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)
Palpable.
A darkness that had enclosed and covered me in a slick of corrosion.
I swallowed around the clot of dread that threatened to close off my throat. “It’s like a . . . new sense. Like it’s pulling at my flesh and digging at my spirit. A shout of silence. An intonation of depravity. If I’d have gotten closer to him? I would have heard what he was thinking. And I know if I would have touched him, I would have seen exactly what had been in that man’s mind. I’d have seen the Ghorl telling him exactly how to hurt me.”
A low growl reverberated in his throat. “I won’t let anyone get near you.”
“How did you know?” I asked, attempting to distract him from the rage that gathered like storm clouds in his pale eyes.
It took him a moment to answer. “You chase evil long enough and it becomes easy to recognize.”
With the way he seemed to calculate what to say, I could tell he was leaving something out. That there was something more to him than he was letting on.
Pax suddenly pushed up from his chair and leaned over the table in my direction before I had the chance to delve deeper. A white, shadowy flame.
A dusky luminosity.
He hovered over me, the oath grinding from his mouth. “Until we figure out how to keep you safe? Permanently? As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be treating every person we cross as a threat.”
We remained there, held by a tether that blazed, a string tugging so hard at my chest that I couldn’t breathe.
Pax finally blinked and stepped back, as if he was berating himself for getting so close to me. “I should take a shower,” he said toward the floor, roughing a palm over the top of his head.
“I’ll be right here.” It was my own promise. Trying to assuage the fear that radiated from him. The fear of letting me out of his sight.
With a tight nod, Pax strode across the floor and into the bathroom, and he clicked the door shut behind him.
A second later, the pipes squealed as the shower was turned on. The walls were so thin that I could hear the rustling on the other side, the pounding of the water onto porcelain, the swoosh of fabric, the jangle of a belt.
I squeezed my eyes against the visions that assaulted my mind.
Because I couldn’t picture him that way. Naked as he stepped beneath the spray.
I couldn’t keep from wondering what it might be like if he saw me the way I saw him.
From wondering if he felt it.
I knew I was being foolish, lost to a child’s crush, to a bond that resounded with so much strength that it could easily be distorted and confused. But I wasn’t a child anymore.
I could only imagine the way he’d spent his human life. There was no way he hadn’t . . .
Jumping from the chair, I clipped off the thoughts because that was something I refused to think about.
Devolving into it would only hurt.
It wasn’t his fault that I’d always thought of him as mine, but I had no claim on him here.
I stuffed our burger wrappers into the paper sack and shoved it into the garbage; then I climbed onto the small twin bed and leaned against the headboard, trying to slow my breaths. To calm the ravaging beat in my chest. But the harder I tried to clear it, the more I seemed to focus on the sounds coming from the bathroom. The shower when it turned off and the squawk of the metal curtain hooks being dragged against the rod.
I’d worked myself into some kind of anxious frenzy by the time the door finally snapped open, and there was no stopping the gasp that slipped from between my lips when he stepped out, wearing a fresh pair of jeans and rubbing a towel over his wet hair.
He was shirtless, chest and shoulders and abdomen bare, and in the dull light, my eyes raced to take him in, hungry as I searched for every scar beneath the designs that covered his skin. The dark images swirled and played over his flesh like sentient entities.
Muscle bristled beneath, packed and hard and rippling with that sleek strength he emitted.
He stopped right outside the door.
We both froze.
Locked.
Ensnared.
“You can’t look at me like that, Aria.” The gnarled warning cut into the severity that writhed between us.
My attention snapped from the barren wasteland tattooed on his abdomen and chest to meet the white fire in his gaze.
“I don’t think I could stop looking at you.” The admission flooded from me on a needy breath. “How could I when you’re like looking at my truth? For the last ten years of my life, I’ve been told you were a figment of my mind. A piece of my warped imagination. That I was delusional. And here you are with blood pounding through your veins.”