Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
As always, if he initiated a slow burn, doing his best to show her he worshipped her, in the end the ride was rough and wild. He held her for a long time with the bubbles bursting over their skin after she’d collapsed against him. He just breathed her in before regaining his strength enough to carry her inside to the bed.
* * *
Lying in bed with a woman curled up like a sleepy little kitten was the last thing Master ever thought would be exactly what would make him relax and feel he had a home. He stared out the glass walls that led to the forest and thought about how different his life was, how it had changed in a single moment of time. A breath. A heartbeat. All because of this one woman. Few things shocked him, but Ambrielle did. He knew he had to protect her—even from herself.
“I’m going with Ink in a few days to pay a visit to Leonard Stoddard, Reese’s parole officer, to ask him what’s going on. A few of the brothers will come along as insurance that things go the way we want them to go.” He introduced the subject casually.
Ambrie’s head went up alertly, her eyes darkening as they moved over his face. “I’m going with you.” That was decisive. “I can stay in the background, but I have to learn.”
“You don’t have to learn anything. When we catch up with Thompson, and we will, I’ll call you in at the last minute and you can finish him off if that’s what you still want to do. The rest of it, Ambrielle, it isn’t easy to live with. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life with that kind of shit fucking up your brain.”
“You do.” She reached out to him, very gently rubbed along his shadowed jaw.
When she made gestures like that, as small as they were, they turned him inside out. He caught her hand with his and kissed her open palm. “That’s how I know I don’t want any part of this life for you.” He didn’t break eye contact, wanting her to know he meant it.
She pressed her palm against his lips as if to silence him. “It’s because you have to live with the kinds of things you’ve had to that make up who you are. I need to know and understand them, Kir.”
She sounded so reasonable, when he knew what she was asking wasn’t reasonable. He pulled her hand down to his chin. “I want you to open your eyes just a little bit and see the real me, not the one you’re making up in your mind. See reality. I’m dirty. Not clean. You persist in looking at me as if I’m some kind of hero, Ambrielle. If you don’t open your eyes, sooner or later, when you do wake up, you’re going to be so shocked at what you see, you’ll run.”
Ambrielle responded to his utter despair with a small shake of her head. “My father used to tell me to wake up from my dreamworld and see reality. He wanted me to see that the real world was dirty and gritty, not clean and black-and-white. I think I woke up when those men killed my parents right in front of me. Everything he’d told me over the years was suddenly right there in front of me. All the times he drilled it into me that I needed to pay closer attention to my surroundings, that the world wasn’t a nice place.”
Master wrapped his arms around her and rolled over, so she was sprawled over the top of him. In this position, he didn’t have to meet that steady gaze, the one that was beginning to look at him with an emotion he was becoming addicted to. “No, princess, the world isn’t always a nice place, but you don’t have to live down in the dirt. I can keep you safe.” He nuzzled the top of her head with his chin.
“Master, I had the perfect example of parents who loved one another and made it work, even though they had very different personalities and sometimes even views. They knew one another, inside and out. That was how they had complete confidence in each other. My mother told me I would know the right man when he came along. I waited. I knew you’d come. You came. I want to know everything about you. If that means getting into the dirt with you, then I will.”
Master closed his eyes, his heart sinking. His princess. So determined, but she didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. “This throat thing.” Was he really going to discuss this with her? Tell her one of the most painful things he’d gone through?
Her hand moved up to his throat, her fingers stroking caresses gently, until his eyes burned, until his soul wept. Bog, she was killing him slowly. Piece by piece.