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)
When I look up at him, he’s watching me.
“That wasn’t much of a deterrent for snooping, was it?” he asks.
I shake my head, exhausted. “The opposite, maybe.”
He smiles. “My violent, wild Allegra. Maybe it’s time.” He dangles the pouch in front of me.
“My mother’s ring,” I say remembering.
He shakes his head. “No, it’s not that. It’s something else.” He opens it, drops what’s inside into his palm and holds his hand before me. He opens it and I look down and inside his hand I see two rings. Two simple platinum bands. One thin and small, the other thicker and wider.
Confused, I look up at him.
“The night you were kidnapped, I had picked these up.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, sitting up straighter, glancing at the rings before turning my face back up to his.
“I was going to marry you, Allegra. Not quite for the right reasons, although they were there. I just didn’t know them yet. Now, I know. I love you. I want to marry you for no other reason than that. Will you do that? When this is over, when I’ve killed that bastard, I’m going to ask you to marry me, and I want you to promise that you will say yes.”
I turn my gaze to the rings, then back up at him. I reach up to touch his face. “I love you, Cassian. I love you more than anything in this world. And I say yes now because that bastard doesn’t matter. You matter. We matter. I don’t give a fuck about anything else. It’s just you and me. You and me forever.”
He takes the smaller of the two rings and slides it onto my ring finger. I make myself look. I don’t let myself turn away and neither does he.
“You are my wife, Allegra. In my heart and in my mind, you are my wife.”
I take the larger one and slide it onto his. “And you are my husband, Cassian. In my heart and in my mind.” I reach up to kiss him, pulling him down to me. “Make love to me please. Make slow love to me.”
19
CASSIAN
Imake slow love to her in front of that fire. I take my time and weave my fingers with hers so I can see our rings, our promise, and make slow, slow love to her.
Afterwards, I set another log on the fire. Sitting on the couch, we watch that log crackle, the flames catching, rising high. Our bodies intertwined, we stay like that for what I wish could be forever. Just Allegra and me in this room, no outside world, no monsters to battle. Just us. Together. Like this. Forever.
Forever.
She turns her soft eyes to mine. They’re liquid gold when she’s sated, burning amber fire when she’s my violent little Allegra. She brushes my hair back from my face.
“You look like her.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Your mother. I saw the photograph on your laptop.”
“When you were snooping, you mean?” I tease.
“Yes. When I was snooping,” she confirms. “She was beautiful.”
“She was,” I say, shifting my gaze to the fire, thinking about the mother I never had the chance to know.
“And Seth, he looked like her too,” she probes.
I turn back to Allegra. After a moment, I decide to correct her. “Looks,” I say.
She tilts her head, confused.
“He looks like her. Seth looks like our mother. More than I do.”
“I thought… Isn’t he… I thought he’d died.”
“You thought I killed my own brother.”
“No. I just…”
“It’s what everyone believes, Allegra. For a reason.”
“I don’t understand.”
I get up, walk over to the cabinet where I keep the whiskey and pour two glasses. I return to the couch and hand her one. She takes it and drapes her legs over mine as I settle back into a seat.
“It’s better if everyone believes he’s dead.”
“But, Cassian, people think you killed him. Why would you want that?”
“Because it’s better than anyone knowing the reality. Besides, ruthless is good in my business.”
She waits, quiet, forehead furrowed.
“He has Huntington’s disease.”
She is no less confused. “I’m sorry, Huntington’s? I don’t know anything about that.”
“Not many people do. Seth, he was barely in his thirties when he began to lose his mind.”
She gasps, slapping her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“He’s in a facility a little way out of town. He has the best care possible, and I try to visit him every few weeks, although these days I think my visits agitate him more than anything else.”
“He doesn’t remember you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. No, that’s not right. He remembers something, but it’s not me. Maybe it’s glimpses of a past life, but it’s gone as soon as it comes, and it only upsets him. Sometimes there are moments, glimmers of hope. At least I saw them that way for a long time.” Hope. There’s that damned word again. Something inside me stretches awake. “Those moments are often the worst because he’s gone and hoping isn’t going to bring him back. It’s not going to reverse what is irreversible.”