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)
“Oh my God.”
It was a whisper.
Awe.
A blooming of hope in the middle of my faith that kept getting trampled.
Pax threaded our fingers together and lifted them between us. “There’s a reason, Aria. Something we’re supposed to do. We just have to keep you safe until we can see it through.”
“It was different last night,” I told him.
Words started to fly out as the memories came flooding back.
“With you all there. When I expelled the energy the first time, I was drained . . . exhausted beyond my boundaries . . . but when Dani wrapped her arm around my waist to support me, a flicker of the energy returned. We already knew that happened when you touched me. Believed it would be the same for all Nols. But, Pax . . .”
I gulped as the realization came battering into me. “When all four of us were standing together. It was powerful. Extremely. There’s no chance that bolt of energy would have come out of me if all of you hadn’t been right there. With me. Touching me.”
It was the contact.
It was the contact.
Awareness careened, a frenzy that blistered through my insides and sank into my spirit.
Bolting upright, I tossed off the blanket and sheet that covered us, and I started to tear the bandage free from my abdomen.
“Aria, what the hell are you doing?” Pax flew up to sitting, scrambling to stop me.
“No, Pax. Don’t. Just listen. Look.”
I could tell he didn’t want to give in. That he worried I was delusional.
Fevered.
I was, but not in the way he was thinking.
He relented, and I grimaced as I peeled the bandage away to expose the wound.
A wound that was still there. The skin puckered and red and inflamed. But it was healed in a way it shouldn’t be. The skin that had been sutured was closed. Not just by the stitches, but by the mending of the flesh.
Beyond the fathomable.
“How is this possible?” Pax muttered, aghast as he looked at the laceration.
“Because it was a lie to keep us weak.”
A lie we’d been fed.
One I was sure Ambrose had created. Because he knew . . . He knew the power Abigail had possessed when they’d been together.
I could only imagine the ways he’d used it against her.
“Valeen showed you, Pax.” My words rushed in urgency as the truth weaved together. “She showed you that we belong together by allowing you to feel that I was in trouble. In danger. She gave you that sense that you had no other choice but to find me. And we already know together this power is far greater than we thought—and now, after what happened last night? I have to believe it is even stronger with the four of us together.”
No question our Nol was our greatest strength.
But there was power in these numbers.
In us.
In this family.
Excitement burned a path through me, and I gasped as Pax stared at my healing wound for the longest time before his eyes flicked up to mine.
Awareness flared at the connection. Our breaths shortened and heaved.
“We’re stronger together. All of us,” he murmured.
“Yes.” Then I threw myself at him, lifted up high on my knees as I wound one arm around his neck and braided the other through the longer pieces of his stark-white hair. “Together,” I murmured.
He was sitting, a leg drawn up in front of him and an arm looped around my waist. His gorgeous face was turned up toward me as I gazed down at him.
Each of us held.
Kept.
Then all reservations broke.
He pushed up to capture my mouth.
In an instant, we were fire.
A frenzy.
Desperate hands and beseeching kisses.
He wore no shirt, his chest and back and abdomen bare, and I dug my nails into the designs that covered the rippling, sinewy muscles of his back as I struggled to get him closer.
Need rose up inside me. A tidal wave I had no intention of escaping.
“Aria,” he murmured at my lips.
My name praise.
Bliss.
Truth.
Calloused hands slid up under the enormous T-shirt I wore. He was careful not to touch my wound as he rushed his hands up my sides. Gliding over every rib until he was palming my breasts.
I arched into his touch.
Flames seared.
“I need you,” I begged. “I need your touch. Your love. Your belief.”
“And I need your everything,” he rumbled back, his lips devouring mine, his tongue delving deep.
That fire leaped.
Pax climbed onto his knees, too, and he angled back for a second to peel the shirt over my head.
The air was warm but still, and a shiver rolled through me. Chills that lifted in the wake of his ravenous gaze.
“Are you sure you’re not hurting?” The question was stone. Purified by his care.
“I’m not. I’m not,” I promised, and he had me around the waist and was laying me out in the middle of the bed. He remained on his knees, that gaze severe as he looked over me, attention tracking over every scar and blemish.