Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 130924 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130924 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
My hips roll back into her, my cock thrusting in to the hilt, and I groan as a breathless sound escapes from her lips.
“I don’t regret losing it to you,” she whispers, her neck arching. “I only wish you had stayed and told me the truth. But you will always be the man who first claimed me. That will never be taken away, Brom. It will always be you.”
Her words do something to me, like a loose thread that’s finally pulled, finally unraveling the binds around me.
And I decide I can’t waste time at all.
I start fucking her faster, each thrust going deeper and deeper, and suddenly I’m fantasizing that Crane is here too. I want to come inside her and watch my seed trickle out of her legs, mixing with the blood, and then I want Crane to shove me aside and do the same. I want to see him fucking her just like this, coming hard so that our semen is mixing together inside the same woman.
Our woman.
When I’m gone, it’s Crane who will have to take care of her in my place.
She belongs to him as equally as she belongs to me.
“I’m coming,” I grunt, my eyes pinching shut. I slip my hand between her legs, rubbing her clit until she’s coming too, and the two of us fill the barn with our rapturous noise, our shaking breath, our shuddering bodies.
I empty into her, filling her with my seed, wishing that someday I could give her a baby for real, that I could become a father, that I would have that life with her that I was once promised. She doesn’t owe it to me, to marry me, to carry my children, but I still dream of it just the same, born out of love and lust, and not something outside of our control.
Though perhaps love is always outside of our control.
When I’m finally done, I stay inside her. I don’t pull out. I lay against her, careful not to crush her completely, and I stare at her face, taking in every detail. I see our youth and our history together; the smattering of faint freckles on her nose, what I used to call pollen dust, the faint scar on her chin that she got when we were trying to cross the creek and she slipped on a wet rock. The distinctive shape of her lips, the very lips I used to fantasize about kissing when we were merely the best of friends, and all of this was nothing more than a dream.
“I love you,” I tell her, and even though I’ve told her before, it burns inside me, a furnace that can’t be caged. “Don’t you ever forget that, Kat. I love you and I always have. I always will.”
I watch as her eyes grow wet, and she reaches up to touch my cheek.
“I love you too, Brom,” she whispers, giving me a mournful smile as her words pierce my heart. “I always have and I always will.”
Something inside me breaks. That thread doesn’t just come loose, it snaps.
And I can’t help the tears that spill from my eyes and onto her cheeks.
“Daffy,” I murmur, shaking with emotion, and I kiss the tears off of her, hers and mine. “Please know, please know that no matter what happens, no matter what happens to me, I am choosing you. I am choosing this. Us.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you, Brom,” she says. “I promise. We’re going to help you. Crane and I. Next week we have the full moon ritual, and it will work. It will work. You can’t give up hope yet. We won’t let you.”
But I haven’t given up hope. I know the day is coming soon when I’ll have to make a choice, a sacrifice, in order to save them. I also know if I voice this to her, she and Crane will do everything they can to stop me.
So I keep that inside.
“You know Crane really loves you,” she says after a moment, her fingers trailing over my drying tears.
The smile on my face is instant. “I know.”
“Do you love him?”
“I do.”
“You should let him know.”
“I have.”
She bursts into a grin. “He knows? Oh, thank goodness. I know Crane is Crane, and he doesn’t really seem to show his emotions, he just states them, but I can see how much he loves you and that all he’s wanted is for you to love him.”
“What about you?” I ask. “He loves you. Do you love him?”
She rubs her lips together. “I think so.”
“Kat,” I warn her. “I know you do. And you haven’t told him.”
She shakes her head. “No. I think I’m afraid to.”
“Why?” I frown.
“Because then he’ll ask me to marry him.”
I stiffen at that, a stab of jealousy between my ribs.
“And you don’t want that…” I say carefully.