Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
A blister of rage bludgeoned the air.
And here we already were, right at the heart of it.
“Yet, you agreed to marry him.” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
As if I had a choice.
I bit back the words I wanted to spit.
Tremors ripped beneath the floor, and I had to plant my hands on the table to steady myself. To keep my chair from vibrating with the shame. The hurt. The pain. The anger.
All of it swept into a snarl of regret.
I couldn’t look at him when I admitted, “Yes.”
“So why leave, Aster? It seems to me it turned out exactly how you planned it.” Disgust twisted his voice.
Clearly, he was having second thoughts about what had happened last night. About the promise he’d made when he’d walked out the door.
There were too many things I couldn’t say. Too many things that couldn’t be taken back. Too many things that would destroy him now.
A fist slammed down on the table, and I sucked in a shocked breath. I squeezed my eyes shut as I fought the impact of his fury.
“Why?” It cracked through the room.
Guttural.
Grieved.
A single tear streaked free.
It wasn’t of fear.
It wasn’t of weakness.
It wasn’t of anything but the loss that neither of us could take back.
Every secret I could never give him.
I lifted my face because there was no use hiding from him. Not when he was there, potent and powerful. Angel and beast.
“Because there is only so much one person can take.”
I wondered if he had any idea I’d taken it for him.
Based on his expression, I believed, no. He’d just been a reckless fool.
Greed had infested and taken control. Clouded who I’d once believed him to be.
Something moved through his being.
Something barely held.
Something barely contained.
“Has he hurt you?” Logan’s question was almost emotionless.
Almost.
Except his green eyes turned a deadly shade of black.
A flashfire of visions banged through my mind.
Pain. Blood. Shattered on the floor at his feet.
Begging.
Begging.
The knot in my throat throbbed, blocking off the truth that ached to become his.
I wanted to look away. To drop my gaze.
But I just sat there, shackled by this rage, by this lure, by the past that had caught up to Logan and me so quickly, neither of us knew how to stand in it.
The eye of the storm.
Right here.
Right now.
And there I sat, staring at the face of my glorious, dark defender.
My beautiful, sweet boy who’d loved me like loving someone was simple.
His chair suddenly scraped across the floor and, one second later, he had me torn from mine with my back pinned against the wall, so fast I could barely process the action.
Then everything stilled.
The only movement was my pulse that screamed through my veins and the savagery that radiated from his body.
Air wheezed from his lungs, and every muscle in his powerful body vibrated as he pressed closer.
He reached out to take me by the jaw so he could tip my face up to meet the vengeance in his. His hand was shaking. Shaking and shaking.
“Tell me, Aster.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter?” It was venom.
“I’m already leaving him.”
Logan had one hand pressed to the wall to hold himself up. With the other, he scratched his fingertips along the edge of my face, as if he had the urge to claw his way in. His head tipped to the side and the violent words cut into the dense air. “I told you last night. I will kill him, Little Star. I will.”
Agony lanced through my being and ripped me wide open.
“You don’t want that kind of war.”
“It might be the only thing we can find.”
“The only thing I want is my freedom.”
“Yet you gave yourself to me.”
He’d always been my heart’s direction. I wasn’t sure there was anywhere else I could have gone.
Still, I needed to play it off like the only reason I was here was because of the bet. Like this twisted fate hadn’t drawn us together.
Magnets.
Gravity.
“Only because it bought me time. Because he’ll honor the bet,” I forced out.
The curl of Logan’s smile with his split lip was full of ire. “I think we both know that’s not true.”
I tried to hold back the welling of emotion. The moisture that burned. But I couldn’t. Couldn’t.
Not when for the first time in seven years, I felt it.
Hope.
Beauty beneath the betrayal.
And I found it in the man staring back at me.
Logan’s trembling thumb traced my cheek. “He can’t have you back.”
The words cracked.
Everything sizzled.
The man was a short-circuit to my mind.
“Thirty days,” I forced out. It was a reminder of our deal. It was all I had to give. I might get free of Jarek, but I’d never be free of my name.
That old possession burned through those stony, green eyes.
“Thirty days.” When he whispered it, I knew it was a lie.
“I’ll find the proof you need, Aster. I’ll find it and set you free.”