Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 25180 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 126(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25180 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 126(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
“When I was a child,” I begin, swallowing. “My father was a warrior, like me. But he would…behave far differently than I do. Most of the time, he wouldn’t even partake in the battles, he would carouse with women and go on drunken binges for days on end, waiting for someone to collect him and return him to the castle. And my mother, she found out about this and used me as a weapon against him.” I pause, for once allowing the memories to flood in, rather than blocking them out. Memories of cold confusion and despair. “My father might have been a fool, but he loved me. My mother used his pride in me to punish him. While he was away, she’d force me to sleep outside in the dead of winter. Or put me in a pit with the wolfhounds and challenge me to escape…”
Frigid air blows into my chest, making me pause.
Gwen’s expression hasn’t changed, but horror is frozen in her eyes.
She doesn’t say anything, but she reaches down and threads our fingers together, raising the temperature inside me back to normal and it turns out to be exactly what I need to continue. “My father had to find a way to get revenge and…I guess at some point it eclipsed the affection he had for me and I became a tool for him to use, as well. Against her. He would bring me into battle and put me in the thick of it. Right on the front lines, before I was even twelve years old. I suppose he wanted to show my mother there was nothing she could do to hurt him. He was beating her at her own game. And that’s all it was to them. A game…and I was the game piece to move at will.”
Without a word, Gwen slides closer to me and tucks her head into the curve of my neck. I pull her as close as possible and…it feels as though I’m truly exhaling for the first time in my life. The hard-packed pressure in my sternum is dissipating and there is only her. The warm support of her body, her hand in mine, breath on my throat. This is how I want to remain. How I want to live. Exactly like this. With her and for her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, tightening her grip around my fingers. “They allowed hate to rule them. It speaks to your strength of character that it doesn’t rule you now.”
I grunt, letting my palm stroke down the back of her hair. “Well. You didn’t see me on the battlefield. I was hateful then.”
“You left the Fury on those fields, where he belongs. You didn’t bring him with you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you bought sweets for my sisters.”
A rumble passes through me. “It was nothing.”
“And when I scorned you in front of others, you merely laughed. You have a good mixture of arrogance and humility, Corbet. For all the terrible treatment you suffered, you came through it a good man. Be at peace with yourself.” She sighs against my throat, stirring my chest hair. “The only experience you have with marriage is seeing two people pitted against each other, twisting their commitment into something ugly. I don’t fault you for not wanting to marry.”
I wait for the deluge of relief to hit—she understands—but it never comes. It sits at the top of my jugular, stuck, making it hard for me to swallow. Wasn’t my ultimate goal to reveal my past to Gwen so she would see things from my perspective?
Yes.
But now that she does, now that she is a step closer to being my permanent lover, a worry starts to niggle at the back of my neck. An undefined one. I don’t feel settled whatsoever.
“Gwen…”
“You will be ready to take a chance on love someday,” she says, her hand trailing down my chest, my stomach, the gentle pads of her fingertips teasing my cock back to life. “You’ll judge a person based on their actions and you won’t see them through the lens of your past. I promise.”
“Gwen—”
Her mouth locks with mine, halting my words with a kiss.
Why does my heart feel as though it’s going to explode?
Why is she speaking as though anyone else will ever exist for me?
There is only her—and I try to show her that with my mouth. I taste every inch of her, winding our tongues together and giving her the breath from my lungs, groaning when she wraps her fist around my dick and strokes it into steel. There is something happening between us, but I’m not sure what. There were barriers the last time we gave each other pleasure, erected by us both, but they’re gone now, and the air is thick with desperation.
Mine. Hers.
My touch roams over her back to knead her tasty backside, rifling back up into her hair, my hips rolling toward the smooth circle of her hand. There is no way to get enough of her. She is a sweet addiction and I’m succumbing to it. Yes, the conversation between us was left unfinished, at least on my end, but I have time to figure out why I’m unsettled. Don’t I? Why should I be anxious? She told me she understands why I don’t want to marry. That’s as good as an agreement to be my mistress. And in time, she’ll realize there will never, ever be another woman in my life. The very idea is abhorrent to me and I’ll prove it to her, again and again.