Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 54283 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 217(@250wpm)___ 181(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54283 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 217(@250wpm)___ 181(@300wpm)
He stumbles back a step, shock painted across his familiar face. "You don't mean that, Brynna."
"Yeah, I do."
"If you walk out that door, you won't be welcome back, Brynna," he says, his voice shaking.
"I know." I lean up on my toes, pressing my lips to his cheek. My throat aches, my lips quivering against his scruffy skin. This hurts. God, it hurts more than I thought anything could hurt. Because it wasn't Naz who brought us here. It isn't even war that destroyed everything. It's my own damn father and his stubborn inability to just…let it go. To let me go.
"Take care of yourself, Dad," I whisper. "I love you."
He closes his eyes, shutting me out.
I turn, running for the door as the tears slip down my cheeks. The sob I've been holding at bay claws its way up my throat, a broken, brutal sound. It's the loss of childhood, of innocence. Of everything familiar.
Naz is waiting for me down the street, as if he knew I'd need him. He steps out of the SUV, his amber eyes locked on my face. He doesn't say a word. He simply opens his arms.
I launch myself at him, hitting him like a comet.
He wraps me up in his arms, pulling me into the safety of his embrace. I bury my face against his chest, inhaling his familiar scent—sandalwood, smoke, and something inherently male. His lips brush my crown, a feather-light caress.
"I'm so sorry, little one," he whispers, his deep voice rumbling through me. "I'm sorry it came to this."
The regret in his tone is unmistakable, as if he genuinely wishes he could have forged a different path for me.
A sob wrenches from my throat, the sound muffled against his chest. And then I'm shattering, breaking apart, falling to pieces in his arms as the reality of what I just did crashes into me.
I walked away from my family, from the only home I've ever known, from everything I've every know. For him. Because I love him. Because I couldn't bear to lose him.
He doesn't tell me it'll be okay. He doesn't whisper promises he can't keep. That isn't Naz. He doesn't lie, not to me. He simply gathers up the broken pieces of my heart, holding me together…shielding me with his strength because I have none left.
And then he lifts me into his arms, sliding into the back of the SUV with me, and takes me home. Toward the future we've sacrificed everything to build together.
"Make me forget," I plead as he strips me bare in the privacy of his bedroom—our bedroom—in his mansion in Calabasas an hour later, his hands gentle against my skin. I feel calmer but stretched thin.
I need his hands on my body. I need his claim pressed into my skin. I need to be his, broken open and shattered for him.
His hands tighten on my hips without hesitation as he lowers me to the bed, his touch a searing brand shutting out everything but this—everything but us. He follows me down, his weight grounding me in the moment. In him. In us.
"Mi alma." His lips find my neck, trailing scorching kisses everywhere he can reach. "Mi luz." He nips my pulse point, sending an addictive kind of pleasurable pain skittering through my veins. "Mi vita."
He paints a trail of devotion across my body with his lips, with his hands, with every word he breathes into my skin. His teeth close around one of my nipples, and my back bows off the bed, the shards of ice around my heart melting.
His fingertips dance across my abdomen, tracing every imperfection as if he intends to memorize—as if he already has. I gasp and quiver beneath him, delirious with pleasure, with the sight and feel of him.
He's soft with me, gentle in a way that's foreign and beautiful and so damn devastating. It's like he's determined to put me back together again with nothing more than the strength of his devotion, the fervor of his worship. And damn him, it's working.
I wanted to break. To crumble and burn. He won't let me. He builds me up instead, breathing iron and fire into my veins, into my soul.
"Naz," I whisper his name like a prayer as he settles between my thighs, spreading me wide.
His molten gaze locks with mine as he dips his head, inky black strands of his hair falling over his forehead. His tongue flicks out, the tip of it settling against my clit.
My back bows off the bed, a broken moan tumbling from my lips. This isn't fucking. It's rapture. Divinity.
"That's it, mi amor," he murmurs, his breath hot against my pussy. "Let me hear you."
I'm the one who was just tried and convicted, sentenced for loving him, but he eats me like a condemned man savoring his last meal, one seeking absolution between my legs.