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)
8
Terrible things?
Yes, Jules would do terrible things. Enjoyed it when necessary.
Found it deeply satisfying.
Caressing his mate as he uncuffed her throat, clever fingers trailed over her breasts, delighting in Brenya’s beauty. Kissing three times along her jaw as he made his way to whisper at her ear, “I know you think I am horrible when I say such things. But I don’t mean to scare you, not in the way you imagine. I love you. Understand that.”
Obsessed. Starved for. Curled around mentally and physically in all ways possible.
She was his hoard, and he the dragon.
“And I will tell you I love you every day. I will show you I love you.” Forearm to the mattress, Jules hovered over the breathless Omega he had caught, studied her features, his eyes running over Brenya’s jagged yet wonderful scar. “These moments of terror will waste away into nothing. I’ll assure it. Because I know that you love me too.”
Sure fingers danced over her breastbone, tapping where his claim was buried deep—where he and she were one. “Emotions are layered and complex. The chemicals released retarded by the Beta suppressants you ingested from birth. Now, they flood you, overwhelm you, because you don’t know how to identify each one. How to explore them. But this one, this warm, bright, knowing you feel here? This is your love for me.”
His touch traveled lower, Jules palming the vulnerable, concave belly he’d worked so hard to fatten up over the last months with simple food for a complex woman. Possessive, insistent. “And here. That’s where I am inside you. Where you know. Where your instinct lives. Listen to it. Trust that this will never lie.”
Because he would.
He would lie to his mate.
But not today. Today was a long-awaited conjunction. Today was their first true day as husband and wife.
“And because you love me, I beg you, Brenya. Please do not test the lengths I will go to preserve you. Not even in a passing comment. You cannot die.” His cheek to hers, a gentle nuzzle, careful his scruff did not abrade her delicate face, Jules pressed her into the mattress and turned her head toward the light. Silken words at the shell of her ear, he told his deepest truth. “You cannot die if you want the world to live. And it’s so little I ask. Just thrive. Take the happiness you deserve, because I will give it to you.”
He didn’t have to look hard inside her to feel the confliction, the thready grasp she had of what was actually happening between them.
He teased at that thread, subtle, soft, knowing brute force would never serve when it came to his mate. What point would there be in flooding her, in compelling? What satisfaction would blossom in a mate he had to constantly control or maneuver?
He’d made that mistake before.
Brenya had to come to him, not because he created the perfect world around her, but because she craved him. Not sexual pleasure. Not a lifestyle. Not power.
Him.
Until she could not breathe without relishing the feeling of him inside her.
Where he would germinate.
The seeds of his psyche already wending their way into every last part of her being.
Weaving them together as one, by her own admission.
If….
Expression one no other would ever see, Jules flavored her feelings with melancholy, with this emotion she had yet to learn the name for as he cupped her cheek, slipping between the pillow and her skull. The hand that had just been inside her fully. “Now, give me your word that you won’t leave the Dome, ever—not by ship, not by foot—and I will make a vow in return to protect your people at all costs. So long as you live. For you. I will even tell you where I have hidden the Red Consumption. Every last location.”
Turning her head so she could meet his eyes—those unnerving eyes that left grown men weeping. He relished showing her the full ugliness of his insides and the beauty of his exterior. The honesty of every word flowing through the link. “I want your happiness above all things. So much so that I will give you complete power over me. The Dome. My life. Pleasure. Comfort. I’ll give you peace, Brenya. In your world and in your thoughts.”
His voice came so soft, a whisper of devotion and obsession. All of the darkest parts of him folded under and between adoration so they might go unnoticed. “I’ll show you what estrous should be. Fill you with children. Teach you everything you desire. We could build Bernard Dome to be anything you wish.”
Jules smiled, his practiced, most gentle expression down at his beloved mate. The one he would only ever show to her. The one he’d designed for her. “Give me your word, and I will give you mine.”
In the last decade, he’d personally tortured countless men and women. Knew how to craft a string of words into a blade. How to disarm, to divert, to break. Placed phrasing in precise order. Savored the flash of confusion in Brenya’s eyes at his intentional mention of children… how it muddled the rest of his offer.