Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
“Aria.” His molars ground so hard I felt the force of it crack in the room.
“You are so beautiful.” It scraped out without permission. “Your body that has kept your scars, those eyes that hold your secrets. And I know your heart is, too.”
The air in the small room grew dense, every molecule enclosed. Trembles rocked through it. An awareness that thrashed and begged in the space between us.
“I’m the last person you should see that way.”
“You’re the only person I could see that way.” I figured I didn’t have time to be shy or modest. Not when this might be my only chance at confessing this.
My only chance at confessing what burned inside me.
I didn’t know how many tomorrows I had left.
The words were a whisper of desperation from my lips: “How do you see me?”
A groan curled up his thick throat, and he tossed the towel he was using to dry his hair to the floor before he took two steps to bring himself to the end of my bed.
His movements were slow. Filled with caution. With a reservation that rattled him to the bone.
“I see the one person who has ever meant anything to me. I see the one I’ve been sent to protect. I’m looking at my purpose, Aria. But it has to end at that.”
“Why?”
He choked over a pained, disbelieving sound. “You know why.”
“And maybe I don’t care. Maybe I want to take one thing for myself. Just once. I’m eighteen and I’ve never been kissed, and I might die tomorrow.”
I couldn’t believe I was telling him any of this. That I’d laid all my insecurities and inexperience at his feet. But it all left me in a bid of gravity.
“Don’t fucking say that,” he spat as he surged forward. He dropped to his knees at the side of my bed.
I moved, drawn, sitting up and draping my legs over the side, because the only thing I wanted to do was erase that space.
Heat blasted from him.
The man was a furnace.
“Don’t fucking say that.” It was a whispered plea this time. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“And what if it would kill me if something happened to you trying to protect me?”
He took my hand between both of his. “You’re worth any cost. I’ve known it my entire life.”
Tears blurred my eyes, and he reached up and wiped away the one that slid down my cheek.
“I would never ask that of you.” Except I had, hadn’t I? My spirit had beckoned him through the darkness. Shouting to be rescued when I’d been trapped.
“You don’t have to ask for what has already been committed.” Fingertips trailed down my cheek, gathering more moisture before barely brushing over my trembling lips.
Shivers rolled, a flash fire that made me shake, and the love I’d forever feel for him flailed from within, begging to be acknowledged.
The brittle ice of his eyes had gone soft, a lapping sea as he stared, though his muscles were taut with restraint as he kept brushing his fingertips over my lips. “How is it possible no one has ever kissed you?”
“Who would want to get close to someone like me?” It quivered out.
The loneliness of the life we lived.
Solitary confinement.
Not that anyone could have gotten close to me anyway.
Not when my soul only wanted him.
“Any man would be lucky to get close to you, and I would give anything for that, but you know I can’t. I’d be a bastard for touching you. I won’t taint you. Won’t take that risk. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
My throat tightened. My heart a riot that bashed against my chest. My mind a spiral of the things he’d given me.
I would give anything for that.
I won’t taint you.
God. Did he somehow think he wasn’t worthy of me? That this man who’d risked everything—his freedom and his life—wasn’t good enough?
I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t make any sounds come from my thickened tongue, and Pax slowly stood, his gorgeous body towering over me, a fortress.
He reached out and cupped my cheek.
“We have to go back.”
Each time I’d slept, I’d done it out of sync with our Laven family, and I had hidden in the sanctuary of Tearsith while they fought.
My nod was weak, but he was right.
Faydor was calling.
And we couldn’t resist it any longer.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Pax
Tearsith
Pax closed his eyes, and he hovered in the nothingness.
Weightless.
Boneless.
He floated higher, where lights flashed and flickered before he emerged at the boundary of Tearsith. A lush paradise that surrounded them.
Aria was already there, standing at the edge and peering out into the meadow like she no longer knew where she belonged.
He eased up behind her.
She shivered. The way she had at the hotel when he’d been a fool and had gotten too close to her.
How fucking gorgeous she’d looked, sitting on that bed. How he’d wanted to crawl over her and press her into the mattress. Unwrap her. Trace his fingers over every scar on her body.