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altogether. Still, Alex stood, arms folded over his broad, bare chest,
expression serious, commanding obedience.
“Tell me, angel.”
Jacob bit his lip. That single word snapped the thread of his
resistance, and he spread his arms wide as he readied his heart for the
chopping block.
“I thought you were my mate,” he began.
“I am,” Alex said.
“No, you’re not,” Jacob continued. As Alex opened his mouth to
protest, he raised a hand to silence him. “Look, if you were my mate,
then we’d be made for each other. Our bodies, our desires, whatever,
would be perfectly suited to meet each other’s wants and needs.”
He stopped, pausing as he raked his eyes over Alex’s broad
shoulders, his muscled abdomen, his wide, commanding stance. Alex
was perfection personified. And Jacob was a mistake.
He sighed. “I know I’m not the most…” He trailed off,
embarrassed. Gathering his courage, he continued. “I’m not the most
sexually exciting person in the world, but—”
“I told you you’re beautiful.”
“Whatever,” Jacob said, glad that he’d bothered to dress before
the time had come for this particular conversation. His weirdly
hairless, weirdly pale, weirdly skinny body might have been fine for
all his past boyfriends, who, as planeswalkers, had all looked like
him, but after Alex’s rejection, Jacob felt self-conscious as hell about
it. He didn’t want the gorgeous, muscular, manly-looking werewolf
44
Ellen Ginsberg
studying his decidedly less exciting nakedness any more than he
already had. “Look, I appreciate the white lie, but—”
“It wasn’t a lie.” Alex more growled the words than said them,
and Jacob swallowed around his fear. Liar or not, he certainly had a
way of convincing people. Pacing back and forth, Alex muttered,
“Why would you think it was?”
“If you wanted me,” Jacob said quietly, “like if you really needed
and desired what we were doing back there, I would have been able to
claim you. Planeswalkers mate by latching onto their lover’s needs.
It’s like a map of their souls. Their desires, their feelings, their
dreams? We get a little piece of all of that when we mate.” Jacob
paused, inwardly cursing himself for the reverence in his tone. It was
useless. “But I can’t have any of that if you don’t want me.”
Alex stopped in his tracks. His expression darkened, and Jacob
knew he’d hit a nerve. For a long time, he didn’t say a word. Finally,
he spoke. He stood ten feet away from Jacob, not making a move to
close the distance.
“I want you,” he said slowly.
Jacob laughed bitterly. “Well, then, I must just be a lousy lay,
because—”
“I didn’t say that,” Alex said darkly. The sun had set, and in the
moonlight, Jacob could see the glint of his claws pushing through
Alex’s fingertips. His eyes narrowed, his shoulders slumped, and his
anger exploded as he punched the tree next to him.
Taking a breath, Jacob backed away.
“This is fucked,” Alex said.
Jacob shook his head. “It’s fine. We’re just not mates.” Even as he
said it, he brushed his thumb over his punctured finger. The bleeding
had stopped, but his wound still pulsed with a dull, aching hurt. The
closer he got to Alex, the more it throbbed, the offset center of his
need. It was like a compass, feeling its way toward magnetic north.
Jacob turned away, his body tensing as if the gesture were
unnatural. “Look, people have been wrong about this before—”
Jacob at the Break of Dawn
45
“Well, we weren’t,” Alex said quietly.
Something in the tone of his voice caused Jacob to glance up, and
he could swear for a second he saw the glint of a tear brimming in the
big werewolf’s eye. Alex huffed out a breath, and the glimmering
speck disappeared. As if that were enough to banish whatever shred
of emotion he felt for Jacob. As if that were enough to fortify himself
against Jacob’s unwelcome psychic assault.
Jacob’s own head was a mess of cosmic muddle. A thousand
conflicting impulses charged his mind and body, and he stood, rooted
to the spot, trying to sort through the mess, trying to settle on some
action that would make sense of what had just happened.
Gathering his courage, he approached Alex. The bigger man
shook his head and turned away, but Jacob pressed against him, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]