Page 27 of Mane Attraction
The realization that she could feel his every emotion all the time now, that he could probably sense hers in return, made her want to crawl under the silk covers and hide until this nightmare sorted itself out.
But deep down, in a place she wasn’t ready to acknowledge, a traitorous part of her whispered that this wasn’t a nightmare at all. It was something her soul had been searching for the whole time.
The guest suite door burst open without warning, and Janice rushed in like a whirlwind of concern and auburn hair. Her hazel eyes immediately locked onto Xelene’s face, and whatever she saw there made her stop dead in her tracks.
“Oh God, what happened?” Janice demanded, closing the door behind her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Xelene sat up straighter on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped tightly in her lap to stop them from trembling. “I screwed up, Janice.”
Janice moved closer, her expression shifting from concern to something sharper. “Define ‘screwed up’ because in my experience, your version of disaster is usually everyone else’s version of Tuesday.”
“I had sex with Lev.” The confession burst from Xelene’s lips like a dam breaking. “In the back of his royal vehicle. After his father’s funeral. I don’t know if it was the emotions or hisintoxicating presence or both, but I completely lost control and had sex with him.”
Xelene’s cheeks burned with the memory—Lev’s blue eyes darkening with hunger, and the feeling of his hands tightening on her hips as she’d straddled him on that leather seat.
“And it was...” Xelene swallowed hard, her voice dropping to barely a whisper, “it was the best sex of my life.”
Janice’s eyebrows shot up toward her hairline, and a slow smile began to spread across her face. “Okay, so what’s the problem then? Sounds like you finally found a guy who can keep up with you.”
If only it were that simple.
EIGHTEEN
XELENE
Xelene stood abruptly, her fingers moving to the waistband of her jeans with shaking hands. She pushed the denim down just enough to reveal the top portion of the mate mark on her left hip—four precise claw marks that stood out like a brand against her pale skin.
“This is the problem.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Xelene could hear Janice’s sharp intake of breath and could practically feel her friend’s shock radiating across the room.
“Holy shit, Xelene.” Janice’s voice was barely a whisper as she moved closer, her eyes fixed on the marks. “Is that what I think it is?”
Xelene pulled her jeans back up, her expression a mixture of panic and resignation. “It’s Lev’s mate mark. He accidentally scratched me during his orgasm and didn’t realize it until it was too late. Now we’ve completed the mate bond between us, and I’m bound to his soul forever.”
The words hung in the air between them. Through the bond, Xelene felt a pulse of Lev’s emotions again—his regret, his fear, his desperate need to comfort her. The intensity of his emotions made her knees weak.
Janice sank onto the bed, looking stunned. “Forever? Like, actually forever?”
“Forever.” Xelene began to pace. “And Janice, what’s worse is that Lev said I can walk away from him if I want to, but that seems impossible. Just this short distance apart from him right now feels like I’m missing a limb.”
She stopped pacing and faced Janice, her green eyes bright with unshed tears. “So how would I live the rest of my life on Earth feeling incomplete while he’s here on Nova Aurora? Walking away doesn’t seem like it’s going to work, but my career is back on Earth. I can’t just abandon my life and everything I am just because he accidentally marked me.”
The panic was rising in her chest again, making her voice pitch higher.
“We’re connected in ways I still don’t fully understand yet. Like right now, I can feel his emotions as clearly as my own. I can feel how upset he is that he did this, how scared he is that I might walk away and that he’ll lose me. And it’s intense, Janice. Plus, he can feel my emotions too.”
Through the bond, Lev’s protective instincts surged so strongly that Xelene had to grip the bedpost to steady herself. His alpha nature was responding to her distress, demanding that he come to her and comfort her regardless of the consequences.
Janice shook her head slowly, her expression a mixture of amazement and concern. “So basically, you guys can’t hide anything from each other anymore? You can’t deny any feelings or emotions?”
“No.” The word came out sharper than intended. “I can’t hide from him or escape him no matter where I am. And I’m assuming the same goes for him.”
Xelene’s carefully constructed walls—the ones she’d spent decades building to protect herself from exactly this kind of vulnerability—had been obliterated in a single moment ofpassion. The thought of Lev being able to sense her every emotion, her every fear and insecurity, made her feel stripped bare in the most terrifying way possible.
“It’s terrifying,” Xelene admitted, her voice breaking slightly. “No one has ever seen me this intimately.”
Janice stood and moved to Xelene’s side, placing a comforting hand on her arm. Her touch was warm and grounding, a lifeline in the storm of confusion and panic.
