The Awakening Aidan - By Abby Niles Page 0,8
ever going to do.”
He couldn’t help it. He grinned. He loved how she held nothing back. He stepped forward; the need to sample her lips, to taste her for the first time, was almost crippling. His beast licked his lips, urging him to surrender to years of instinct ingrained in them.
Take. Mine.
One kiss and he’d know for certain if the magnetic draw to this woman was the awakening of the Drall.
“I’ll look for now, Dr. Avgar, but make no mistake, I will eventually touch.”
The nervous movement of her throat belied the steely edge that stiffened her jaw. “You shifters are all the damn same. ‘Take. Mine.’ No freaking thought at all to what the woman wants.” She stepped forward until she stood mere inches from him, head tilted back as she poked him in the chest three times. “Let me make something perfectly clear. You will never have me. If it weren’t for Liam, I wouldn’t even be here.”
Her parroting back the two words he’d just thought only seconds before made it clear she was well-educated in their nature. Didn’t deter him though. If anything, the urge increased. His beast growled.
Kiss her. Now.
She shoved past him and into the cabin. “Where is he, anyway?”
Breathing deeply, he slowly closed the door. “He decided against therapy.”
“Why am I not surprised?” She looked around the room, then faced him. “Well. I guess this is good-bye, Mr. O’Connell. I’d say it was nice meeting you, but I’d be lying.”
He grinned again. The woman would do anything to draw a do-not-cross line. While she might think it put him in his place, all it did was make her more enticing. He stepped farther into the room. “I was hoping we could talk.”
“I can’t imagine what we could possibly have to talk about.”
“Liam.” He threw down his ace in the hole.
“I can’t talk to you about a patient.”
“Technically he’s not a patient since he’s refused therapy.” When she opened her mouth, to protest no doubt, he added, “Listen. I really need to know how I can help him.”
That, he meant. If Liam was going to refuse Jaylin’s help, Aidan needed to know more about what he was dealing with. When her shoulders relaxed from their normal ready-for-a-fight rigidity, he knew he’d won.
“Fine.” She walked farther into the room and perched on the edge of the couch. Knees pressed tightly together, purse resting on her lap, entwined fingers on top of the purse—the image of propriety.
She was such a contradiction, wanting so badly to be considered aloof, completely professional, but he’d already seen her anger, her feistiness, and he’d continue to bring it out.
He sat on the coffee table in front of her, the heat from their knees meeting. He hoped she felt the same warmth. Other than the slightest widening of her eyes, she gave no indication his choice in seat had any effect on her—until she shifted on the couch. He bit back a smile. She wanted to scoot back, distance herself, but she wouldn’t. She was too proud.
Her chin went up. “What would you like to know, Mr. O’Connell?”
His flirtiness disappeared as the seriousness of the topic hit him. “I need to understand Dsershon better. Until Liam, I’d only heard stories about what a rejection from a mate could do to a shifter. I don’t understand how a man who was so completely in love not six months ago, so completely happy in his life, has turned into what he is today because his mate left him. Shouldn’t he be able to get over it and move on?”
“Says a man who hasn’t Fewsed himself to his mate. The sad thing is you won’t grasp what Liam is going through until you’re Fewsed as well, then you’ll understand why he can’t” —she used finger quotes—“get over it.”
“Love isn’t supposed to ruin.”
“On the contrary.” The indulgent smile she offered ground against his nerves, as though she were explaining the reality of love to a wistful teenager with stars in his eyes. “The bond our Dea gave you with your mates is not this euphoric event that’s gushed about. Eventually, shifter love does ruin, whether it’s through Dsershon or from being Wydowed. One day, the Fewshon will be traumatized, and life for the shifter is destroyed.”
“You make it sound so dark.”
“Do you see any light in what Liam is going through?”
He didn’t like how Jaylin made bonding sound so awful. “Liam was Dserted, it’s different. He wouldn’t be like this had Ava Fewsed with him. It’s Ava’s