Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 138334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 692(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 692(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
To his shock, she did exactly what he said. His woman. Fingers threaded through his. Dark eyes staring straight into his. She let her soul fly with his while they burned in the white-hot lightning together.
He let himself collapse over the top of her, desperate for air, trying to drag air into his lungs for both of them. He wasn’t certain he had lungs. He thought the fire had, for once in his life, burned him clean. He buried his face in her neck, all too aware he couldn’t stay with his full weight on her slight body. He was crushing her. It was just that in this moment, with his cock still jerking in her and the aftershocks rippling through her, he could still share her heart. He still shared her body. Even, like now, her very breath.
Very slowly, reluctantly, he eased his body from hers. He felt bereft. Her arms slid around his neck and clung for a moment. “I’ll be right back, Lotus. Let me get a washcloth.”
He washed the evidence of her innocence from his cock, reluctant to even do that. Then he returned and very gently cleaned between her legs. A little shiver went through her, but she didn’t flinch away from him.
“Did I hurt you, Meiling?”
“No, it was beautiful.”
He returned from the master bath and lay down on the bed on his belly, as close to her as he could get without crushing her. The moment he did, her fingers found his hair, just as she had done so many times before, only now it felt so much more intimate. Peace settled over him.
“How is it I knew I could have shot the sniper in the trees and gotten into the field before Drake Donovan or Remy could have stopped me when no others would have been able to do it, Gedeon?” Meiling asked suddenly.
She continued to run her fingers through his thick, unruly hair. He loved when she did that. It made him feel cared for. This was what they had always done together at night—lay close and talked.
He knew sooner or later she would ask questions. He wanted just a little more time before she did, afraid she might think he’d chosen her for yet another reason other than because he was in love with her. Still, he refused to give her less than the truth.
The pads of Meiling’s fingers caressed his scalp as her soft voice persisted. “You’re so fast when you want to be. Lightning fast, yet you hide it most of time. I have similar speed. And the strength I have isn’t normal even for a leopard.”
“I’m going to have to go back in the history of the leopard species a little bit to give you answers, Meiling.” He tipped his head up just a little to nuzzle the underside of her breast. “It’s the kind of history our people would like to forget. You’re part of that ugly history and so am I.”
Her fingers didn’t stop moving in his hair, but he felt her gaze on his face. He kissed her bare skin. It was so necessary that she know how much she meant to him. She was his only. There had been no one before her and there would be no one after her if he ever lost her. He hadn’t known he was capable of loving until she came along.
“Why are hesitating to tell me, Gedeon?”
He used his teeth to nip at the very sensitive underside of her breast, then soothed the sting with his tongue when her breath came out in a little rush of reaction. “I always feel as if I’m asking you to accept more and more of me on faith and trust.”
She was silent for some time, her fingers continuing to move in his hair, although slower, as if she was thinking, turning things over in her mind.
“You recognized all the way back in the jungle when I moved the branch off you that I was different. It wasn’t just that Slayer was quiet when I was around. I told you I didn’t have a leopard, but you knew something about me then, didn’t you?”
“I suspected, but I didn’t know. I was blind at the time. I hadn’t seen you, but the more I was around you, the more I had my suspicions that you had superior gifts, just as I do.”
“Are there very many others with them?”
“I don’t think any others still live, Meiling. That’s part of the very shameful history I was about to tell you. I’m going to confess to you that when I tell you everything, I won’t look the best to you. I already gave you a little of it.”
He had told her a little bit, so hopefully she wouldn’t condemn him. She remained silent, so he took a breath and launched into what he knew. “There were three families that seemed to be born with extraordinary gifts. No one knew if it was the combination of genetics, the female and male leopard getting together, but they all emerged around the same time, although in different countries.”