Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
“What I remember is you hooking that massive tuna that led you on such a merry chase, you both fell out of the boat,” Zyra said. Then to me, “Once they got back in the boat, rowed to shore and trudged up to the house, their clothes were frozen solid. It took hours to defrost them.”
“Did the tuna get away?” I asked.
“Lost the bugger,” Manny groused. “And he took my pole with him.”
I laughed.
And Tanyn rested his foot on the top of mine.
The unusual intimacy of that startled me, and my gaze shot to him.
The black of his pupils was dilating and contracting, like he was visibly struggling with deep emotion.
Or arousal.
I stopped laughing and drank more wine.
“Have you ever fished, Catla?” Mangold asked me.
“Absolutely not,” I answered.
He chuckled. “I guessed not.”
“I have been on a yacht, more than one, actually,” I shared.
Mangold smiled at me. “I could guess that too.”
“No fishing was involved for anyone,” I said.
Mangold’s smile didn’t move.
“Dary didn’t fish either, dear,” Zyra told me. “I think she would have been a vegetarian if—”
Mangold clearing his throat interrupted her.
She didn’t start speaking again.
“If what?” I asked.
Mangold and Zyra were looking anywhere but at me.
Tanyn was studying them both, his face back to impassive.
“If what?” I pushed, even though I sensed I actually didn’t want to know what.
“Well, it’s all done now,” Zyra said, fidgeting with the stem of her wineglass and sending wild looks to her husband.
“What’s done?” I pressed.
“I shouldn’t have—” she began.
“Early on,” Tanyn cut into this, and we all looked at him, “my father, or perhaps it was Tatra, would send meagre shipments. Manny and I didn’t fish and hunt because we enjoyed it. We did it so we wouldn’t run out of things to eat.”
I sat very, very still.
And then I lost my godsdamned mind.
Throwing my chair back in order to get up, I did it so violently, it toppled over.
Hurley jumped to his feet and barked over me shouting, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Tanyn stood too, and said softly, “Baby, calm down.”
“That dick dicked with you more than I thought he’d already dicked with you?” I yelled.
Mangold and Zyra were exchanging knowing looks, but I didn’t have time for that.
“He stopped doing it,” Tanyn told me.
“When?” I spat.
Tanyn didn’t answer.
No one did.
“When?” I shrieked.
“When I was twelve,” Tanyn said.
“Oh my fucking gods.” My voice trembled with the depths of my ire, and I was, quite literally, seeing red.
“Catla, calm,” Tanyn ordered.
“Fuck calm!” I screeched, grabbed the wine bottle, which fortunately was mostly empty, and threw it with my demon’s strength against the wall, where it shattered.
Silence descended and the only movement was Hurley scuttling to me and nosing my hand.
Tanyn broke the silence. “Do you have it out?”
“No,” I snapped, grabbed my wineglass, downed its contents in one long gulp, and threw that against the wall too.
It also shattered.
Hurley whined.
I took in a deep breath.
Then said, “Right. I’m better now.”
“We’ll just, er…finish these…um…” Zyra was muttering as she and Mangold took their wineglasses and slunk to the door to their rooms.
When that door closed behind them, instantly, I asked Tanyn, “Why aren’t you having sex with me?”
His brows shot up. “Pardon?”
“You heard me,” I stated. “You barely even touch me.”
“I don’t because we don’t know each other very well.”
“We’re in the midst of a compatibility trial.”
“Yes,” he confirmed.
I waited.
He said no more.
“We’re supposed to fuck during a trial, Tanyn,” I reminded him.
“This is going fast for you.”
“Uh, duh,” I retorted.
His lips hitched.
I arched a brow. “Is something amusing?”
“Would you like me to fuck you?”
“Generally, yes, because you’re hot,” I was just that drunk enough to share. “Right now, no, because it’d be weird and because I just made a fool of myself.”
He assumed a baffled expression. “You did?”
I pointedly looked at the shattered remains of the wineglass and bottle on the floor then back to him.
“Just to say, while you were in the throes of your drama, I was in the throes of fighting my dick getting hard.”
I tossed out both hands. “So…hello.”
“Come here, Catla,” he said.
“You come here.”
“No, sweetheart, you come here.”
“I’m not going there.”
“I’m king.”
“I’m going to be queen.”
“Baby, I know you hate it, but my king will always trump your queen.”
I harrumphed.
Then, for some insane reason (I blamed the wine, and the earlier martini), I stomped to him.
He immediately ended the moratorium on touch because he pulled me into his arms.
That lean, hard body pressed to mine?
Heaven.
Shit.
“How about we agree to let it happen naturally,” he suggested.
“I’m naturally sleeping in bed beside you. In a sexy nightgown, I might add.”
“I didn’t miss the nightgown.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“Arnaud pushed through some tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy,” he declared. “I’m pushing through not only the end of those but also initiating higher taxes for the same. They are not happy. They also give profusely to campaigns for members of the Assembly. There’s going to be a vote on Tuesday, and right now, they’ll get the ninety-five percent to vote my resolution down. I need to pull three assemblybeings’ votes to my side before Tuesday. It’s a lot of negotiating, conceding, and strategizing, because I refuse to instigate ass-kissing. But public services have been negatively affected and even stalled without those taxes. This resolution has to pass.”