Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Rising on tiptoe, she pulled down his head and kissed him until he couldn’t breathe. “Oh and, big guy—there are going to be bats. They’re friendly.”
Bram had never known how to laugh, but that moment, he felt his lips curve, the laugh form in his chest. And as the stars spun overhead, the Milky Way vivid against the desert sky, he laughed with the most beautiful woman in all the universe.
Chapter 45
The quiet places in the world are the rarest gems, to be treasured and well guarded. I have been most fortunate to have stumbled upon not one but two such gems in my lifetime—but alas, their direction I will not share here, for to do so would be to extinguish the quiet.
—Fragment from Memoirs of a Life by Arici Carvalli (1894) (out of print and unavailable online)
Eleri’s breathing was getting shallower with each step Adam took, the blood bond feeling as if it was cutting in and out. He fought the urge to run. He was sure-footed, but a single stumble and he could send Eleri plummeting to the earth, wounding her already fragile body.
Instead, he tucked her even closer to his chest and walked with intent.
He saw Dahlia long before he reached her and saw, too, how Bram was leaning his body against hers. The man’s eyes were bloodshot as fine blood vessels broke under the pressure on his brain. “Follow me,” he said, and ducked into the entrance.
Then he let his instincts lead him, and though he could’ve outpaced Bram, he didn’t. The other man had fought his need to die in peace to help Eleri, and Eleri wouldn’t forgive Adam if he left her brother behind. But his jawbones were grinding together from the strain of it as they walked through passageway after passageway.
Bram’s breathing was becoming labored, Dahlia’s murmurs of encouragement holding an edge of panic. “Adam, how much longer?”
“Less than five minutes.”
They somehow managed to get down the final slope, with Adam having to place Eleri down at the other end, then come back up to help Dahlia navigate it with Bram. Picking Eleri up again the instant they were in the wider passageway, he rapidly counted off fifty steps…. and there it was, the breathtaking cave with a bioluminescent glow he’d named Mirage.
Walking inside with Eleri, he ignored the sound of the underground river, ignored the stirring of the bats who were annoyed by the intrusion, and watched Bram’s face with agonizing focus as the other man walked in.
The J-Psy was murmuring to Dahlia as they came in and didn’t stop, his expression unchanging as he walked further inside.
Adam’s stomach dropped.
Just as Bram’s head jerked up and he said, “Fuck, it’s so quiet here.”
• • •
Eleri woke to the awareness that she was in Adam’s arms. There was no question about it. She knew these arms, knew the body that cradled hers against it…and knew the triangle of stone she could see with its moss that glowed a luminous unearthly green.
Stirring, she spread her hand over the beat of Adam’s heart. “Adam.” It came out husky, almost a non-sound, but he heard.
He crushed her close, buried his face in her hair, and cried. Silent sobs that shook his big frame and made her desperate to hold him. But she could barely move in his embrace, so she just kept murmuring his name, telling him she was all right, and stroking his chest where she could reach.
It hurt her to feel him cry.
No more numbness. No more walls. Every emotion as searing as lightning.
“Please, Adam.” She managed to turn her head enough to brush her lips against his jaw.
And tasted salt.
“I thought I lost you.” He pressed a kiss to her lips, his fingers gripping her jaw in that way he had that made her feel so anchored, so wanted. “You were almost gone.”
This time when he buried his face in her hair, she was able to twist around and wrap her arms around him, and the two of them stayed that way for a long time before she became aware of deep breathing elsewhere in the cave. “Who’s here with us?”
“Bram and Dahlia. He crashed soon after he got in here.” Stroking her hair, he pressed a kiss to her temple. “Dahlia’s tucked against him. He asked her not to go, and she just lay down on the mattress I had the clan bring down here. Never thought I’d see our Dahlia do anything for a lover again.”
That was when Eleri became aware that they weren’t on the ground, either. And she couldn’t see much of the cave, just that small triangle…that was the opening of a tent, she realized.
They were inside it.
Adam was seated against a couple of large pillows braced against the canvas back wall of the tent—which seemed to have stone beyond it, their bodies on a thick mattress complete with a sheet. A plush blanket lay over her as another did no doubt over Bram and Dahlia.