AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Is she real?
A mirage, maybe. She always looked like one, even back then. If I feel her face, will she shimmer and disappear?
One of my hands floats up, fingertips grazing the smooth skin of her rounded cheek.
It—
She feels real.
Warm. Soft. Shaking like a leaf.
So much is the same. Her colors. Her fine-boned hands wringing together. Those blue fucking eyes.
And the clip in her hair.
She starts to speak but winds up pressing her mouth closed. Those lips… I remember those, too. So plush and pink. And I remember thinking they couldn’t possibly be as soft as they looked.
They move, now. Forming the only word that could convince me any of this is actually happening.
“Bear? Is it really you?”
She gave me that nickname as a joke after I told her all of the guys on the team called me Beastly, and confessed I wasn’t really sure how I felt about it.
“You’re not a beast!” she’d huffed, adorably indignant. “You’re a… bear.”
I remember blinking at her. “…excuse me?”
She had flashed a smile, the small, impish one I liked best. “Yeah, you’re a big, snarly, furry guy,” she’d said, gesturing at my long hair. “But then, when we’re on the roof and I get cold, you keep me warm. Big bear.”
My eyes trace over the clip holding her black curls away from her face. Breaths heave in and out of me, but the rest of my body is frozen in place. Numb lips move without my permission, speaking the nickname I only had the balls to call her a handful of times back then.
“Butterfly.”
chapter
thirteen
Dark, melted chocolate. Aromatic hazelnuts. Luxurious smoothness and flaky salt and nutty buttery?—
My life flashes before my eyes while I perfume, instantly dousing my panties in slick, and thoroughly embarrassing myself to the brink of death.
Oh. My. Lord.
I’ve had this dream before, too. A full-grown alpha-male Cassian who wants me in a way my half-grown almost-alpha friend Cassian never did. Forest green eyes that stare me down with intent, instead of pity.
The dream is familiar, but it’s not usually so vivid.
Besides, Cassian wasn’t designated when I knew him. I never got to find out what his scent was.
So why can I taste chocolate on my tongue?
And breathe the rich scent of hazelnuts?
Am I in heat? Is this some sort of episode? Am I going to wake up with padded cuffs on my wrists? Or Meg shaking my shoulders?
What other explanation could there be?
Aside from the obvious. Which becomes more and more likely the longer I look at him.
