Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“You don’t have to keep going,” Graves told her, low and menacing. “I already want him dead.”
“I have to,” she forced out. “He told me that he was just taking back what was his. That he owned me and that I could never leave. That he would kill me before allowing it. And he must have thought I was dead after he beat me to within an inch of my life and left my broken body in an abandoned alleyway.” She hiccupped over the next word. “Even in death, there was no escape, no exit from him.”
Twin flames danced in his eyes.
“And they call us monsters.”
Kierse nodded. Men could be just as much monsters as the ones with claws and teeth.
“That was what I saw,” he said faintly as if afraid of spooking her.
“What do you mean?”
“The one time I could read you, when you were overwhelmed with Imani’s magic, I saw you bloodied up and lying in an alley. I saw what Jason had done to you.” Graves clenched his hands into fists.
She gulped. “Yes.”
“I didn’t realize that at first. I wasn’t sure why your brain was stuck on that image.”
“Now you know,” she whispered.
“How did you escape him?”
“I was mere blocks from Colette’s brothel. Gen brought me in,” she explained. “I was terrified at first that I would be forced to work in the brothel or run jobs for people. That every person I came in contact with was only being nice to me as a ruse before they would hurt me.” A long breath escaped her lips. “But that wasn’t the case. That wasn’t Gen. It took me a long time to figure it out, but she was always just my friend. She helped me heal.”
“And where is Jason now?” Graves asked with deathly quiet.
She shook her head. “Dead, I think. I stuck a knife in him.” She looked down at her hands, picking at her nails. “He should have suffered more, but when I went for my revenge, I took what I could get.”
“Good,” Graves said, slowly removing his gloves. “I wouldn’t have been able to suffer him being alive. I would have killed him myself.”
“His death belonged to me,” she told him, brushing back her hair with trembling hands. “It’s why I have trouble with accepting comfort, accepting any sort of actual intimacy.” She took a deep breath before adding, “It’s why I couldn’t love Torra.”
Graves went still at the name. She hadn’t spoken about Torra since he’d held her as she cried in the subway tunnel. But here was the truth. The one even she hadn’t been able to face.
“There wasn’t enough left of me that wanted more than just casual sex.” She looked up to meet his eyes, every ounce of openness on her face. “It’s why when I came to you in the tunnels, that was . . . It was different with you.”
“Ah,” he said, swiping a tear from her cheek. His face softened. “That is why you couldn’t fathom that I would think you would leave.”
“How could I leave the one person I’d allowed myself to be vulnerable with? The first person I ever considered more with.”
He cupped her cheek. “I see it now.”
“What a pair we are,” Kierse said with a choked laugh.
“What a pair, indeed.”
Then his lips were upon hers again. She opened her mouth to him, letting his tongue slide across hers. His hands, his blessedly bare hands, came up to cup her cheeks, and she leaned into him. She wanted this. It wasn’t a matter of just sex. This was so much more. She had confessed her darkest secret and revealed exactly who she was. And he still wanted her.
She wanted more than the sum of its parts. She wanted it all.
“Graves,” she whispered. “I want this. I want to be with you.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
He pressed a kiss to her lips. “Come with me.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Her heart rate picked up as he pulled her away from the comfort of the sitting room, up the first flight of stairs, and then toward his rooms. These weeks, she had never gone inside them and always respected his privacy. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious. But she was naturally curious, and there were few things left secret to a thief with a good set of picks.
When he pushed the far door open, she found his bedchamber. It was stunning in both the simplicity of the furniture and the richness of the pieces he had chosen. Unlike the opulence of the rest of the house, this felt more like a sanctuary. It felt like Graves.
“I’ve never done this, either,” he admitted.
“Done what?”
He pulled her into his inner sanctuary. “Brought someone to my room.”
She swallowed. “An all-new experience.”
“It doesn’t happen often when you’ve lived as long as I have.”
She wandered his inner sanctum, taking in the small details that must have mattered to him. The carved wood bird figurines on top of a dresser; a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven on his dark mahogany nightstand; a handful of European coins, as if he’d just returned from a trip, though they looked far out of date; a portrait of the real Anne Boleyn in her signature B pearl necklace; and another painted in muted colors with two figures in a field of wildflowers, looking down at a little green book. One of them could have been Graves for all she knew.