Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
She did.
She felt the uncomfortable squeeze of his fingers around her throat as Jules guided her with that unyielding grip to rise. To find her footing and unfold… or choke. To recognize that his strength was necessary. That without him, to deny him, to try to struggle in the mire of her inharmonious bonds alone was a losing war.
Bare feet scrabbled against the slippery lacquered floor, rivulets of slick trailing down her thighs, as Brenya’s unsteady legs bore her weight. It was no easy feat. Stiff muscles protested, pain lancing through her womb, but Jules gave her just enough support to keep her upright, at long last coiling his dark sea around a flailing mind that mentally reached for him.
Because she’d asked.
Indulging in the helpless sound of her whimpers, Jules’s chest vibrated with quiet satisfaction. “You’re safe with me.”
Her breath stuttered. Safe? No. There was nothing safe about what Jules had done, was doing, and would do to her.
Safe was existing as a Beta making the descent. Risking her life day in and day out for the Dome she loved. Safe was everything that happened before Jacques Bernard ripped her in half on his cock. Safe was the endless black ocean in Jules when it was glassy and calm. When her island floated through it untouched, drifting in his unfeeling void. Not when it crept up her shores… not when it seemed to hunt her.
Safe was dissociation. Safe was Jacques in an endless coma, so she could stumble sleepily through whatever days she had left.
Being here. Feeling him. Standing barefoot in a puddle of her own slick while Jules’s turbulent mental ocean pressed in, licking at their link. Expectant.
Was not safe.
Pupils dilating fully, her world narrowed to Jules Havel, and she offered a pain-drunk, “I don’t feel safe.”
The nothingness inside him reached out again, brushing ever so softly against her fear, seeping in as if wrapping her in a warm blanket. Enveloping his mate in something soothing yet elusive.
His chest expanded, and so did hers.
Synchronized breath, Jules exercising some kind of authority over her body that far outstripped anything Jacques had ever wielded… calming her, drawing Brenya further from the Alpha’s manic grip.
Into Beta control.
Jules… formidable, unreadable, demonstrated just what he could do—muffle the pain and pleasure the other might stab in. Drench her in him, slither into her senses… should she let him.
And Brenya could weep for the relief of it, resentful he had withheld this mercy until she’d called out for help. Grateful that he was tending to her now. Going liquid, the circle of his fingers around her throat a quiet promise everything would be okay.
If only she’d…
With one decisive, unhurried pull, Jules drew her flush. Chest to chest, her spine molded to the pressure of his forearm, and let her feel the shape of what was hers.
The thick line of his hard cock pressed against her lower belly, hot and heavy through saturated fabric. Fabric soaked and sticky because he too had been forced to come, over and over, in the chain reaction of Jacques’s physical pleasure. Because Brenya was his pair-bound mate, and what she felt, he felt.
Yet, through every spill, not a grunt. Not one hitched breath as seed had pumped from his cock.
A deliberate shift against her. Just enough to smear his scent on her rumpled shirt, dragging her into his rhythm as he dipped his head to nuzzle the soft, vulnerable skin beneath her ear.
His breath was warm, his stubble sinful as it scraped just so.
A cunning grin wove into tone and intention, Jules murmuring along the shell of her ear, “Let me make it all better.” Each syllable like a kiss. “Choose me.”
Under his control, every last cell in her body already had, a strangled vibration thrumming from the very throat he gripped in his palm as she fisted his shirt and held on for dear life.
The throat he tilted and kissed, altering his hold to expose the jagged claiming mark.
His mark.
When the edges of Jules’s teeth found their home in that tender, ruined skin. A nip. A quick, wicked flick of his tongue…
Molten glory rushed under her skin and slick splattered onto the floor, hot and humiliating, as if her bladder had emptied.
“More.” A female murmur. A softly uttered call for comfort. For something Brenya could not name.
He hummed in a way that told her there would be a cost. “More?”
To bid her follow where he would lead.
Carefully coaxing her gently toward the mental brink, daring her to take a good, long look into that endless abyss that prowled around her little island. To see what kept her safe from Jacques.
To really peer into his depths. To open fully to him.
Dip in a toe, submerge herself in their bond.
Jules crooking a mental finger, his sea seducing in undulating waves where her mind was raw and her body in pain. Made silent promises she couldn’t fathom.