“I wouldn’t know the difference.” Her trembling fingers grazed the skin of my jaw. “That’s the first time I’ve…” She bit her lip.
“The first time you’ve come undone for someone?” I smirked. Thank fuck. Pride swelled in my chest.
“The first time I’ve come ever.”
I choked on my breath and coughed. “You’ve never played with yourself?”
“Oh my gosh.” She groaned, dropping her hand. “This is so embarrassing!”
I chuckled, nuzzling into her neck and planting a sloppy kiss. “I’m your mate, little witch. Sex should be second nature for us. You can talk to me about it.”
My dick was straining against the sweats, and it fucking hurt. I wanted nothing more than to sink into her. But this wasn’t about me, it was about her. I wanted to show her exactly what she meant to me.
Whether she believed me or not, I was in love with her.
“I’ve… touched myself. But I’ve never let myself come.”
“And why not?” I pushed my dick against her throbbing pussy, wishing the fabric would disappear.
She let out a soft whine. “I don’t know.”
“Saving your pleasure for me maybe?” I pulled my head up and kissed her lips.
She kissed me back teasingly before pulling away. “Maybe.”
“I’m in love with you, Harlow. I wasn’t kidding about mates being the love-at-first-sight romance.” I stroked her hair out of her face. “My feelings for you are so much more than I thought possible.”
“More than her?” Her eyes widened. “Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I shook my head. “After falling in love with you, I question if I was really in love with her at all.”
She managed a small smile before her eyes fluttered closed. “I don’t know if what I feel for you is love yet, but it’s closer than I’ve ever been before.”
With her naked body beneath me, she fell asleep. And I was left with a raging hard-on and a heart full of love again.
THIRTEEN
Harlow
“What the fuck is that, Harlow?” Xavier’s deadly voice pierced through me as his eyes darkened.
My heart clogged my throat as I took him in. He looked like Ares, God of War, ready to take me down as if I’d committed one of the worst atrocities.
“Nothing to say?” He sneered.
“Xav, it’s not—”
“Do not Xav me!” His voice boomed, rattling the walls of the cottage. “You betrayed me in the worst possible way. How could you do this to me?”
I flinched, burying my face in my hands. Xavier was furious. He was fighting his shift as his body kept transforming mid-way before he’d come back to normal. It was terrifying to face his wrath head-on. “I can’t lie to you. You’re the one that told me that.”
“You tricked me.” Pain laced his words as if it physically hurt him to say them. “No wonder everything I felt for you was so much more than what I felt for Olivia. Because everything with you was fake. You amplified it.”
A spear might as well have been shoved through my heart at his accusation. “No! Don’t say that.” Tears spilled down my cheeks. “Nothing between us is fake. You said you loved me.”
“Because you planted this bond!” His voice wavered. “You played me in the worst possible way.”
This was all a huge misunderstanding, but his words were destroying me. He jumped to conclusions without even consulting me. I was vulnerable with him the past few days, and we’d grown closer.
I’d just walked through the door from checking in with Deb and found Xavier with that damn spell jar.
How could he think so little of me to believe I would be capable of faking a bond? With a werewolf of all beings?
I glanced up, swallowing the fear, and locked my gaze with him. The tension was so dense the air between us crackled. “It’s a spell to cure loneliness, but it’s not a spell to fake a matebond with a werewolf. I was tired of living on my own, so I cast a spell to attract a familiar. I didn’t even want to find love before you.”
“How can I trust you?” The small glass jar of ingredients for the spell shook in his hand before he chucked it toward me.
My hands shot out, and I caught it. “Because I’m your mate, and I…” I swallowed the doubt. I knew how I felt for him. He’d been so gentle, so patient with me. “I love you.”
His eyes widened, and his jaw ticked. “But how can I believe that?”
My feet started moving, and before I realized it I stood beside my bookshelf and pulled my family’s grimoire out. I flipped it open to the spell for attracting a familiar and sat it on the table with the jar. “There’s the spell I used. All those ingredients in that jar are listed here. You can check my grimoire. There is no love spell inside, let alone a spell to fake a matebond.”
He stepped over and read the page with the spell and inspected the jar. Then, he flipped through each page of the thick book painfully slow. Sure enough, he found my words to be true but his reaction was not what I was expecting.
He staggered back cursing under his breath. “I’m sorry, Harlow.”
My hand trailed down the open page of my spellbook before shutting it. “You have to trust me if you want this to work. You should know me better than that by now. Your accusation hurt me.”
He didn’t seem to be listening to me as he shifted and bolted from the cottage without saying anything else.
Fear gripped me and rooted me to my spot as I stared at the place he had shifted, sweatpants tore to shreds on the floor.
No. What was he doing? Where was he going? He couldn't leave. We had to talk about this.
I shook off the paralysis before taking off after him. I called on the spirits of the
