Series: Lords of Rathe Series by Meagan Brandy
Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93354 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Knight leaning over it, touching me. Tasting me.
Or I swear dreamland Knight was about to before my damn eyes flew open and ruined all the fun. I’d almost prefer another murderous nightmare over being teased but not taken care of.
Besides, me and the Grim Reaper-like fucker who keeps trying to kill me in my sleep should be on a first name basis by now. Who the hell has the same nightmare over and over, anyway?
Groaning, I rub my legs together in hopes of some relief, but at this point, I’m convinced not even my vibrator will get the job done. Knight’s touch, or the memory of it that played in my dream, is that good.
Straight up, I want to fuck Knight, and if I had his number, I would beg for a booty call. I am not above a late-night ride.
Pouting, I roll onto my side, and my eyes find the clock, its red lights blinking back at me. Ten after four.
Jesus fuck, four o’clock?
I didn’t make it to bed by four most nights last semester without Ben’s supervision, let alone wake up before it. No, I haven’t woken up this early since I was a little girl.
It’s strange, for several years I would wake from a dead sleep at three a.m. like clockwork. I would just sit there and stare at the minutes ticking by with this heavy sense of anxiousness, as if I was just waiting for something to happen. For someone to come in and…I don’t know, kill me…or so my uncle thought.
After he realized it was happening, Uncle Marcus would do his best to check on me, telling me things like ‘it’s okay,’ ‘all the doors are locked, ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of, little crow.’
The thing is it was never fear I felt. Not once.
It was excitement that raced through my veins, a strange stirring eagerness deep in my chest, like when a puppy wags its tail, or that was the only thing I could think to compare it to when I was a child. I tried to tell my uncle I wasn’t scared, more than once, in fact, but he would just look at me with kind eyes and a small smile, and even as a little girl, I knew he thought I was trying to be tough. I wasn’t.
My little late-night waiting party went on for years, until ever so slowly the feeling of anxiousness dropped into my stomach, creating a hollow void of despair. Of…loss. It made no sense. Eventually, I learned to block it out until one day, I no longer had to stop trying to.
It wasn’t gone, somehow I knew that, but it was as if a deeper part of me knew what to do and protected me from the pain I didn’t understand because it made no sense.
My uncle was a wholesome man. My best friend was the shit and his grandma treated me like I was one of her own. After I lost my parents, I had a whole support system around me. I didn’t know another way.
With a heavy sigh, I climb from bed, making my way to the bathroom. I splash a little cold water onto my face, staring at my ratted hair in the mirror.
“Ugh.” Brush in hand, I head back into my room, throw on a pair of sweats, and reach for the shirt I tossed off mid-sleep last night, but squeak when my fingers touch something sticky. “Damn.”
I kick it to the side, and my eyes fall to the T-shirt folded neatly on the dresser—the black shirt I woke up in the other night. I tug it over my head, brush my mane of Daenerys, and tiptoe into the kitchen, careful not to wake Ben as I quickly pop in a pod to make a cup of coffee.
I snag a blanket off the back of the couch and throw it over my shoulders before moving back to dress up my drink. Only once the steaming beverage is drowning in cinnamon syrup do I leave the room and head down to the first floor, then out the dorm doors.
The campus is a dead zone, as I suspected, so I watch my surroundings as I make my way toward the picnic tables about twenty feet away.
I climb on top of the one nearest my building, ignoring how my ass is instantly wet from the moisture built up on the chipping paint, and wrap the blanket tighter around me.
I look up at the sky and my mood sours a little more.
There’s just something about the darkness fading that rubs me wrong. Everything is better at night.
“I should be surprised to find you here, but I’m not.”
I jolt, my legs flying from where they’re bent as hot coffee sloshes over the edge. My head snaps over my shoulder, seeking the voice out in the shadows of the trees.