Total pages in book: 248
Estimated words: 236909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1185(@200wpm)___ 948(@250wpm)___ 790(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1185(@200wpm)___ 948(@250wpm)___ 790(@300wpm)
“If? You speak as if there is another option.”
My pulse skipped. “Because there is.”
“And what is that?” His head moved, and his lips brushed the corner of mine.
“We satisfy each other’s needs.” I was a little surprised as I spoke the words, but they were the right now I’d been thinking about earlier. “You don’t need fragile trust, nor do you really even have to like someone when you have attraction.”
His fingers curled into my hair. “I don’t dislike you, Sera.”
An unwanted emotion swelled in my chest, leaving me off-kilter and making me nervous. I tried to put distance between us, but his hold prohibited it. “There is no reason to lie. I know where we stand with each other. I’m not offering myself for whatever meager affections you or anyone can give.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Then what are you offering yourself for?”
“Pleasure.”
The wisps of eather went wild in his eyes. “That is all?”
“Why does it have to be anything else when it’s what I want?” I said, and that was the truth. Maybe there was more behind it, but I knew better than to pry too deeply into that. “Either way, I will not play the I-don’t-want-you-but-no-one-else-can-have-you game. With you or anyone.”
“There is no one else, Sera.” His hand landed on the center of my back, causing me to jump.
“Only if there is you,” I said, fully aware that I had no plans of easing my needs with anyone else at the moment or in the foreseeable future. Not because of anything he’d said, but because it simply didn’t appeal to me.
But he didn’t need to know that.
“So, that’s the deal. Between us. Not between your father and some ancestor of mine.”
His eyes flashed, the eather seeping into the veins just beneath them as his mouth came within inches of mine once more. “Pleasure for the sake of pleasure?”
“Yes,” I whispered as I felt a strange warming in my chest.
“You’re so reckless.” His hand slid from my back to my hip, leaving shivers in its wake. “You have your dagger on you?”
My brows pinched at the unexpected question. “Yes?”
“Make sure it stays hidden,” Nyktos warned. “Because a Primal has arrived.”
The heat in my blood immediately cooled. “Were you expecting one to visit?”
“Not at all.” Without warning, Nyktos hauled me across his desk and onto his lap. His strength and the feel of his body against and beneath mine was a shock to the senses. “There’s not enough time for you to leave, so there’s no avoiding this. No matter what I say or do, you’ll stay right where I have you. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
Nyktos brushed my hair over my shoulder. “I’m being serious, Sera.”
“I know.” I turned my head to him. “I know when to be reserved and not reckless.”
“Good. Just don’t forget how to be so exquisitely reckless later.” His gaze flicked to the closed doors. “I apologize ahead of time for how I’m about to behave. I have a feeling you will not appreciate it, considering what we just discussed.”
Before I could respond to any of what he’d said, a charge of energy swept through the chamber, dancing over my skin before I could even formulate a response. Tiny bumps broke out across my skin. The breath I exhaled formed a faint, misty cloud. Gripping the arm across my waist, I stiffened as every part of my being reacted to the power pouring into the air.
“Relax,” Nyktos murmured in my ear as his hand settled against my hip, squeezing gently. “What you’re feeling is me. I’m basically showing off.”
I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make me feel better, but I forced the air out of my lungs and my fingers to relax.
The doors to his office swung open, and a tall figure filled the entryway. The sword at the hip was a wicked, curved one, the kind crafted for beheading. Light, blondish-brown hair framed high cheekbones and a chiseled jaw as hard as the thin layer of shadowstone armor worn over a broad chest and shoulders. A shallow scar ran from his hairline and across the bridge of his straight nose, then down his left cheek, the healed wound a shade of pale pink.
What in the world could leave that kind of scar on a Primal?
My fingers pressed into Nyktos’s arm as the Primal came to an abrupt stop, armored boots in line with the breadth of his shoulders. The way he stood there—the frenetic, violent energy brimming just beneath his flesh and the glow of essence pulsing behind his pupils said one thing.
He was a warrior.
The Primal’s silver gaze slowly drifted over us as the corners of his lips tipped up. A deep divot in his right cheek appeared first, and then an identical one in his left. “Am I interrupting?”
Nyktos’s chin grazed the top of my head, startling me enough that I jumped a little. “What does it look like, Attes?”