Mated to the Moon (Portal City Protectors Book 6) by Georgette Clair (little red riding hood ebook free txt) 📗

Alpha, Fabiana,” he answered, gazing down at her. “What else would you expect?”

“I–” She shook her head. Not yet. No. She couldn’t.

“Shh, pequeña. We will save that for later. Let’s just go home. When you’re ready, we’ll involve the others.”

“Why are three of my wolves being carted away?” Pasquale interrupted.

“Because they hurt her.”

Pasquale lifted a brow. “Fabiana?”

She dropped her head.

Two fingers lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You bow to no one.” Adonis turned his attention to Pasquale. “And that is between my mate and me.”

“Make sure they hurt then.”

“Absolutely.”

Great, it seems I’m moving.

“Why can’t I smell you, pequeña?”

And I’m not answering that.

“I’ve never seen the Moonstone lands. No time like the present.”

“Hmmm.”

Okay, that didn’t sound ominous at alllll.

Chapter Five

Adonis fingered the small bird tucked away in his pocket. It was ratty and torn in places, but the scent he recognized from his mate permeated every mishappened stitch. Even as he stroked it, he imagined her soft fingers caressing it, holding it close to her chest.

Did it warm her when she was trapped in the darkness? When that puta of a father locked her away? Adonis wasn’t sure she’d been allowed any comfort, but he couldn’t leave it behind. He could only wonder as to why she had.

But no one liked to have a weakness exposed, and Fabiana was a woman who hid her weaknesses. Some may take her timid nature and the way she hid her face as her shortcomings.

Adonis saw it much differently.

His gaze traveled to her, sitting across from him in the back of his Rolls. Her dark, lustrous hair cascaded around her shoulders, and she crossed her white-clad legs primly, rolling her fingers absently in her green sweater.

Understated. Blending in.

That’s what she went for, but she only drew the eye instead. Her quiet countenance was watchful, even when her gaze wasn’t on him, and he had no doubt she took in everything around her. Her bags were packed, courtesy of her brother’s wolves, tucked into the trunks of Adonis’s soldiers’ cars—well, aside from the one trunk housing three very soon-to-be-dead wolves.

Oh, how he would enjoy that.

For now, his attention was settled on the woman across from him and the way she would see his world and … him.

He couldn’t call what he felt nervousness. He’d never truly experienced the emotion, but it was as close as he’d ever gotten. It was like a sort of shaky hope in his chest—hope that she’d see beyond the man he had to be to the man he was on the inside.

So he reached out.

***

“This belongs to you.”

Fabiana’s gaze swing to Adonis, something she’d been pointedly trying to avoid since her brother practically carted her off with a quick kiss on the forehead.

“Hate me later, but you need this.”

Yeah, like I need a root canal.

Of course, what he handed her stopped her thoughts short.

Uccellino.

Fabiana hadn’t been able to come up with a name for the stuffed animal her mother had made for her, so she’d called him Birdy in Italian, trying to hold on to the language her mother spoke exclusively. Most days, she had to hide it away so her father wouldn’t take it from her or destroy it.

But when he found out how important it was, he used it against her anyway.

So she’d left it behind, tucked away where it would always be safe.

And Adonis brought it back.

His long fingers cradled it in the space between them, his gaze on her as he waited. Most powerful men used silence to batter others, a tool to create tension in the space. Not Adonis … he simply waited.

“Why did you bring that?” She curled her fingers tighter in her sweater to keep from reaching out.

It means nothing. Throw it on the ground and forget it so I can treasure it alone.

He cocked his head and her heart lurched. Something about the way he did it was so similar to her. The studious, inquisitive nature of his features set her off balance and comforted her at the same time.

“Because it’s yours.”

“Everything in that room was mine.”

He shook his head. “No, not like this.” Adonis gestured for her to take it, a small lift in his hand she tracked with her eyes.

“You could have left it behind.”

Instead of answering her, he leaned a bit forward and dropped it on her lap, sucking the air out the compartment as his large frame moved.

“Do with it what you want, then.”

Silence.

“Entropy of a system approaches a constant value as temperature approaches absolute zero,” she whispered to compose herself and stop from picking up Uccellino and cuddling him to her chest.

Adonis shifted. “I’m not sure what the third law of thermodynamics has to do with the bird, but if you are speaking of your attraction to me … remember that absolute zero is theoretically possible, but not the case when it comes to us. It’s impossible to not want me, no?”

She gaped at him. Did he just …

Fabiana glared at Adonis. “Define the spin anti-corelated case.”

“A spin-zero particle could decay into a pair of spin-½ particles. Due to conservation of angular momentum, the total spin before and after decay–”

“Symmetries give rise to conservation laws.”

“And now you speak of Emmy Noether. It’s a shame her gender ensured she would not get the fame Albert did in the same year.”

This wasn’t real. The mic in his ear must be allowing someone to give him the information. No one ever knew what the hell she talked about.

“My mother wanted to be a scientist, a physicist to be exact. She was allowed to go to college, but when she married my father, it all stopped. Sometimes, she whispered theorems