Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“You want to be mine in every way, Little Moth.” He buries his face between my legs and doesn’t come up for air until I arch my back and press myself into him and it’s moments before I come, griping handfuls of the duvet, my eyes closed, head thrown back as he devours me whole.
Only when it’s over, when orgasm subsides and I lie boneless on the bed, does Cassian rise to stand to his full height, all powerful, a wide grin on his face, his lips glistening with his victory over me.
“And you are mine in every way. Body and soul, you are mine.” His eyes grow serious, that grin vanishing, expression hardening. “Understand that, Allegra. And know that I will wreck this world to avenge you. Know it here.” He sets his hand against my chest, over my heart. “Know it with your body. Know it with your soul. Know that I will destroy anyone and anything that stands in my path to avenge you, my Allegra.”
I stare up at him, startled, heartbeats wild beneath his warm hand. I’m still trying to catch my breath. I set mine over his and feel his warmth, his strength. I begin to shiver. Cassian sees it, he pulls his shirt over his head and slips it over mine before tucking me into the bed and pulling the blanket around me. He cups the back of my head and the way he looks at me makes breathing hard. Makes me think maybe he’s right. Maybe his claim on my soul is not nothing.
I gasp when my gaze catches on an angry wound on his shoulder, the rows of stitches lined up like soldiers. “What happened to you?”
He glances at it like he’d forgotten about it, then shifts his gaze back to me. “That’s me coming for you.”
“What…” I touch it gently, look up at him, trying to understand him, this man who wants to possess me. Who is right in that I want to be possessed by him.
“I’d take a dozen more bullets for you. Do you know that?”
How did I not see it before? I’ve been so out of it, sleeping most of the time. I haven’t seen him fully naked or even shirtless since he brought me back.
The stitches are rough, the skin beneath warm. I look at the other scar on his stomach. The one that’s barely healed. The one I put there. There are others too. Old ones hidden beneath the dark ink of the Grim Reaper’s robes.
I turn my gaze up to his. “Why?”
“Why?”
I nod.
He touches my cheek, brushes hair back from my face. “Because I feel you inside myself. In here.” He touches his chest, hand over his heart. “I feel you in here, Allegra. And here.” He touches his stomach. “You are inside me just as I am inside you. I belong to you just as you belong to me.”
We stay like that, no more angry glaring, two souls bared, almost. My fingertips touch the space where his heart beats. I set the flat of my hand against it and he covers it with his, his touch gentle, his hand warm.
“Do you understand now, my Allegra?”
I look up at him, into those eyes where I can lose myself. Where I know I’ll never be lost.
“He told me you weren’t coming,” I hear myself say, my voice small. How little faith I had.
Cassian’s eyes darken and narrow. “And you believed him?”
“He said Michael paid you and you wouldn’t come for me.”
“Did you believe him?” he presses, and tears blur my vision of him.
“You don’t know what I did,” I whisper, looking away, feeling shame. Feeling shame for my weakness. He doesn’t now that his vow is wasted on me. I can’t be his. It’s too late for that.
He cups my face, turns it up to his.
“Whatever you did, you did to survive,” he says, his jaw tight, and I don’t know if I’m grateful or sorry he doesn’t push me to say it. To tell him what happened in that room. What happened after Malek cut off my finger.
“You don’t understand.” My throat is so tight, the words come out strange.
“You told me on the first day I met you when you gave me this,” he says, pointing to the scar on his side. “You told me that you wouldn’t be a good little victim. Do you know that I believed you from the start?”
I search his eyes, so different from Malek’s, from Michael’s, from my father’s. Their eyes were dead. Their eyes only came alive when they were cruel. But Cassian isn’t cruel. He’s never been cruel. Not even in the beginning. Not to me.
“I don’t like it when I wake up and you’re gone,” I admit. “I was scared. I am scared. I’m scared all the time, and I hate myself for it. For being so weak.”