Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
He's covered in blood.
Dried blood clumps a gash at his temple, matting his dark hair. More blood crusts his split lip. His expensive suit—always so perfect, always so pristine—is torn across the shoulder, stained dark across the chest.
He moves carefully. Stiffly. Like every breath cracks something inside his ribs.
But he's standing.
He's alive.
He's real, and here, and not dead.
I try to run.
Lorcan's hand shoots out, iron around my bicep, yanking me back so hard I stumble.
"Wait," he commands.
But I don't want to wait. I need to touch him. Need physical confirmation that he's real, that this isn't some nightmare hallucination my grief-soaked brain conjured.
Lorcan holds me in place while Giovanni closes the Aventador's door. He puts his hands up. "I'm alone." Then he's walking towards us.
I strain against Lorcan's grip, thrashing like a hooked fish. "Let me go!"
Giovanni's green eyes find mine across the courtyard.
Everything else disappears.
Lorcan releases my arm.
I run.
I crash into Giovanni's chest hard enough that he grunts—actual pain, the sound punched out of him—but his arms come around me anyway, holding me tight despite the obvious agony it causes.
I don't waste a single moment.
"My King," I gasp against his bloody shirt, my hands fisting in the torn fabric. "My King, my King—"
His hand tangles in my hair, gripping, pulling my head back so he can see my face.
"I am yours," I whisper, the words spilling out raw and desperate. "I choose you. I choose you. I don't want any of this without you. None of it makes sense without you, Giovanni. I don't want it."
He lets out a breath and just stands there, looking at me with those devastating green eyes like he's memorizing every freckle, every angle, every impossible thing about this moment.
Then, slowly—so slowly I feel every fraction of the distance between us being erased—he leans down and kisses me.
It's not like any other kiss I've ever had. From anyone. Ever.
I can count the number of times Giovanni has kissed me on one hand with fingers left over, and every single one of those kisses was a weapon used to get something from me.
Never, not once, has it ever been tender.
But it's tender now.
His mouth moves against mine with a gentleness that makes my chest ache. Like I'm something precious instead of something owned. His fingers cradle my jaw with such careful reverence that tears burn behind my closed eyelids.
It's everything I ever wanted in a kiss and never thought I'd get from him.
When he finally pulls back, his thumb lifts to trace the edge of the collar still locked securely around my throat. His touch is featherlight, almost reverent.
His voice, when it comes, is barely more than a whisper—rough and raw and achingly possessive.
"Miss Take," he breathes against my lips, the words vibrating through the thin space between us before his hands find my waist and pull me closer.
His eyes close as he exhales slowly, like he's trying to center himself, and when he speaks again his voice carries that dangerous edge I know so well.
"I would like to stress here—" and the formal phrasing feels deliberately chosen, like he's struggling to maintain some semblance of control even in this moment of tenderness, "—that the consequences you endured at the hands of my associate last night will not be enough to erase the demerits you earned."
His thumb strokes across my collarbone, tracing the edge of the collar with maddening slowness.
"You broke all three of my octopus hearts when I saw you come in that chapel without my permission."
Oh, God. I look up at him, blinking. Then I reach up and place both my hands on his face. Because this admission cost him dearly.
He just admitted to being… jealous.
Giovanni Bavga does not do jealous.
I open my mouth to explain, but he kisses me silent. Whispering words past my lips…
"Three hearts that beat beneath the ocean's veil,
Each one I gave to you without consent—
Three times the pain when loving seems to fail.
Like ink that clouds the water, my intent
Was always to conceal what lies within;
A master of escape, yet still I'm spent.
Your absence left me hollow in my skin,
As if I'd squeezed through spaces far too small,
Where only beaks remain—where we begin.
I cannot fit through cracks in your stone wall
Unless you choose to let me break inside.
Three hearts, three times I love you—that is all."
"Yes, my King," I whisper back. "I love you too. That is all."
23
GIOVANNI
23
When Emmaleen and I break away, we all go back inside. Lorcan stands, smirking at me from across the room.
"What?" I snap. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"It's just…" He smiles, that infuriatingly knowing Irish grin spreading across his face. "Poetry… out of the mouths of brutes."
I glare at him.
"Here's the thing, G—" Lorcan leans against the foyer wall, arms crossed, still looking far too pleased with himself. "I've known ya for what, seventeen years? Watched ya catalogue people like spreadsheets. Seen ya reduce entire negotiations to cost-benefit analysis. Witnessed ya treat women like quarterly earnings reports with legs. And now—"