Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
At least I would have gotten to experience something like this once in my life.
At least someone other than my grandparents had cared about me for at least a little bit.
That was something.
I tried to hold back a groan as a wave of nausea rolled straight through me.
“What hurts?” he asked after a moment.
“Everything.” I tried to laugh but coughed instead, and damn, my lungs weren’t right. Since when had breathing been so hard? “Thank you… for this.”
“You’re not dying, but you are really sick,” that almost comforting voice said against my ear, his words slow and steady.
“I know. I’ve never been this sick before.”
The arm around my hip moved just a little.
I squeezed my eyes closed and took another painful swallow, trying to put my thoughts in order. “Hey… if something happens to me, if I don’t make it out of here…” I could barely say it. I could barely fucking think it, but I had to. It had been on my mind since I’d been in that room with those assholes.
His body tightened, and I didn’t imagine how gruff his voice came out. “Nothing is going to happen. You’re sick and you’re puny. That’s all.”
I let out a slow breath through my mouth. Me? Puny? “Says the man who couldn’t feed himself,” I mumbled, half expecting him to make a smart-ass comment in reply.
What I got was a chuff.
Did that count as a laugh? Had I made him laugh again? “I’m serious though,” I whispered. “Tell everyone I saved the world. Make it up. Let me at least go down a hero.”
His muscles stayed hard. “You’re not going to die,” The Defender grunted.
I pressed my forehead a little more against the column of his neck. “My last name is Castro. You can tell them my real name if you want, or Gracie, I don’t care. I wouldn’t be able to.” I shivered. “My grandparents never called me Gracie anyway, only people I met did. They usually called me mi amor, that means—”
“I know what it means,” he cut me off. His chest rose and fell slowly against my cheek. “You talk in Spanish in your sleep.”
I did? “I do?”
“Yeah.” Neither one of us said anything for a moment until he asked, “Why do you pretend like you don’t know Spanish?”
“I don’t pretend. I’m just not speaking it now just in case they’re listening. I’m paranoid. And why would I have said anything to you when you barely talked to me in English?” I thought about it. “We, my family, never spoke it in public, just at home.” That was why I had never been allowed to call my grandma Abuela. So that no one could pinpoint their accents.
He made a sound in his chest that I was going to hope was acceptance.
“You smell nice for having not showered,” I mumbled.
“I told you, I don’t need to sweat as much as you do, and it doesn’t have an odor.”
“Lucky,” I muttered.
His head tipped down, his chin brushing my temple. He sighed right before he lifted his arm, moving it to the side and—
I heard the zipper, then felt him shift a bit before he tugged the opened sides of the hoodie wide and wrapped them around me. Like a taco, and I was the filling.
I blinked.
Oh shit.
I was T-shirt on skin with a beautiful man.
And not just any beautiful man, but The Defender. The fucking Defender. A gorgeous pain in the fucking ass. One who was taking care of me.
People would pay millions for this. If I had them and I hadn’t gotten to know his real personality, I would too.
Could he really be such a dickhead when he went to this extent?
I dropped my head and even caught my breath… until my teeth chattered and I shivered again. I swallowed, deciding to try and get my mind off this, so I asked the first thing I thought of. “Are you a cyborg?”
I felt his huff more than heard it. “No.”
Turning my head a little, I lifted my hand—and I was going to blame the fever on messing around with the hormones controlling my brain—and with the tip of my index finger, I lifted his lip a little. It was firm and soft at the same time.
I tapped his canine tooth with my fingernail. It felt… normalish. It wasn’t like I ever poked at my own teeth.
Moving my hand, I nudged at a spot on his jaw with the pad of my finger, and still, he let me.
Then I gently knocked on the part of his collarbone that was exposed from his unzipped hoodie.
“What are you doing?” The Defender asked slowly.
“I don’t know, making sure you’re not.”
I heard the deep breath he let out from his nostrils. I felt the shift of his muscles beneath my legs and beside my arm. I barely heard him say, “You can call me Alexander.”