Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
“No, there are other things on that mountain,” he said roughly. “I’ve seen them myself.”
“So then take your mate to the trail and find them. You don’t need my help.” She switched ears. “Look, I gotta go. Sorry. Good luck.”
She ended the call just as John Matthew appeared in the bathroom doorway with a towel wrapped around his waist.
You okay? he signed.
“Yeah.” She put her phone aside. “It was nothing.”
As her hellren stared across at her, she eased back down against the pillows. For a moment, she felt entangled, but then she just let that tension go—and the fact that it was easy to segue out of the unease meant the shit wasn’t that important… and besides, she was feeling better than she ever had lately. More stable, instead of less.
Unlike certain other people. Who happened to have mohawks.
And maybe she was a bitch, but it felt good to turn her back on the grind of whatever bullshit destiny had tried, and failed, to line up for her. April had been the moment, and that was passed, she told herself.
“C’mere,” she murmured as she motioned for her mate. “I want to give you something.”
John Matthew’s lids lowered, as if he were reading her mind, and right on cue, her hellren came across the antique rug on a prowl, his body moving with sensual intent. When he stood in front of her, his broad dagger hand went to the erection that had thickened up at his hips. Gripping himself, he released the terry cloth wrap.
Then he let things fall to his feet.
“That’s what I want,” Xhex moaned.
Turning onto her side, she palmed her mate’s erection and pulled him forward. Opening her mouth, she had a moment of thanks for the fact that the grand antique bed they slept on, which was not ordinarily her style at all, was so built up with its carved head- and footboards that it placed her at just the right level.
Sucking John’s arousal in deep, she closed her eyes and snaked a hand around to lock onto his ass. In and out, slow and steady, with his fingers spearing into her short hair, and his breathing getting heavy, and his hips pumping to the rhythm she set.
This was what she needed. The crap about her past in the lab, and what had been done to her during those experiments… and V and his stupid visions… and that mountain, which was not her business and nothing she was interested in… and Rehv with his issues? Fuck it all. Here and now and with her hellren was the only thing that mattered.
As John started to come, her phone rang. The sound, like the dying man who was probably trying to reach her again, was easy to ignore.
Destiny was a goddamn shit salad, and no offense to the guy and his dread disease or whatever was killing him, and his GF with the four paws and the silver-bullet problem, Xhex was not going to add any croutons to what was already in her bowl.
For the first time in her life, everything was okay.
She was not fucking it up.
SEVEN
AT THE END of the day, as the last of the light was draining from what had been a cloudy sky, Lydia pulled up to the imposing gates of Phalen-ville. She didn’t have to wait long for the estate’s security department to clear her and unlock all that wrought iron. Hitting the gas on the borrowed SUV, she proceeded down an allée of trees that locked her into what she had started to think of as the Jolly Green Giant’s colon. The chute was the length of a football field, and there was no exiting once you’d started down the thing, no breaks in the lineup of all those matching conifers. At the end, things opened up and the stone house was revealed.
Funny, the sprawling mansion got bigger every time she saw it. Or maybe the size distortion was because she felt like she had to reacquaint herself with the grandeur every time she came back. Then again, when you’d spent your life living in two- or three-bedroom houses, you suffered from building dysmorphia if you got an upgrade like this.
Inside, she could forget the scale. Outside, she could see nothing else.
Pulling around to the side, she came up to the detached garage, hit the opener, and waited for the third door down the lineup of ten to open. After she parked, she turned off the engine and just stared at the varnished wainscoting in front of her. Like everything else in C.P.’s world, the interior of what was—or should have been—a utility building was finished as if it were a living room. Or maybe a stable for champion thoroughbreds.
She needed to go inside. Find Daniel. See how his day was.
See if he’d done what he’d promised her he would.