Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Okay, fine, her hellren didn’t appear at all approachable.
He was still an animal underneath a thin, civilized veneer that could be shed like a suit of clothes in a moment’s notice. And screw the passage of three decades. He remained the male who had ushered her into who she really was all those years ago, a divine mystery who had done more to define the joy in her life than anybody else, and whose loss had taken all the color from her world. His “death” had destroyed her from the inside out, even as she had continued breathing, and his shocking return was inflating all those places that had suffocated.
How long until I can trust this, she wondered.
“Why are you so far away from me, leelan.”
As he reached out to her, lifting one of his massive arms, the black diamond in the King’s ring flashed, and the tattoos that ran up the inside of his forearm, the ones that detailed his purebred lineage in the Old Language, rippled.
“I’m just enjoying the view,” she purred.
And what a view it was.
His waist-length black hair flowed over the pillow she’d laid her own head on, the ends dropping off into thin air and nearly touching the carpet. She thought about what the straight, silken lengths had felt like, draping all around as he’d mounted her, that which had faded from well-worn memories happening in real time, no distillation from recollections required anymore.
That warrior body of his was just the same as well, the muscles that padded his heavy bones marked with veins, his contours so different from her own. When he’d taken her, his weight had pressed her down into the mattress, and as he’d surged on top of her, penetrating her sex, marking her with his bonding scent… it had been like the first time.
Better than the first time—
A pain she didn’t understand lit up behind her sternum, and she rubbed the spot that hurt. The sensation was familiar, the infection of grief and mourning like a pneumonia that refused to be cured and required her to make effort out of breathing. But if there was any moment she needed to be overjoyed, it was here, it was now. Her nightmare was over.
And yet the sense that this was all a cruel trick of her subconscious nagged at her.
Wrath lowered his thick arm, his pec bunching up from the movement. “I’m sorry. I should have been there for you. For L.W.”
With a swipe of her hand, she wiped tears from both eyes. “How are you apologizing for your own death?”
“I can feel your pain like it’s my own, and I don’t know what the fuck else to do.”
Her feet started moving before she even thought about going back over to him. “I’m not hurting. How could I be?”
“You’re lying, but I don’t blame you for the denial. Here, let me make room for you—”
“I’ll just sit down here—”
They both laughed, and she lowered herself into the space he made as he shifted onto his side. Reaching out, she hovered her hand over the curve of his hip.
“Why do you hesitate to touch me?”
She smiled through her tension. “How do you know that when you can’t…”
“See?” His black brows tightened over the bridge of his aquiline nose. “You can say it. I’m still as blind as ever. That hasn’t changed.”
Lowering her hand to his skin, she felt the warmth and smoothness of his flesh, and underneath, the ropes of power that wrapped around the curving bone of his pelvis. Her eyes shifted to his sex as it twitched, even though he had come five times in a row, deep inside of her.
“I just can’t believe it’s you,” she whispered. “After all these years.”
He brushed her cheek with his forefinger and rubbed the wetness away with his thumb. “It’s a good thing, right? That I’m back.”
Beth closed her eyes and turned her face into his palm. “Of course. God, why would you question that—”
“It’s okay.”
“What is.”
“If something… if you found someone. You know. Thirty years is a long time.”
Beth stiffened. “What the—”
“I mean, I’m trying to imagine what it was like for you. Moving out of the mansion, raising L.W. all by yourself, years going by, then decades. After a while, I wouldn’t blame you for looking for some companionship—”
She put her forefinger on his lips. “Shh.”
His sensuous mouth moved under the soft pressure she put on it. “I’m just saying. Thirty-three years is a long, long time.”
Shaking her head, she went back to the worst scene of her entire life, the one that, in spite of all the grief that had followed, had been the source of her deepest pain: the moment she had been told he was gone. She’d been with L.W. in the young’s playroom, their son working with his blocks, stacking them high as he had always done, the one-on-top-of-the-other like a compulsion for him. The door to the bright, cheerful room had opened, and she had known even before the Brotherhood had walked in wearing the black leather of war, and smelling of fresh blood, gunpowder, and lessers. But worse? When Tohr had come through them with George. The sight of Wrath’s service dog, at the side of anybody other than his master, had destroyed her.