Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Her breaths were shallow, and she panted as I held her there while the water heated, her body still twitching from the aftershocks of her pleasure.
I would never be able to wipe the memory of it from my mind.
The way she’d glowed when I’d filled her.
A luminescence radiating from her skin, her spirit a whispering flare that speared into me.
Like every cell in her being was trying to find a way to join with mine.
No question it had, and neither of us was going to be the same.
Once steam had begun to fill the enclosed space, I stepped into the tub with her.
Chills rolled through her the second the heated spray hit our flesh. The cold that had seeped down to her bones had thawed, the ice melted by the connection we shared and the warmth that fell over us in sheets and rivulets that skimmed down our bodies.
I eased her head back under the steamy fall, saturating her hair with the heated water while she looked up at me with those fathomless gray eyes.
Bottomless.
Eternal.
Right then, they toiled like a dark sea tormented by a violent, unending storm. But right in the middle was an island.
Her pupils firm with a fierce, stark love.
With hope.
With belief.
Unfound and undying.
My heart hammered in spasms of volatility. I brushed my fingers through her long, black locks, chasing away the lingering cold steeped in the strands. My voice was brittle when I finally forced myself to speak. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Blinking, she shook her head in doubt, and when she spoke, her voice was rough from the trauma she’d sustained. “I thought I’d almost fallen asleep, but then something woke me up. I was here, in the room, and you were sleeping on the floor, but when I looked out the window to figure out what the sound was . . .”
Droplets of water trailed down her face, gathering with the tears that got loose from the darkened pools of her eyes. “The little girl was there.”
A bolt of terror rocked through me, and my molars ground.
There’d been something about the little girl that hadn’t sat right.
It’d felt like an omen.
A harbinger.
“She was outside, alone in the cold. Barefoot and only wearing a thin nightgown.”
Distress pinched Aria’s brow. “It was like I could feel her out there, calling to me, and I knew I had to help her. But there was also something about it that warned everything was wrong. Instinct kicking in that what I thought was happening wasn’t. I tried to call out to you, but I couldn’t make the words form. It was like . . . I could make no sound. Had no control over my actions. The only thing I was capable of was unlocking the door and following her out.”
A tremor rolled through me, and my arms tightened around her.
I didn’t respond; I just waited, letting her sift through the debris.
Aria inhaled a shaky breath. “She darted across the lot. I shouted for her to stop, but she just looked back and laughed before she turned and ran farther away. I knew the road was out there, so I followed. There was a heavy fog, and I could barely see. It was so disorienting. Like everything I’d remembered from when we’d pulled in had ceased to exist—the motel disappearing behind me, and rather than there being a gas station on the other side of the road, there were fields. The only things remaining were the road and the little girl.”
I couldn’t breathe as she continued to explain. “Right before I got to her, she ran across the road. A truck blazed through, and I thought she’d been hit.”
Her nails sank into my skin as her explanation hitched. Then the words started tumbling like a landslide from her mouth. “Only, once it blew by, she was on the other side, and she was laughing and laughing. I followed her, Pax. I followed her into the maze of high grasses on the other side, even though I knew something was off. I could feel it. But it was like I was shackled by a panic that wouldn’t let me go, and I kept chasing her. Pleading with her to stop. She kept going until the field opened to a pond, and when she stepped into it, she immediately sank.”
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
A ball of razors rolled down the length of my throat, and I pulled her closer and clung tighter. Desperate to get her close enough that I could protect her from every threat. From every monster. From every evil that hunted her, night and day.
Aria felt the torment of it, too. The hopelessness that roared inside me. How could I truly protect her when I had no idea what we were up against? How, when whatever the fuck this was echoed with a power unlike any of which we’d ever been told?