Total pages in book: 362
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
Shadows seeped out from behind his shoulders. “That is the exact opposite of what I need to do.”
“How will you keep me safe if you’re dead?” I demanded, feeling my stomach pitch with each word. “Because that’s what will happen if you try to stop this.”
The line of his cheekbones sharpened. “You doubt the extent of what I’m willing to do for you.”
“That’s the thing, Ash. I don’t doubt what you’re willing to do.” Panic seeded itself in the pit of my belly. “Listen to me. Please. We just got a second chance. One we had to fight for and will have to keep fighting for. And I am terrified of losing that—losing you.”
His eyes went wide. “That is what you’re terrified of?” More of his flesh disappeared. “You will never lose me, Sera. Never.”
“Then prove it,” I whispered. “Please.”
He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring. His eyes closed as another deep, quaking tremor ran through him. “Kolis… I know he scares you.”
My breath caught as I dropped my hands to his chest. “He doesn’t.”
“Do not lie to me, Sera. Not now. Not about him.” The tendrils of shadows arced. “I know what I felt from you when he had you. I choke on the taste of what you felt even now.”
A part of me shriveled up right then because I didn’t want to remember that he’d felt what I had. The fear. The panic. The desperation. And—
I stopped myself right before my lungs seized.
Ash’s neck twisted like the Ancient’s head had moved. Inhumanly. Otherworldly. The similarities between them and the Primals were uncanny. “This,” Ash ground out, “is what I was talking about just minutes ago. You don’t always have to be strong, Sera. And you never need to pretend with me.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Do you think I don’t know what you felt when you heard that Kolis had summoned you?” Ash demanded. “Do you really think I don’t know what caused you to scream in the middle of the night? Do you?”
My body flashed cold and then hot as eather rose. I stepped back. “I am afraid of him. I’m fucking terrified of him and how he makes me feel like I have no control over anything. Okay? Does it make you happy to hear me say that?”
Ash flinched, the shadows stilling.
Shame scalded the back of my throat. I shouldn’t have said that, but fuck. Now was not the time for this. “But I’m more terrified of losing you, and you know that is possible.” I closed my eyes for a moment, then reopened them. “It hadn’t occurred to me until Aydun spoke. Kolis’s return as the true Primal of Death made you vulnerable. But I’m sure you were fully aware of that little fact.”
Jaw working, he looked away.
“Yeah, you knew, and we’re going to talk about that when I get back,” I warned him. “Because I will be coming back, and I will probably be in a bad mood. So, be ready.”
His head turned toward me. A moment passed, and then the smoky eather gathering around him collapsed into nothingness once more. “This isn’t right.”
“I know.”
Ash held my stare, and then his mouth was on mine. His head tilted, and he parted my lips with a fierce stroke of his tongue. A desperate wildness claimed him. Us. We’d been here before. Too many times. So I recognized the madness in this kind of kiss. How it was a prayer and a curse. A promise and a release in a clash of teeth and tongues and searching lips. Desire flooded my senses. His. Mine. Pure, red-hot lust overwhelmed everything as his arm tightened around my waist. He lifted me onto the tips of my toes, and I could feel his hardness pressing against my belly. Desire pulsed through me, pooling between my thighs. I moaned into his kiss as I struggled to remember exactly what we were supposed to be doing at the moment. This wasn’t it.
But damn, it felt so wrong to stop.
I wrenched my head away, panting. “We don’t have time for this.”
His pupils were visible now, but his eyes were no less bright. However, need fueled them now. “Fuck if we don’t.”
I gasped as Ash’s hands went to the band of my leggings. He shoved them down, lacy undergarments and all. Somehow, he got one leg of the tight material over one boot.
“That was impressive,” I murmured.
Rising, his lips curled into a shadowy, silky smile as he drew his hand up my leg, along my inner thigh. His mouth returned to mine, muffling my cry as his fingers delved between my thighs, parting the slick heat there. The contrast between my warmth and his coldness was startling.
Ash groaned into my mouth, and between his touch and that sound, I was undone. “Fuck it,” I moaned. “We’ll make time.”