Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
All she had seen from me so far was dark, primal, raw, inner demons. What kind of man could stand by and allow the things the Order did to her? I didn’t care that she didn’t expect an apology. She fucking deserved one.
“I know what you’re thinking.” She said it softly, pulling back from my lips. “You’re thinking how temporary this is. How temporary I am.”
My eyes flitted from hers to her lips and back again. I watched her curls tumble down around her neck and her eyes watch me back. I kept my hands around her body, but I was mindful to not touch her anywhere below the waist, as a gentleman would do. “That’s not what I was thinking. And I don’t think you are temporary.”
“It’s okay to admit it, Walker,” she said, her hands moving up my arms, over my shoulders and to my neck. She pulled me back to her and I felt myself giving in to the kiss.
When I pulled back, I searched her face for more explanation of what she meant.
“It’s our reality,” she said, wrapping her arms around my neck and looking up at me. The look in her eyes was different from a few seconds ago. She was still happy, but there was a slight sadness reflected in her face. “When this nightmare is over, we leave here and start our new nightmare. Or at least for me. You get to go start your life as a powerful politician with all the members of the Order backing you. I have to go back to my mother. I have to go back to all the courting, and the pressure of her trying to find me the perfect husband.”
A thick and suffocating possessiveness rushed through every vein of my body at the idea of her being courted by any other man. No fucking way could I allow that. No fucking way.
With a smirk, she added, “Not that I think anyone would touch me after what we’re going through. Every single powerful man in Darlington County has now seen me naked and doing things that would give my mother a stroke. I’m soiled now. Who’d want that?”
“First thing,” I said as I pushed my body against hers harder. “I will never allow another man to court you. Get that out of your head. I’d destroy anyone who dares try to land a hand on you.” I kissed her briefly as a way to put a period on the sentence. “Second thing is you are far from soiled. You are perfect. Absolutely perfect regardless of what happens in this manor.”
Her eyes narrowed as she tilted her head to look at me. “And how are you going to prevent someone from courting me?”
“You’re mine.” It was a simple statement, but the truest fucking thing I’d ever uttered.
“Inside Oleander Manor. Only in here.”
“Who says I can’t court you after we leave this place?” I answered as I kissed her again. “I’m a good ol’ Southern boy who knows how to do the dance too, you know. I could woo your mother.”
She giggled. “My mother is easy. As long as you have money, she’d be putty in your hands.”
I shrugged. “Money, I have. Family name I have. But what I don’t have yet, is you. But if your mother is our only obstacle, well, that’s easy.”
“And you think everything that has happened in this manor, and what will still happen while we’re here, are the acts of a politician’s wife?” Jasmine shook her head and sighed. “Hardly,” she answered for me. “I honestly can’t see myself walking out of here without my reputation completely destroyed.”
“What happens within these walls, stays within these walls.”
“I think there are two different sets of rules,” she said. “One for you, and one for me. There’s no way I come out of this clean.”
“Fuck them all. And I don’t care,” I said, swiping a wayward lock from her forehead. “I could see you as Mrs. St. Claire. You by my side as we shake hands and kiss babies.”
“A politician’s wife? You can honestly see me as a politician’s wife?”
I nodded. “Can you see that as a possibility?”
She laughed. “It’s fun picturing the two point five kids with you, living in the governor’s mansion, but…” She shook her head again, a far off look in her eyes. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to fill those shoes. Our happily ever after may just be you and me here, now…temporary.”
I kissed the tip of her nose. “Listen. If we can survive this place and the Trials, there is nothing we can’t face. I can woo your mother, and you can woo my constituents. And we’d make beautiful babies.”
She giggled and pressed her lips to mine. “We’d definitely make beautiful babies.”
“Besides,” I added. “You don’t want me going to jail, do you?”