Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 92254 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92254 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
“Five. Actually.”
“Six if you count me sucking you off in the library. How are you hard again?”
“Magic. Mostly your tits though.”
She frowns and looks down at herself. She squeezes one and pushes them together. “I don’t know. They’re fine. Just boobs.”
“They’re perfect.”
“I’ve seen better. I knew this girl—”
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
She shrugs. “Your loss. But her tits were glorious.”
“You are glorious.” I tug her closer. She sighs and lazily strokes my shaft. “Can I admit something?”
“Absolutely.”
“I didn’t want to do this.”
She laughs and squeezes my head. I grimace slightly. Maybe I should’ve phrased that better, especially with my cock in her fist.
“You didn’t want to do what exactly?”
“Stay home. It’s difficult for me.”
“You certainly are suffering right now.” She kisses my neck. “No, I’m sorry, you’re being honest and I’m making jokes.”
“Work is everything. The Brotherhood is everything. Being the patron is more consuming than you can guess and it encompasses my every waking moment. I was afraid to stop.”
“That must be difficult.”
“It’s a lot of weight to carry. I’m not complaining. Someone has to do it, and I’m strong enough. But I was worried that taking off even one day might be too much.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then she kisses my shoulder. “You care about your family. That’s really important. It’s admirable, actually.”
“You care about yours too. That’s why you’re here.”
“True.” She frowns then looks down. “We’re having a serious conversation and you’re still hard.”
“You’re still stroking.”
“We’re kind of weird, aren’t we?”
“It’s the good kind of weird.”
“Didn’t know that was a thing.”
“How about you get on all fours and let me fuck you into sweet oblivion?”
“What’s that have to do with being a weirdo?”
I bite her lower lip and tongue her teeth. “Nothing. I just want to fill you again and spank your ass until it’s branded with my palm print.”
“Well, since you put it that way—”
Her fingers lightly brush over the bandaged wound. Her skin’s glowing from a physically demanding level of sex and a very good sauna session. Maud cooked an incredible dinner, and now we’re back in bed. It’s a little past eleven at night.
“Did this hurt?” she asks.
“The stitches weren’t bad.”
“No, I mean, the stabbing.” She chews her lip. “Knives kind of freak me out.”
“I got over that a while ago.” I move her hand away and make her fingertips brush over a scar on my abdomen. “This was a knife.” I make her touch another closer to my right hip. “This was a knife.” And another over my left collarbone. “This was a shovel. I think it might’ve been sharpened.” I show her wound after wound after wound.
“You’ve been through a lot,” she whispers. I hate how upset she sounds. I don’t want to scare her with this, but it’s who I am. I can’t hide that. She deserves to know me, even the ugly parts.
“It was mostly my father’s people,” I admit.
“Wait, really?”
“It was his form of punishment. He couldn’t do it himself, so he’d get my guards to hurt me instead.”
Her mouth falls open. “Your own guards? The people that were supposed to protect you?”
“They didn’t like it. They always apologized afterward and were really nice to me. Sometimes I even liked it, you know? A few cuts, a few bruises, and I’d get a lot of positive attention for a few days.”
“That’s sick.”
“I’m aware.”
“Maybe that’s why you like it when I’m a little mean to you.”
“Probably.” I pat her ass lightly. “What’s your excuse?”
“Oh, I’m just a freak.”
“Thought so.” I kiss her lightly, feeling more relaxed than I have in a very long time. The burden of leadership is still there, but it doesn’t feel so crushing. “You know, the worst part of getting stabbed this time wasn’t even the knife or the stitches.”
“What was it then?”
“I like Aunt Sona.”
She seems surprised. “You’ve never said anything good about her around me.”
“That’s because she’s been a terrible, vindictive, vicious bitch for years. But back when we were kids, she was actually kind of fun. I remember one time we had a pool party and she brought over like fifty inflatable animals. She spent all afternoon blowing them up with a pump. The kids went wild. It’s one of my fondest childhood memories.”
“Sometimes I forget that when you say Aunt Sona, you mean you literally grew up with these people.”
“That’s the hard part. I loved her once. Her and Garen and all the others that left when the family split after my father’s death.” I don’t mention that I had a very active hand in killing my old man. That’s a story for another night. “I went to that auction to try to talk sense to her, thinking I was speaking with my aunt. If we could just get past the animosity and come back to being a family—” My fingers dig into her hip. “But she tried to kill me instead. I’m almost happy it happened in a way.”