Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Illium nodded. “No, she wouldn’t do that.”
Raphael held his gaze. “Quite aside from his wanderlust, Vivek’s brain is astonishing and needs to be fed. You’re the first opportunity he’s had to leave and still end up where he wants to be.” A smile. “It helps that he knows you’ll let him do whatever he wants and will, in fact, enable him to rise to even greater heights.”
“You and Ellie, you’re both sure?”
“Yes. Even Dmitri left once. A time before your birth. While he returned, I don’t think Vivek ever will, and Elena and I couldn’t be happier for you, Illium, that you’ll have a spymaster of his caliber.”
“Then will you do me the favor of telling him to pack his bags and get to my territory asap?”
“He’ll be on a plane today. You know he won’t be coming alone?”
“Lady Katrina is welcome in my territory.” Illium grinned. “Even Jason says she has a way of knowing things no one else knows.” Vivek’s lover was a vampire old and with all kinds of murky connections.
At first, Aodhan said after the call ended, when I heard about Vivek and Katrina, I thought she’d eat him alive.
Pretty sure Vivek was offering himself on a silver platter to be eaten. With sauce. Illium had seen the way the other man looked at the mysterious owner of the Boudoir. But they’re a good team, aren’t they?
An unexpected but excellent team, Aodhan agreed. What businesses do you think she’ll set up in your territory?
Who knows? With Katrina, it could be a weapons clearinghouse, a club decadent and exclusive, or a guild of assassins. Her only loyalty is to her people—and Vivek’s at the top of that list, so as long as Vivek is loyal to me, we’ll have her cooperation and occasional assistance.
A crisp wind, its fingers riffling their hair. And in the distance, the first smudge on the horizon that was land.
Illium took a deep breath, looked at Aodhan. “Ready?”
“With you? Always.”
Grinning, Illium raced forward, Aodhan by his side.
45
Vivek had spoken to Katrina before he’d approached Raphael about leaving the Tower. No matter the roaring need inside him to go with Illium, be part of an adventure unlike any other he might ever encounter, he wasn’t about to jeopardize his relationship with the only woman in the entire world who had seen into every corner of his soul and loved all of him.
Including the old shards of bitterness that had faded with time but would never be erased. Because a man couldn’t simply forget that he’d once been a child abandoned by his family. A child who couldn’t move, couldn’t defend himself. That child had grown into a man who was now a fully trained and lethal hunter with an extraordinary life, but he never denigrated the emotional pain of the person he’d once been.
It had helped shape him—including the need for fidelity that was so important to him.
So, that night, in the midnight hours after Illium’s ascension, he’d lain with his head in Katrina’s lap in the moonlit confines of their lush bedroom while she sat up in bed. She’d been running her fingers through his hair with one hand and answering messages from one of her business managers with the other.
Most of his Kat’s businesses came alive only at night.
He knew why she preferred the night, understood that he wasn’t the only one with shards of bitterness lodged in his innermost psyche. As he’d been a helpless boy once, Katrina had been a young woman with no way to keep herself safe.
“Kat,” he’d said after she put down her phone.
“What is it, lover?” Her head shifting so that he could see those pale feline eyes, her hair a midnight curtain around them, and the strap of her scarlet nightgown falling off one shoulder to expose the plump curve of her breast.
“Damn but you’re gorgeous. My brain just short-circuited.”
A husky laugh. “You say such things.”
Each and every word was true. Vivek would never get over the fact that she’d chosen to be his all these years. She would never wear his amber, unable to accept such a physical symbol of locking her life to another’s, but Vivek didn’t care. He knew his Kat. She’d murder anyone who dared separate them—and he loved her enough to tend to her wounds as she did his.
“What do you think about moving territories? I know you have so many businesses here—”
“Lover,” she’d interrupted, “I have businesses everywhere. I’ve only stayed in New York all this time because it’s your home.”
Shifting so that he could sit up, face her, he’d stroked her hair back from that astonishing face that had become even more otherworldly in the centuries since they’d first found each other. No one would ever mistake Kat for mortal. The golden cream of her skin was too flawless, the pink of her lips perfection, the pale green of her eyes a rare hue no mortal would ever possess.