Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“I think she likes you too.” Hold smiled. “She’s very friendly—she and her mates have made Fierce and I feel extremely welcome since we moved to the Mother Ship.”
Fierce had to agree with this. He liked Deep and Lock a lot—they had a lot of good tips on how to deal with a human bride. (Though if Hold didn’t let them have a normal Claiming Period, Fierce didn’t see how he and his brother would ever get Celia as their bride.)
“Let me show you the bathing chamber,” he said to her now, trying to make peace. “Can you swim? If not, you might want to stay out of the bathing pool. It gets deep in the middle and you’re tiny.”
She lifted her chin.
“I can swim…a little. Anyway, show me. I’m dead on my feet—I’ve been up since five this morning and I just want to rest.”
“Of course, my lady. Please let us know if you need anything,” Hold said courteously. “I’ll put the clothing Kat sent you in your room while Fierce shows you the bathing chamber.”
“Thank you.” Celia gave the Light Twin a dazzling smile that nearly took Fierce’s breath away. By the Goddess—did she realize how beautiful she was? Somehow he doubted it. That ass of a fiancé certainly never told her!
Then Celia looked up at Fierce and the smile left her face.
“All right—show me the bathroom,” she said shortly. “I’m exhausted.”
“Sure.” Fierce nodded, trying not to show that her attitude nettled him. “This way.”
And with a jerk of his head, he headed for the bathing chamber—or the “fresher” as most Kindred called it.
If their new bride wanted to keep her distance from him and save her smiles for Hold, that was fine with him, he told himself. He’d never been jealous of his brother and he wasn’t going to start now.
9
CELIA
Can’t believe Peter acted like that! What is wrong with those people? Who doesn’t know how to check on a turkey and take it out of the oven on time?
Celia looked at the diamond ring in her hand and then placed it carefully on the wooden bench beside the stack of towels. She would be careful not to lose it, but she didn’t feel like wearing it right now.
She’d had fights with her fiancé before—most notably when he’d flushed her birth control down the toilet—but none quite like this. Why was that?
Maybe because in the past, you always backed down and apologized, whispered a little voice in her head. Tonight you refused to back down and Peter showed his true colors.
Celia tried to push the little voice away but couldn’t quite manage it, maybe because she knew it spoke the truth. She’d never felt quite good enough for Peter—possibly because of her background and lack of upbringing. She’d always had to struggle with feelings of low self-worth because growing up, it seemed that nobody wanted her.
Well, they certainly want you now! whispered the little voice. But the image that filled her head wasn’t of Peter and his family—it was Hold and Fierce that hovered in her mind’s eye. It occurred to her that she’d never found out from Kat how exactly two such huge warriors could fit with a human woman sexually. She saw another image—the three of them together with Celia in the middle as they touched and teased her…
She shook her head. What was wrong with her tonight? Fighting with Peter and his mother and telling him they were taking a break. And then fantasizing about the two huge warriors who had erroneously come to Claim her as their bride…
Have to stop thinking this way, she told herself. Probably she’d just been comparing the Thanksgiving dinner on the Mother Ship and the people she had met here with Peter and his family and that’s why they’d had a fight. There was no denying that Kat and her friends were more relatable and much nicer than her prospective in-laws. Plus, she was exhausted from having such an eventful day. What she needed was just to get clean and then get right to bed.
Celia eyed the bathing pool longingly. It was a vast oval filled with steaming water, set directly into the floor. In fact, she wondered how in the world nobody stumbled into it on their way to use the bathroom at night. It was way bigger than a hot tub—big enough to swim in, if you could swim.
Despite growing up in Florida, Celia wasn’t a very good swimmer. It wasn’t like she’d had a normal childhood where she got to go to the pool and the beach like other kids. Once or twice one of her foster parents had taken her and a big group of the other foster kids to the YMCA to splash around in the pool, but Celia had always been stuck in the shallow end.