Page 30 of Forbidden Wolf

He stared at me, his shoulders slumping.

“I figured out that sex without emotion or feeling just leaves you empty,” Levi replied. “So, I channelled my energy into my career and worked my way up the ranks. My team was investigating the latest threat when I felt your pain. It drew me to you like a beacon.”

“Why would you feel my pain?”

He’d found me just in time to save me, but I couldn’t understand how he’d found me in the chaos of those conditions out there.

“Tasha, I’ve already explained this to you. We’re mated. I can feel your emotions as a background hum while we’re apart. They’re stronger now you’re here with me.”

My arms tightened around my legs to make myself even smaller. There had been a lot of negative emotions in my life. “How are we mated?”

He watched me with predator precision. “What do you know about werewolves and how they mate?”

I slowly stood and rubbed my eyes. “I dunno, it’s probably much the same as vampires. They taste each other and then they have lots of sex and babies.”

He moved closer to me, his hand gripping my chin to force my head back so he could study me. His thumb caressed over my bottom lip.

“There’s nothing wrong with your blood,” he said absently. “Wolves mate when they bite the woman they love during sex. It connects them at a fundamental level. It marks them as belonging to them so no other man will touch them.”

His hand skimmed down my throat until it reached my left shoulder. His touch sent tingling waves of pleasure into the area that always bothered me.

“I always have a niggling pain in that shoulder,” I whispered. “Your touch soothes it.”

His presence intoxicated me. His scent made my fangs lengthen and my mouth water. I wanted to bite him to claim him.

“The mating is completed when the female returns that bite.” His forehead touched mine.

There was a magnetism between our bodies that brought us closer together. It had always been there. I thought it was because I was a horny youth when we first met. Each of us was forbidden fruit to the other, our clandestine meetings exhilarating. No one else had kindled that flame in my belly, no matter how many men tried to lure me to their bed.

Standing here, that feeling of a light electrical current over my skin reappeared. My body swayed closer to his without my permission. Our eyelashes kissed and I could see the tiny golden flecks around the pupil of his eyes.

“What are you trying to say, Levi?” I asked against his lips, my mouth open slightly in temptation.

“That you’re my mate. I tried to find you when I realised what had happened, but you never returned to the facility in the forest. The wolves and vamps are enemies. How was I supposed to find you?”

My body froze but my fingers latched onto the front of his T-shirt. “How am I your mate?”

He sighed, closing his eyes, and tangling out eyelashes together. “We had a lot of sex that summer, Tasha. I bit your shoulder in the heat of the moment, and you fed from me every day.”

“They’ll kill us,” I said. A relationship was one thing, but a mating was permanent. The coven leaders would slaughter an entire family for that level of infraction.

He enclosed my hands in his. “They don’t need to know.”

I gasped, my body bending away from Levi to allow me to stare at him in horror. “Our mating must be why I can walk in the sun.”

“You can what?” Shock flashed across his expression, his mouth open and eyes wide as he jolted back a few inches.

I shrugged and collapsed back against the wall. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I was hot and confused. Levi felt my brow with a delicate touch of his fingers.

“You’re burning up, Tasha. My blood is the only thing fighting that infection from the bite.” He lifted his wrist to his mouth, but I stopped him.

“I prefer the neck.” My gaze clashed with his and adrenaline spiked in my blood. If I was going to feed from him, I wanted to do it properly.

Without a word, Levi hauled his T-shirt over his head and dropped in onto the floor. He sat against the wall and I crawled over him to straddle his hips.

“I’m still pissed at you,” I informed him in a hurt voice.

“I know, baby, but I can’t change the past. We can argue about it when you’re better from this infection.”