Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86768 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
What we’re doing, me moving inside her, her clinging to me, it’s love making. Deep and soft and hard at once. And needy. So fucking needy. I can’t fucking stop kissing her, looking at her. I can’t stop breathing in her breath, and I can’t fucking look away from her eyes, from the brokenness, the openness. The vulnerability inside them. She’s giving it to me like a gift.
That thought and the damage I can do is more terrifying than any game the Commander could play, any sadistic punishment he could think up.
Because in my arms, beneath me, is my redemption.
But it’s a double-edged sword because I know I can break her.
Madelena sucks in a ragged breath and her teeth find my lower lip. When the walls of her pussy throb around my cock, I feel the pain of this knowledge. The only relief is the fact that just as I can break her, so can she break me.
I know it as I draw back to look at her soft face in the aftermath of our love making.
She and I have always been destined to be together. For better or worse. Even before our blood oath. We can each be the other’s savior. Or the other’s destruction. This is our destiny. Until death do us part.
30
Santos
“Val does not leave. Am I clear, Mother?”
My mother sits in one of the armchairs in what used to be Dad’s study, sipping her vodka martini. It would have been mine, but since I moved out to Augustine’s, she took it over. I don’t really care. I need the space apart from them, honestly, especially now with Madelena in the picture. Truth is, there wasn’t anything new in Thiago’s warning. It just gave more weight to my father’s own warning, to the words that have echoed subtly in my mind for years.
After getting back to Avarice, I left Madelena to rest before tonight’s event and took the opportunity to see Caius and my mother. We need to get some things straight between us.
Caius is quiet, his eyes on us.
“I don’t see why you’re so upset. A soldier is a soldier.”
I step in front of her so she has to look at me. “Am I clear?” I don’t like that she’s sent Val away and replaced him with someone I don’t know.
She shrugs. Sips. “Fine. Besides, we have a more pressing issue.” She sets her drink aside and gets up to walk around her desk. I glance at Caius, who’s been strangely silent, but turn back to my mother as, from inside the drawer, she retrieves a familiar little blue plastic compact and tosses it to me. I catch it. “Care to explain?”
“This again? Where did you get it?” It’s the compact of birth control pills I’d given back to Madelena.
“Ana found them among your wife’s things.”
“What the fuck was Ana doing going through her things?”
“She had time on her hands when your brother was forced to escort Madelena to an event you should have been in attendance for! But you disappeared. For fuck’s sake, Santos. What the hell were you thinking? This is important!”
I tuck the pills into my jacket pocket and sigh.
“What is she doing with those pills?” she continues, pointing an accusing finger at me. “You know what has to happen. Why is she still taking those things?”
“I’m handling it.”
“You’re not handling it.”
“We will do this on my terms.”
She walks around the desk and comes right up to me. “No, Santos, not your terms. Our terms. We had a plan in place. We’ve had a plan in place since before your father died. We Augustines have the same end goal in our minds and hearts—”
“Unless that’s changed,” Caius cuts her off. He speaks the words quietly but they stop everything.
I turn to him, eyes narrowed, and take a step in his direction.
He simply raises his eyebrows and casually sips from his glass.
“Has it changed?” my mother asks, drawing my attention back from my brother.
“For fuck’s sake! No, of course not. We are on track. Nothing has changed. But we will be doing this my way. On. My. Terms.”
The finality in my voice has my mother backing off. She picks up her drink and returns to her seat in front of the fire but keeps her eyes on me.
“We have another issue,” I say, wanting to change this subject.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“The Averys have purchased a property in Avarice.”
My mother’s gaze moves from me to my brother.
Caius finishes his drink and sets his glass down loudly, muttering a curse. “Not an issue,” he says finally.
“No?” Mom asks. “How is that? They’re here to make trouble.”
“What can they do?” Caius asks. “Truly, what can they do?”
“Apart from accusing your brother of killing the Commander, you mean?” she asks. “Poking their noses where they don’t belong and stirring up the past?”