Total pages in book: 21
Estimated words: 19922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 66(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 19922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 66(@300wpm)
She started to cry the moment she saw him, and the moment she was free, she threw herself into his arms...
Like she had already forgiven him.
Like he had never broken her heart in the first place.
And when he cupped her face with hands that just wouldn't stop shaking—
What he saw in her eyes had his chest tightening painfully, and all he could say was—
"I'm sorry it took me so long," he said hoarsely.
"You didn't take long at all," she said with a shaken laugh. "I watch true crime shows all the time. I know I still have hope because it hasn't been 72 hours—"
"Not that."
Maika was confused. "Then what—"
"I'm sorry it took me so long to realize I love you."
Did he just say—
Did she just hear—
"S-Say that again," she choked out.
"I love you, matia—"
For the first time ever, it was Maika who didn't let him finish speaking, with her lips covering his in a teary kiss.
Ours
ours (pron.): belonging to us; what a marriage becomes when both parties finally stop being idiots about it
"YOU'RE NOT GOING TO be the one to speak."
"I know!"
"Then why are you nervous?" Mykos asked in amusement.
"I don't know!"
He chuckled, but she only kept wringing her hands. They were standing in the hallway of their home, and Mykos was already dressed in a tuxedo that made him look like the cover of a magazine she couldn't afford, while Maika was in a dark green gown that Portia had helped her zip into twenty minutes ago. She had looked at herself in the mirror and thought she almost looked like she belonged in his world.
Almost. But not quite.
"I'm not joking, Mykos. I'm really nervous. What if I do something that will embarrass you? What if—"
"I understand," he soothed, and the way he said it—gently, like she was something he needed to handle with care—had her heart doing that familiar, inconvenient thing where it tried to climb out of her chest.
"I think we have..." He checked his watch. "Ten minutes."
For what?
Instead of answering his wife, he took her hand, drew her to the nearest room, which this time was her favorite library, and well...
She didn't even get to ask the question again, because the moment the door was closed behind them, his mouth was on hers, and his hands were sliding the straps of her gown off her shoulders, and her back was against the bookshelf (again), and books were threatening to fall (again), and she had just enough brain function left to think we really need to stop doing this to the library before she stopped thinking entirely.
Ten minutes was all it took indeed. Ten minutes in which she forgot the gala, the speech, the five hundred guests, and her own name.
After that, Maika was still rosy-cheeked and flustered when they arrived at the ball. Mykos, naturally, looked exactly the same as before, because of course he did. The man was incapable of looking disheveled. It was deeply unfair.
The hotel ballroom was enormous — crystal chandeliers, white linen tablecloths, centerpieces that probably cost more than her old monthly rent. Hundreds of guests in evening wear, and she wanted to turn around and flee, but every single one of them turned to look when Mykos Ravensworth walked through the door with his wife on his arm.
Maika's grip on his arm tightened. He covered her hand with his and squeezed once, and somehow that single gesture said I'm here, you're safe, and if anyone looks at you wrong I will end them, which was both terrifying and exactly what she needed.
They found their table near the front. Mykos pulled out her chair for her the way he always did, like it was a reflex he'd had since the day they married. She sat down, smoothed her gown, and tried to look like a woman who hadn't been ravished against a bookshelf seven minutes ago.
"Your turn," she whispered once it was nearly time. "I'll be cheering for you."
"Please don't."
Maika pretended not to hear this and blew him a kiss.
"I'm serious."
"You should go," she urged. "It's not good to keep anyone waiting."
"Mrs. Ravensworth is right, sir." Orion had appeared at Mykos's elbow like he always did—silently, suddenly, as if he simply materialized from the nearest shadow. "I've been asked by the host to escort you backstage."
Mykos knew when he was beaten. But as he and Orion took the side door that would lead directly to the backstage area—
"You seem to have forgotten who's employing you," he drawled.
"Not at all, sir," Orion said politely. "I serve at your pleasure."
"And that's why you're always taking my wife's side?"
"Indeed, sir."
A pause.
"It's only because she's always right, sir."
Mykos gave Orion a look that would have made lesser men reconsider their career choices, but Orion received it with the serene indifference of a man who had been receiving that look for fifteen years. Was there anything in this world that could rattle him?