Her eyes move that way. “See the pink hue of the moon?”
“Where?”
I walk to the window; she follows.
“Oh,” she says softly. “I missed the sunset. I bet they’re pretty here.”
I wrap my arm around her shoulder. “The sunsets are one reason why this is where I built this house. You got a thing for sunsets?”
She goes stiff and her expression changes. She forgot her fight for a moment. Now it’s back.
“Fate,” I whisper against the shell of her ear. “Wait till you see it tomorrow. Our sunsets here are like snowflakes. Never the same twice.”
She bites her lip again and her eyes are the windows to her soul. The longing feeling coming at me? I don’t just feel it, I see it in the moistness of her eyes.
My girl likes sunsets. She’s gonna love it here. This fills me with happiness.
“The pink-hued moon is what my mother was referring to earlier. The cycle of the moon is something we pay attention to, it can have an effect on some of us, particularly alphas. Looks like this tail end of the strawberry moon will be sending all mated females in the pack into heat. And for most men, it’ll send us into the rut.”
“The… rut?”
“The need to breed,” I say low. “Or sometimes just the need to dominate. With our cocks.”
She wrinkles her nose like she finds it distasteful but the aroma coming from her contradicts that.
“Gonna be a whole lotta lovin’ happenin’ around Arcana Falls.”
She pulls away. “What about that food then? I’m fading.”
I gesture to the plate of food. “Salad dressing?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she replies, passing me and opening my fridge to look inside. “Your fridge is ridiculously organized.”
“My mother cleaned last week. Told you.”
“How often does your mother clean your house?” She grabs a bottle of ranch and comes back over to the table.
“Never. Unless there’s a crisis and then she lingers and finds ways to keep busy while sticking close and trying to anticipate my every need.”
“Sounds like my mom. A crisis?”
“It’s over. It’s all good now.” More than good.
She looks like she wants to ask questions but refrains.
It’s too early for us to have that conversation. “So, tomorrow we’ll go to your old place and pick up your stuff. End your non-relationship, and go from there.”
I can tell she’s warring with her feelings. Of course she’s going to start on about witchcraft and being engaged again, but I’m intentional in my talking about us this way, like we’ve begun, and that’s what I’m gonna keep doing.
Instead of further debate, she grabs her phone and dials again.
“Shit. It’s ringing. Oh good. Oh shit. Nope. One ring and then Ivy’s voicemail. Fuck sakes.” She tosses the phone, and it skids across the table, falling off the edge, landing on the opposite end of the bench. She lifts her fork and digs into the food.
16
Amelia
Not only can Doggo cook, not only does he have the best napping couch in the history of my life, not only does his mother cook like a Cordon Bleu chef, but this homemade honey wine is delicious, too.
He poured us each a second glass as well and toasted, “To fate,” clinking my glass before I could object.
I didn’t bother responding. I just looked away and sighed, trying my hardest to ignore his gorgeous smile in my periphery.
The fact is: everything about today could’ve come from tearing a page out of my fantasies – if I wrote them down. And if I were imaginative enough to have conjured up the day that today has been.
Cue record scratching and hard braking sounds. Because no.
Because I don’t know if my sister is truly fine. Because Mom is worried. Because of the technicality of me having a fiancé. And because it’s all fake. Whoever coined the phrase, if it’s too good to be true it probably isn’t – I hate them. Loathe them! It’s because of them that I can’t just let go and float through this fantasy.
Here I sit, eating and drinking while the shapeshifter sex god sits across from me with his chin propped up on his palm, his elbow leaned on the table, as he watches me eat. He watches me the way every woman wants to be watched by a gorgeous, muscled, bare-chested man who just served up a plate of great food after the world’s best nap that was necessitated by a day of back-blowing, soul-changing sex. I’ve done nothing but argue, and bitch and complain all day, trying to escape. I was even sort of mean to his sweet-as-pie angelic gift-bearing mom who wants me to call her Mom – who thinks my arrival is a sign of coming grandbabies. And yet after all this, here he is, looking at me – correction, gazing at me like I’m his dream girl.
I bet I could chew with my mouth open, belch loudly, and throw my plate on the floor like a tantruming toddler and he’d still look at me the way he’s looking at me right now.