Page 75 of Veil of Shadows

He stilled.

“Sorry.” I snatched my hands back to my side.What is it about this male?Everything about him called to me.

But his hand glided down my arm until he cupped my palm, then he placed my hand back on his side and held it there.

“You don’t need to be sorry.” In the dim light, the bob of his throat was right in my line of sight.

My eyes snapped up. Fire rolled around him. A fire born of want and desire. His body grew harder in an entirely new way, and the room grew uncomfortably hot as a flush worked through my limbs.

In a breath, he calmed his elemental power, his skin and the air returning to normal.

I licked my lips, and he followed the movement.

“What is this . . .thingbetween us, Jax?”

His fingers sank into my hip, kneading the soft flesh there. “You haven’t figured it out yet?”

And it hit me. What he was implying. And why he hadn’t said anything sooner. My eyes widened as I finally accepted what had been right in front of me all along.

Tradition dictated that males wait for females to acknowledge the mating bond before acting. It was bad luck for the male to push the female into accepting the bond until she was ready. Some even said the bond was strongest when it was allowed to develop naturally.

My lips parted as panic threatened to engulf me anew. “No.”

He growled. “Yes.”

“We can’t be fated. Fate means that you’re my...” I didn’t want to admit it. But the word brushed across my mind as though it’d been waiting to reveal itself, hidden behind a sheer curtain all along and only now peeking out to play.

Mate.

Another rumble filled Jax’s chest, and he leaned down to whisper in my ear. “I’ve been waiting for you to feel it too. This pull. Thiswant.”

My breaths sped up. “Oh Gods.”

He was right. My magic certainly responded to him. Always seeking him. Always trying to join with his. Just tonight, it’d done it again, and I could have sworn that was the reason for my unrest and traveling to the Veiled Between in a dream. We were mates, but I’d been resisting it. My magic didn’t like my resistance. It wouldn’t ultimately stand for that, so it’d grown erratic.Thatwas why I’d traveled to the Veiled Between in my sleep.

And there was a way to prevent that from happening again. My magic would calm if I accepted the bond.

I licked my lips as reality sank in more. Jax being my mate explained this pull I felt toward him—a pull created of the gods. It would also explain my undeniable attraction to him and why our magic sizzled between us. It would also explain why I’d been so captivated by him when he was my abductor and why he was so overly protective of me.

Of course.Fae males were fiercely protective of their females—to a point that it was unnatural. That was why Jax had so adamantly refused to let me do another calling to find Bastian. He couldn’t stomach the thought of me becoming hurt, even if I would ultimately heal.

“What are we going to do?” I finally whispered. Because even if we were meant for one another, that was a feeling best kept behind locked doors in shadowed rooms in the dead of night.Come sunrise, I couldn’t allow myself to acknowledge Jax as my mate. He and I came from different origins. Our lives were never meant to cross, even if the gods had forked our paths until they intersected.

“What do you want to do?” he whispered, his voice husky, his body hardening even more. He trailed his nose up my neck, and a smattering of nerves fired all along my body.

Shivering, I positively ached for him, but I shook my head. “We probably shouldn’t?—”

His lips collided with mine. He kissed me hard, his mouth claiming me. Strong arms entwined around me, as though he never wanted to let me go.

“Weshould,” he growled into my mouth.

The second his taste flooded me, a low moan worked up my throat. My hands tangled in his hair, and I kissed him in return.

He was right. He was my mate.Mine. I wanted this so badly that I told myself the consequences didn’t matter, even though a tiny voice in the back of my mind said that they did.

Shushing that worry, I dipped my tongue forward to dance with his. He tasted like spice and fire, sin and desire. I’d never tasted anything so good.

Growling, he deepened our kiss.

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