Page 116 of Taken by Moonlight

Copyright 2018 BonnieVanak

Touchedby Moonlight Chapter1

STEPHANIE

There isa large difference between what is shown on the outside, and what one feelsinside.

I know this to be true, because I’ve been living it my entire life. Smile, smile, I was always told. Smile to hide away your inner secrets, your trueself.

Never let anyone see you cry. If you must display that torrid emotion, retreat to the privacy of the nearest ladies room andcry.

So my mother instructedme.

It’s different for humans, skins as we call them. They can wear their emotions out, waving them like flags in a parade. Not me. I am a half-Fae, half-wolf shifter, something I hide from everyone who knowsme.

For all of my twenty-four years, I have been told to hide what I am. I have powers, but living in the skin world, I have never tapped intothem.

Never tried to let themrise.

My parents raised me as human, to have skin friends, attend skin schools and work in a job surrounded by humans. Two years of a local community college, living at home, strictly supervised, and then the safest job you could everimagine.

I stuffed and licked envelopes at a large direct mail agency that runs marketing campaigns for finickyclients.

Sometimes they even let mecopy.

Woo hoo. So exciting. I could have died from such stressfulresponsibility.

Dating is also closely supervised. My parents worry my true nature will be revealed if I engage in sex. They have allowed me to go on a few dates with pimply-faced men they deemedsafe.

A few chaste kisses, nothing more. Holding hands in thetheater.

Nothing to invoke passion or desire, for the Fae, and shifters, are highlysexual.

On nights where the full moon bleeds into the sky, my parents locked me in my room to prohibit my changing into wolf. I must never let moonlight touch me, or it can trigger ashift.

My life is tightlycontrolled.

Dreams are not controlled. The Fae can dream-share and for equally as long as I have suppressed my true nature, I have dreamed of a mysterious man who visits me in my sleep, his features blurred so I cannot recognizehim.

On my birthday when I turned twenty-one, we did more thanchat.

His kisses left me burning, caused wetness to flare between mylegs.

I awakened, panting, longing for what I could never have. A cold shower and meditation erased the sexual desire, as it alwaysdoes.

This was hidden from my parents, a forced smile that greeted them every morning. It served me well to mask the intense emotions I felt in the arms of a powerful, sensual alpha who wanted me as no man has ever wantedme.

I’ve always been the dutiful daughter, even as I yearned for something more – to let the wild inside me roamfree.

For years I have succeeded in hiding what I trulyam.

Until last year, when I ran away, unable to stand the restrictions anymore. After two months of being jobless, hungry, and alone and living on the streets, I found work in a strip club, baring my body for other shifters’pleasure.

Yesterday while I sat at the dressing table to apply my makeup, somethinghappened.

My hands glowed blue. My Fae powers are surging now that I am approaching my twenty-fifthbirthday.

I don’t know how a forced smile is going to hide this anylonger.