Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
My hair swished around me as I nodded against my pillow. “I can’t imagine.”
“I know,” he murmured. “Weird that I never gave much thought to giving thanks in my life—but lying here, right in this moment, that’s what I am, Aria. I’m thankful. Thankful that I have you. Thankful that you’re mine.”
A warm buzz hummed in my chest, and redness rushed to my cheeks. I let my fingertips scratch through his stubble. “I told you that you were going to like claiming me.”
It was a thread of playfulness woven with a ribbon of sincerity.
A rough chuckle scraped his throat. “Oh, you did, did you?”
“I just had this hunch,” I teased with a lift of my bare shoulder, a lightness pushing through the gloom we’d been met with in Tearsith last night.
“Let it be known that there was never any question if I was gonna like it or not.” His tone shifted, too, riding on the whisper of levity that curled through the air. A flirty taunt from his tongue that had me snuggling closer to him.
“Well, I don’t know. I would have thought I’d have been irresistible the second you saw me.”
A hot palm slid all the way down my side. Chills lifted in its wake. “Turns out, you are irresistible, Aria Rialta. God knows I tried.”
“I guess I’m going to count it a positive that you were a total failure.”
Mischief danced on my tongue. The joy we’d found together bubbling through my being as that energy rolled through the room.
Pax let go of a warm, rumbling laugh, and he edged close, his nose brushing mine as he murmured, “Total, complete failure.”
I trailed the tip of my finger down his cheek. “You can take heart that at least you excel in one thing.”
In a flash, he rolled me onto my back and hovered over me.
He was so viciously beautiful that my heart clutched, and my stomach twisted into a thousand needy knots.
He angled down and wisped his lips across mine. “Oh yeah? And what would that be?”
My teeth raked my bottom lip, and the teasing evaporated. “Loving me.”
“That’s right. Because loving you was what I was created to do.”
He suddenly pushed back to kneeling, and the covers dropped from around his waist.
He rose high between my trembling legs, a fortress that towered over me.
A stream of light that cut through the slit in the drapes lit him in a dazzling blaze.
Every inch of him bristled with strength.
Skin scarred with our fate, covered with the violent designs he’d imprinted on his flesh.
Our truth.
But it was the first time I noticed what was hidden deep within the horrors inked on his abdomen. The first time I was this close to him in the light.
Veiled within a darkened expanse of red vingas.
The faint vestige of a face.
Gray eyes wide and long black hair whipping around the face.
With a trembling hand, I reached out and brushed my fingertips over the image he’d tattooed of me.
“Pax,” I whispered.
His body quivered beneath my touch. “You see it now, Aria? I was always yours. I just hadn’t quite gotten what that meant.”
The air changed. A charge of static electricity.
All the lightness vanished, and those fathomless gray eyes somehow darkened as he stared down at me.
“Need to feel you, Aria. Whole and safe and real.”
“I’m right here.”
He hooked his fingers in the edges of my underwear, and I lifted my hips so he could peel them down. Then he wound himself out of his, and he came to me.
Pressed himself inside me.
Took me.
His big body curled around mine as he began to move. He watched over me the entire time, our eyes locked, our souls hinged.
I swore that I could feel myself glow. Swore that I could see it reflected in his eyes. Flames that leaped and lapped. And when the orgasm tore through me, shooting me to the greatest heights, beyond the realms that we knew, there was only Pax and me.
Lost to a place that existed only for us.
Our match, something beyond my comprehension.
It didn’t matter, since what I understood was him.
Chest heaving for breath, he slumped down, though he immediately rolled us so he was on his back, and I was draped over him. A soft giggle got free. “So, I think you were totally wrong earlier. I think that is the best way to wake up.”
Amusement vibrated through him, and he curled his arms around me as a smile spread across his mouth.
Joy.
Even in the middle of everything we were going through, I still felt it wrap us whole.
Then he bucked up, the playfulness resurfacing, jostling me against him. “Go get yourself a shower; then we’ll eat.”
“So bossy,” I told him as I rolled away, slanting him a teasing smile.
He sat up, so intimidatingly beautiful in the middle of the bed. “Just taking care of my princess.”