Total pages in book: 22
Estimated words: 20872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 104(@200wpm)___ 83(@250wpm)___ 70(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20872 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 104(@200wpm)___ 83(@250wpm)___ 70(@300wpm)
I nod as tears come to my eyes. Through all the pain, all the torture, all the terror, I never cried. I held my head high and stared my tormentors in their ruthless eyes, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of seeing me break. But now, safe with Kaeso, I can’t seem to hold the tears back.
“Did they… touch you?” The rabid growl in his voice would send any sane woman fleeing, but it makes me inch a little closer to him. “Like a husband is supposed to touch his wife?”
I shake my head as a flush creeps into my cheeks. “No,” I whisper and the tightness in his body releases like I turned a valve and let the pressure out. “A woman checked to make sure…”
I’m hoping he’s going to put the pieces together so I don’t have to say it, but he just stares at me with those big kind brown eyes.
“…that my maidenhead was intact.”
“And was it?”
The intense curiosity in his eyes makes me snort out a laugh.
“That’s private,” I say as I run my hand down his arm that feels like stone under his warm skin. I feel bad when that burning curiosity only increases. “Yes. I’ve been a good girl.”
That rough look lightens as he smiles in relief. I can’t help but smile too as I study every inch of his warm comforting face. It’s covered in scars from long-forgotten battles.
He closes his eyes and sighs contently as I run my fingers over each scar. “You’ve been through so much,” I whisper as I trace the long scar that starts on his forehead and runs along to the top of his stubbled cheek. “Your tragic story is written on your skin. Did they hurt?”
“Yes, but I can handle it. I’ve always been able to handle pain.” He sucks in a breath as he cups my cheek and runs his thumb over my lips. “But there is a pain I fear. The pain of being separated from you. Even a beast like me cannot handle such misery as that.”
I grip his wrist and kiss his thumb when he runs it over my lips again. “Then let’s stay together.”
“I had decided that the second I saw you,” he says as he shifts closer to me, that huge rod pressing up against me once again. The speed of my breath increases, the intensity of my heart amplifies. I like being in this bed with this man.
“How long have you been here?” I ask, wanting to know everything about him.
“I don’t know,” he whispers. “But there was no white in my hair and no lines on my face when I entered.”
I run my hand through his salt and pepper hair with a smile. “I like the hair.”
He groans when I trace the wrinkles beside his eyes. “I like the lines.”
He grips my wrist and leans in close enough for a kiss. “I like you,” he says in a deep throaty voice that sends a heat pulsating between my legs.
I lick my lips as I stare into his piercing brown eyes. It’s a turn-on being under such a powerful man. I never knew men like him existed in real life—oozing with power and dominance like Hercules in the flesh.
My mind keeps going to dirty places with every breath I take of his rugged masculine scent. I run my fingertips along his wide chest that is as hard as it looks. An old toga is draped across it, covering the sinewy muscles I know he’s hiding and the plentiful scars that I find sexier than anything I’ve ever seen before.
“Do you hate them?” I ask, trying to distract my carnal desires with some more talking. “The men who took you?”
He shakes his head, his eyes firm with conviction. “No. Not at all.”
“Why?” I imagine a man as ferocious as him would want to make them all pay for stealing his freedom. It doesn’t make sense.
“They brought me to this moment, Elovissa. How can I hate them when they brought me to you?”
My heart feels like it’s swelling in my chest as my body tingles under his possessive stare.
“You wouldn’t change it, if you could?”
“No,” he says with a fierceness in his voice that ignites my body in a beautiful heat. “I would gladly take every crack of the whip, every slice of the sword, every cold lonely night if it meant coming to you at the end of it.”
My mouth waters as my eyes roam to his lips. I wonder if they’re as soft as they look or if they’re as hard as the rest of him.
I begin to lean my chin up, tempting him to kiss me when the guard smacks the iron bars, jerking him up and away from me.
I almost let out a frustrated hiss as I feel him go.