Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
As if hearing my thoughts, Alexei inhales deeply and brings my hand to his lips, kissing each knuckle with such tender reverence that my eyes burn and my breath catches in my chest.
“I love you, Alinyonok,” he says quietly when I pull back to meet his gaze. “So fucking much.”
It’s not the first time he’s said it—that happened a month after my brothers’ misguided “rescue” attempt, in the aftermath of a particularly mind-blowing sex session— but each time, the words hit me anew. Because he knows how much love can hurt, and he’s still choosing to embrace it.
To embrace me, even though I’d pushed him away for so long.
In response, I lean in, and he crushes his lips to mine. The kiss is as savage as it is tender—a brand of ownership I now welcome, a vow of a future I now crave.
It’s a promise of what awaits me not just when we get home, but for the rest of our lives.
For years, his obsession was a prison I fought to escape. But as he pulls away, his dark eyes holding mine, I know I was wrong. The fortress he built around me was never a cage. It was a sanctuary.
And the monster who rules it is not my captor.
He is my guardian.
My beginning and my end.