Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
It wasn’t just Elijah’s taste … it was what it felt like to drink him. As though they were connected deeper than any male and female had ever been. Then when he’d asked her to drink from him while he thrust inside her … Echo had been lost to the pleasure.
No one had ever excited her more.
While she’d given up her control to Elijah, she hadn’t lost it. She hadn’t taken too much from him like she feared she might.
It had been … bliss.
The bite and sex with Elijah were bliss.
In her short but painful life, Echo finally believed there was a place for that word. That it wasn’t a word for a feeling that didn’t actually exist.
“One of us should speak,” Elijah’s voice rumbled into the room.
She turned her head to look at him sprawled out on the bed, his expression relaxed and sated. The wound on his neck had already healed over, though a few drops of blood lingered on his golden skin.
Echo didn’t know what to say.
She was still … stunned.
It felt as though a thread existed between them now. A golden thread attached to each of their sternums, and when she shifted, it seemed to pull. Then, as reality returned, she felt a flood of foreign emotion.
Satisfaction, but a rising desire. Confusion. A slight panic. Overruling all, though, was need.
When she met Elijah’s gaze, she knew she was sensing his emotions again.
Fuck.
She should tell him what she suspected. But … it terrified her.
His nostrils flared as if he’d scented or sensed her fear. “Echo—”
“We should sleep. It’ll be sunrise soon. We should sleep.” Rolling off the bed, Echo strode into the bathroom to clean the blood from her mouth and brush her teeth. Still naked, she sauntered out and across the room to her backpack to find something to wear to bed. That hunger she’d felt from Elijah intensified.
“I’m not done with you, woman,” he warned huskily.
She glanced over her shoulder before pulling on a long T-shirt to sleep in. “For now you are.”
He sat up, as uncaring of his nudity as she was. She attempted to ignore his male beauty as she walked back to the bed, for fear she’d initiate sex again. “Does this mean you want this to be a onetime thing?”
Echo almost growled possessively at the thought. She bit back the animalistic urge.
Before she could reply, Elijah confessed, “I don’t want it to be. I want to fuck you until you’re hoarse from screaming with pleasure. I want to bury my head between your thighs and devour you for an entire night.”
The very thought of his head between her legs, his beard scratching her inner thighs as he licked at her, made her breath catch. She almost stumbled into the bed.
“I know you feel it too.”
“I do.” There was no point in lying. “But I … it’s a lot. We have enough to deal with. Let’s just sleep on this.”
He scowled but nodded and got up to pull on some boxers.
When he returned to her bed, she stopped him. “What are you doing?”
“Getting into bed.”
She pointed to the other queen. “That’s yours.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. Good night, Elijah.” Echo turned, giving him her back.
To her irritation, she felt the bed move as his determination flooded her emotions. His arm was around her, pulling her against his chest.
“What the hell—”
“Be quiet, love,” he murmured in her ear. “We’ll sleep on this, but if I get to fuck you, I get to cuddle you too.”
“I—”
“Go to sleep.” He gave her a slight squeeze and then she felt his body relax.
Echo was stiff in his hold for a minute or so until she sensed his breathing deepen. When she stopped fighting him, she realized she liked him spooning her in sleep. The heat and weight of him at her back, while comforting, was also foreign. Discombobulating. No one had ever held her in sleep before. She thought she’d hate it. Find it suffocating.
But she liked it.
Too much.
To Echo’s shock, tears stung her nose and blurred her vision.
She’d been alone for so long. Longer even than she’d let herself admit. All of her life, in fact.
If she was right about that thread between her and Elijah, she wasn’t destined to be alone. But what if he didn’t want that kind of permanency? Or what if he didn’t reject her, but Echo couldn’t be what he needed? Her plan was never to live out her immortality. But Elijah was immortal.
Echo squeezed her eyes closed, stuffing down her rising panic.
These were all hypotheticals.
For now, they had an enemy to take down. If they were successful, she’d worry about the future then.
21
It was as if her preternatural senses felt the danger coming before it even arrived.
Echo’s eyes flew open and she sat up, like she’d been yanked out of consciousness.