared?She looks at me, her eyebrows tilted down nervously as she searches my face for an answer.
You can be scared, but you have to stop running. Let me show you how good it could be. We don’t have to be the same person; we can take each other as we are.
I’m not ready to be marked.
Fuck. She’s denying me the one thing I need to make sure no one can take her from me.Is that negotiable?
Not tonight it isn’t.
Tasha…
Paxton.
She’s kissing me. Never in a million fucking years did I think that Tasha Jarreau would lean in first, but her soft lips press against mine like she needs me. Her left hand moves to rest on my hip with half her hand on the waistband of my sweatpants and the other half on bare skin.
I groan into her mouth, and she starts to pull back.
Fuck that.
I wrap a hand around the back of her head and tangle my hand in her dark hair. I don’t know why the hell she’s kissing me, but I’m not going to let her stop now.
I run my free hand up the outside of her leg, the smooth skin of her thigh like silk under my palm. She shivers at my touch. “I told you to wear pants, sweetheart,” I whisper against her lips. I’m not sure if she understands me, and I don’t care either. She knew what she was doing when she ignored my warning and put this skirt on.
More.
That one word makes me freeze. “What?” she asks self-consciously, touching her swollen lips with her small fingers. I can’t tell if she even realizes that she just begged me for more, but I heard it, and now she can’t take it back. I lean in and kiss the corner of her mouth softly.
“I’m never going to let you go, Tasha Jarreau.”
15
Tasha
“We’re ruled by instinct.”
I’m sure the words are nothing more than a coincidence. Paxton couldn’t possibly know that one word could affect me so much. Instinct. The thing that the former Luna Sovereign said was the reason I was chosen.
Have I been ignoring my instincts? It’s an easy question to answer. I think guiltily about the times I’ve shut my wolf out these past few days.
For months, my wolf quietly mourned the loss of our mate. And the second something came along to bring her back into the present, I shut it down. What good are my instincts if I don’t trust them?
It doesn’t help that at the moment Paxton is staring at me like I belong to him. Like he means what he says when he tells me he’ll never let me go. Logic makes me want to pull away, to protect myself even though I’m not even sure what is and what isn’t a threat anymore.
I shut my eyes as I lean back, blocking him out. Blocking out the storm. Blocking out the expectations of this house.
Lead me,I beg my wolf.
It takes a long time for my wolf to rise to the surface. It feels like punishment for how hard I’ve been working to ignore her.
My body floods with anxiety as I wait for my wolf to send me in the right direction. I can feel every fiber of my body hoping that in spite of her insistence that Paxton is my mate, her first thought won’t be to let him mark me. I’m not ready for that. It feels too much like a betrayal of Jimmy. And I still have no idea what a life looks like with someone like Paxton. From what I’ve learned so far, there’s no stability. There’s none of the comfort I shared with Jimmy.
If Jimmy was the calm in my life, then Paxton is no doubt the storm. Another crack of thunder makes me start, as if Mother Nature herself wants to punctuate the point.
Touch him, my wolf finally answers.Touch him and see the bond for yourself. You can’t move forward while you still believe it might all be a trap.My wolf speaks softly as if she feels sorry for me that I’m still having doubts.
