Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 78164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Until we reached his office, where he took me by the wrist and dragged me over the threshold when I inadvertently dug in my heels.
Because that pretty room was deadly.
It was dangerous.
And I had been hurt in there.
The door closed, it locked, my unhappy self completely trapped once again.
The shreds of my black dress had been removed, everything glittering, pristine, and polished.
As if my life had not been ruined in that space only a handful of days prior.
Drawing me inside, Cyderial said, “You will meet with Maeve shortly, so if there is something to be said, now is the time to address it.”
If he thought I was in the mood for conversation, he was out of his mind.
Over there was where he first kissed me. That was the cabinet with the reflective glass front, where I had seen my new slit open under Cyderial’s touch. And right there, on the floor, was where he put his cock inside me as I begged him to stop.
His hand came to my shoulder, and I just about leapt out of my skin.
I may have even whimpered—a tiny, embarrassing sound.
Making his thrums, his deep, pulsing calls, he snatched me to him, warmed me with his body, folding me into him. “Lorieyn, maybe we should begin your day in the training room. Maeve can wait. Would you like to come at me with a sword?”
A very sharp one? Yes. But making him bleed would not change any of this. I had work to do. “No, thank you. I will meet with Maeve.”
“I will have her collected.” Just as I had been bodily collected and urged deeper into my personal nightmare. “Sit, relax. Or steal any rocks you want.”
My voice was hardly above a whisper when he sat me on his white death-couch. “I don’t think a rock is going to make me feel better right now.”
Arranging my limbs like I was some little doll, he fluffed pillows for behind my back, laid a soft blanket over my knees.
All the while, I could not control my tongue. “This is where you sat me the night Private Cullen was hanged.” I pointed to the front of his desk. “And that is where I stood when you denied my graduation and stole the fog.” My eyes went to the most terrible part of the room. “And over there, you raped me.”
Catching my face, distorting my cheeks as he turned my attention back to him, he kneeled at my feet, somber, but said nothing as he drank me in.
Weaponized silence that flayed me bit by bit.
Cut to the bone, I felt so wrong in my skin. And I knew… I knew… he wouldn’t change anything about his choices in the past.
Where I saw tragedy, he saw triumph.
That was why he kept his silence.
And I wept for it, sobbing with only my tormentor to lean on.
The number of times I cried on this man since waking up in his bed the first time shamed me. That I could find comfort with him degraded me. That I was even capable of crying with such fervor confused me.
Recruits do not cry.
No, pain was to be buried deep, deep, deep down.
But I wasn’t a recruit anymore, was I? I was an instructor now. Mated to a demon I clung to as I purged.
I bawled until my stomach hurt, until I was out of tears and thirsty.
A strange sensation I had almost forgotten. A parched throat didn’t belong to mated females, because a flood of male ejaculate should have been plugged inside me. And this made me angry with him on a very different, very strange level.
Holding me as I broke apart, Cyderial gave me all the time in the world. My breath a shivering wreck, I drank down his scent. Nose at his throat, arms wrapped around his neck, I called him horrible names.
Let him witness the damage he’d done.
I hated him. I was fond of him. Addicted to him. And I needed him.
Cyderial had done monstrous things, no question. But he could be so gentle. And forceful.
The man could make me do anything he wanted.
And I suspected he knew I liked being compelled when I was scared. Maybe my brain was broken from academy life. Maybe there was no better way he could have claimed me than by taking me by the throat and dragging me into a bond.
Maybe I deserved him.
A strange thought that quieted my brain, slowed my hiccupping breaths, and lulled me as he rocked me in his arms.
When my voice returned and I was somewhat stable, I muttered, “Did you know recruits call this the death couch? No one who has sat on it lived to tell the tale.”
With a dark chuckle, he rubbed warm circles into my back. “You’ve sat on it.”
Voice hardly more than a whisper, I answered, “And I told no one.”