Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Closing in from the side, he ignored the first level and all the people milling around there, and instead focused on the window that was smack-dab in the lineup on the second floor. The four small panes were all dark, but he fixed that by shutting his eyes again and imagining the profile that he’d come to see.
He’d never been any kind of artist, but his memory drew a picture of Bitty’s bent head as she focused on her computer, her concentration so complete, it was as if she were responsible for the well-being of the whole world through that monitor. Her chestnut brown hair, recently highlighted with red sections, fell forward so her beautiful face was partially obscured, and her slender neck was a temptation even from a distance.
He’d never been inside the house, and he couldn’t go in there now to find her in another room—or even just verify she was at work. Males weren’t allowed to go in.
But she’d come out to him before.
Lifting his lids, he was stupidly disappointed that the female hadn’t magically appeared, and he strained his eyes like he could force the image in his mind to become a reality in the flesh. Shit didn’t work like that, though, and the panic that some night he wouldn’t be able to see her choked him—
Movement drew his attention to the first floor, to one of the windows of the parlor… a female entering into view.
“There you are,” he whispered.
An exhale of relief left his lips on a cloud that drifted toward the house, as if his very breath were called by her as well.
Tonight, Bitty was wearing a pale blue sweater, and her newly tinted hair looked great against the color. She was carrying a tray of cookies, and as she bent down to offer some to a female holding a swaddled young, her lips were moving as she chatted—and then there was that smile. Gentle and kind.
Your anger is your downfall… Unless you can forgive fate, you are going to destroy all of us.
The warning she’d spoken to him—as if it were a message from some kind of divine source—had been something he’d outright rejected. But no longer, not after last night. A hard truth had dawned on him as he’d woken up, and the shit was impossible to ignore: When he’d broken loose from Shuli in the field, it had supposedly been in the noble quest to win the war against the species and take out Lash by any means necessary.
Except that had only been his surface motivation.
Rage had been his real driver. The undeniable, furious energy that burned in his veins and his gut, that made him take risks—that made him utterly indifferent to the fact that a worthy male might well be killed because L.W. was flaking off his ahstrux nohtrum—was actually why he’d bolted.
The truth he’d woken up to tonight? He would have left anyway. Even if he’d thought Shuli would be put in a grave… he would still have deserted the guy.
So yeah, Bitty was right. That kind of shit was dangerous to people.
That kind of shit was dangerous to her.
Opposites attracted? Fuck that. He was a curse waiting to happen—
Abruptly, Bitty looked to the window, and her brows tightened as if she had sensed his presence somehow.
L.W. swore under his breath and backed away.
Even as he hit reverse, however, his eyes clung to her, noting everything about the freeze frame of her standing there, in the glow of that room, everybody else who came and went around her disappearing, as if she were a brilliant light that blinded him.
She certainly hurt his eyes.
L.W. watched her for as long as he could, forcing himself to focus through the pain that had nothing to do with his sight… and everything to do with his soul.
Bitty was his female.
And after last night, when he’d proved those words of hers were not a caution, but statement of fact, he could never claim her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It’s not much. But it’s warm and dry, and it has running water.”
As Lyric stepped into a studio apartment that was bare as a college dorm room before it was moved into, her heart was pounding like she’d run up the stairs instead of taken an elevator to the fourth floor.
“You’re very neat,” she remarked. And then wanted to smack herself in the head. “I mean—”
“When you don’t have much, it’s easy to be clean.”
“Yes, it is.” OMG, what was she saying. “Ah, how long have you been here?”
“A year.”
She looked over her shoulder. Dev was back by the door, at a coatrack that had been mounted on the white wall, and as he hung up the jacket she’d returned to him on the only vacant peg, she let her eyes go wherever they wanted on him—and what do you know, it was straight to his absolutely perfect—