Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40168 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
“Greta,” Tolcan said. “Her name is Greta.” Tolcan stood and stared at Stellan, this challenge in his expression.
“Greta,” Stellan said, looked at her again, nodded, and let himself out. The silence once again stretched out.
“You’d do this for me, risk your life, risk everything, to help Jayce?”
He nodded.
“But why?” She felt like she’d asked this question a million times, or maybe she’d just thought about it so much it felt like she’d been screaming it out loud.
“Why?” he asked and stepped closer.
Greta nodded, swallowed the lump that was in her throat, and didn’t move.
She’d been fighting these emotions for Tolcan since she realized he was different. And every time she slept alone, heard him in the other room, and knowing that for him, wanting her like he clearly did, it had to be hard for him as well, Greta realized that her life wasn’t so bad here. She wasn’t made to be a slave, wasn’t required to clean up after him, to cook for him, or be his sex slave. All those humans that were not in her situation, that were tortured, taken, degraded, broke her heart. She wanted to be stronger, fight for them until she couldn’t fight any longer, not live in this little bubble of a twisted reality.
He stopped a few feet from her, and she felt her questions bubble up, rise up from her and demand to be free.
“I want to help my people, not just help Jayce, but help free all of them.” She swallowed, feeling her strength, but also trepidation rise in her. “I want to be able to do something to make a difference.”
He lifted his hand, cupped her cheek, and she held her breath. His skin was cooler to the touch, or maybe she was just overheated from her emotions and the sudden desire to give herself what she wanted … Tolcan.
“You can’t save everyone. I can’t even do that.” He sounded a little softer, not so harsh.
“We don’t know if we don’t try.”
He shook his head and stroked her cheek a few more times before dropping his hand to the side. “It would take an uprising. It would take a massive shift in my people to realize that capturing and enslaving humans is wrong.” He took a step back, looked down, and for a second was silent, his expression showing he was deep in thought. “I’ve never thought of what we did to the humans as wrong.” He lifted his head, this dark expression on his face, as if this realization filled him. “I followed orders, did what I was told, and never questioned anything.” He moved closer to her again, and the scent of him, dark, spicy, male filled her nose. “But then I saw you, and something in me woke, came alive. I can’t even describe it, can’t even understand how one small human female can make me completely change the way I think and feel.” He cupped her cheek again, and Greta found herself leaning into it. The sound of her heart beating fast, wild, untamed, filled her ears.
This was all so crazy, but it felt … right.
“I know that I’d do anything to make you happy, and bring anyone back for you if it meant you’d trust me.”
As strange as all of this was, and how twisted it seemed when she thought about it, she did trust him. “I do, Tolcan, and that scares a part of me.” She felt this pit in her stomach grow with the truth of that. “I feel something, too, something that makes me question my own sanity, and makes me wonder what I’m even doing.” She lifted her hand, finding strength, and placed it over his much bigger one.
Looking into his light blue eyes, she saw a man, not an alien, not a brute, but a man willing to help her against all odds.
“I know we can’t save the world, and I would never ask you to risk everything to fight, because helping me with Jayce is such a big step. I can never repay you, and never let you know how truly happy and grateful I am for you helping me, helping the other humans, the ones I consider my family.”
The silence stretched between them, and her heart beat faster. The need to be closer, to show him she didn’t ignore the fact that he was kind and gentle to her, that he was trying for her. She wanted to show Tolcan that she wasn’t this Rogue-hating bitch, just like he wasn’t this human killing brute. Well, he might have been in the past, might have been right before he found her, but he’d shown her this good in him, and she wanted to show him that didn’t go unnoticed.
Without thinking anymore, and without letting uncertainty and fear control her, she rose on her toes, braced her hands on his pecs, and tilted her head slightly to kiss him. It was hard since he was so tall, so big, but at the first touch of her lips to his this growl left him. He grabbed her around the waist, and he lifted her easily. She was then moved to the wall, Tolcan so big she felt like a doll in his grasp.