Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
He holds me down in his own element on his own terms and fucks me through the burn, claws at my back, and teeth at my throat, the size of him nearly splitting me open. Right at the edge of everything, life, death, right where the dark went soft and peaceful before, where I’d given up, I come again. And where the wives’ version was death, this is its exact opposite—this is being more alive than I have ever been, down here in the deep with the beast.
Then he brings me up.
Into the sweet air, the indigo sky, and I drag in oxygen in great, tearing pulls and cling to him, and he holds me. I feel the monstrousness ebb out of him by degrees. First, the claws go blunt against my back, then his teeth are safe again when his mouth finds my temple, and the eyes, when I dare to look, are draining back from ink toward that bright ice blue. The thing under the water is just his legs again, or near enough that I can pretend.
He’s just a man again.
But he’ll never be just a man again, not when I have made some peace in knowing the monster.
“There,” he says against my soaked hair, gentling now, the fear finally easing out of him, out of both of us. “There. You’re here. I have you.”
He carries me out of the bay, sets me down on a rock, and gathers my scattered clothes, draping them over me for warmth. Then he wraps his strong arms around me and gently places his chin on my crown. His hands keep returning to my face, my shoulders, the back of my neck, like he still has to keep proving I came back up with him.
I turn my head and glance over at the bay. So much blood and grief and fear in those waters, and somehow, we made something good out of it.
But if I wasn’t wary of the bay after seeing Sinclair get torn to pieces, I’m definitely wary now. As the glow of the orgasms and the adrenaline of our near-death coupling fades, I realize I’m scared. What the women did to me scared me. I felt the loch reach into me and take the wheel, and I felt my own hands undress me and my own feet walk me in to die, and I know now what I didn’t know an hour ago.
They want me.
And they can call me.
And I can’t say no.
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Well, that was a day, was my second to last thought before I fell asleep last night, utterly exhausted from the day’s events, as if I ran a lot of errands and had a lot of appointments or something. You know, just your run-of-the-mill almost drowning by a bunch of dead women, followed by your run-of-the-mill fucking by the monster in the sea. Boy, that would tucker anyone out.
My last thought though, wasn’t so glib.
I have to fix this.
Because I do. Not just because I came close to dying at the hands of ghosts yesterday—ghosts that seem jealous of me because of Alasdair—I’m also close to being a suspect in a murder case. All because I let him in, and now the bargain is broken, and over time there will be nothing to stop Alasdair from becoming a monster forever.
Unless I do something.
Mhairi had told me that there was something I could do, and that I would have to go back to her when I was ready.
Well, I’m fucking ready. I gather my things and get in the car, grateful I don’t have to explain where I’m going to Alasdair. Last night, he went back to the castle to spend the night there. Part of me wanted him to promise he wasn’t going to kill anyone, but I think I’d feel worse if he told me he couldn’t keep that promise. Anyway, I was still mad at him and I have an awful lot to think about, so I slept alone which was both a joy to fling my limbs everywhere, and kind of lonely. Monsters can make good company.
I decide to go to the Torridon Hotel before I go to Mhairi’s shop, because I have a feeling I might need to be a little less sober before I tackle whatever the hell she’s going to throw at me. And, after last night, I think I need to be around actual people, and not monsters and ghosts.
The pub’s the same as it always is—dark wood, and warm lamps, and that token fire going in the grate—except the fire’s much bigger now that it’s fall and we’re starting to genuinely need it. The smell of peat and whisky and something braised wraps around me when I come in. For a second it’s almost unbearable, how normal it is, how warm. John MacLeod glances up from behind the bar and gives me the nod of a man who’s decided I count as a regular, and I proudly take the corner stool I’ve started thinking of as mine.