Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
“Quiet,” he panted, bracing through the burn of the metal disc. “You’re still incredibly noisy.” His fingers stroked my hair. Awkward and uncertain as if he’d never given this level of intimacy to someone before. “I don’t care about Marcus. And you attacked me, remember? I’ll say when you can leave.”
I froze as he nuzzled me. “Your closeness helps my pain. So...help.”
I shivered as his fingers sifted through my hair, claiming me and controlling me at the same time. Cool, quivery pleasure welled from my chest, spreading everywhere—filling me with chilled champagne bubbles. Relief kept building and building, cresting like a wave, glittering with frost and crystals.
The coldness felt distantly familiar.
Friendly...
I reached for it—
Lucien’s touch turned possessive and all those quivery feelings morphed into something cold and sharp and vicious. I gasped as the bubbles spun into a blizzard—surging upward, outward—an icy blast exploding so fast my vision flashed white.
Lucien sucked in a breath as if someone had punched him.
His fingers clenched in my hair.
And then...pain.
The worst I’d ever felt.
Pain, pain, PAIN.
“What—?” His voice broke. “What did you just—” He groaned as the metal disc over his heart flickered red, then...stopped.
The heat in his body flared, chasing the grey pallor from his skin as it warmed his blood and brought him back to the world of the living. I sucked in a breath as his warmth soaked into me, thawing the frigid agony around my heart, yanking me from the blizzard and halting the pain.
Relief rendered me useless.
I surrendered entirely to him, flopping over his chest.
He went rigid, even as his hand skated from my hair, to my nape, to my shoulders. Exquisitely gentle, his fingers settled on the small of my back, drawing barely-there circles in the damp fabric of my dress. “Are you okay?”
Sucking in a deep breath, I pushed away.
He let me go, his eyes searching mine as I sat upright.
And I fell all over again. Not physically...but in a way I couldn’t explain. I felt something deep, deep inside me, tugging me, warning me never to be apart from him.
The longer we stared, the more the compulsion grew.
A quiet, bone-deep certainty as if the universe whispered in my ear, ‘This one. He’s the one. The one you were made for.’
Lucien’s jaw tightened, his gaze darkening as he tracked every emotion flickering across my face. “Rook?” His gruff voice landed somewhere aching in my chest—
A warm, raspy tongue yanked me out of the spell.
Doctors. Surgery. Blood—
God, what am I doing?
We had to leave.
Right now.
“We have to go.” I wiped my cheek from Whisper’s lick. “Marcus will be back soon, and our chances of escaping are rapidly running out.”
Lucien never looked away from me as I scrambled off the bed. With a grimace, he shifted and propped himself up on his elbows, his bare chest roped with muscles and gauze. “You’re seriously going to act as if nothing just happened?” His eyebrows knitted together. “What was that?”
Throwing a glance at the doctors behind me—who kindly acted as if they weren’t eavesdropping—I shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You felt different.” His forehead furrowed, not buying my lies. “I felt you.” He tapped his chest. “In here. I felt a rush of coldness and—”
“You’re imagining things,” I cut in, fear sliding down my back. “We—”
“I’m not imagining anything.” Lowering his voice so the doctors couldn’t hear, he breathed, “Your presence has always been able to ease my discomfort, but this time, I actually feel...better.” He sat up. “The fire is gone. You took away all my pain. How?”
I scrambled for answers I didn’t have.
I panicked for explanations that would make sense but...
Whisper officially reached the end of his patience.
And pounced.
Chapter Thirteen
COLD.
Overwhelming cold continued to flow through me, fading from the mind-breaking intensity of Rook hugging me. Her presence had always been calming and cool, but this time...it’d felt like I’d sunk into a snowdrift. Silent and heavy—a blanket of ice snuffing the flames inside me.
And when she’d collapsed on top of me...I’d felt her.
Her pain.
Her chill—
Whisper launched himself at me.
“Oof,” I grunted as he landed on me with the grace of a collapsing building. His weight pinned me as he huffed and chuffed and proceeded to headbutt me as if I’d just returned from the dead.
“Hey.” I tried to fight him off which only made him purr as loud as a malfunctioning engine. “You’re going to kill me.” His affection turned lethal as he rubbed his entire snout into my face. “I’m not a fucking scratching post!”
“Can someone please get that germ-filled animal off my patient!” A man’s voice cut through Whisper’s emotional attack. “He has stitches for crying out loud. Animal dander—especially feline saliva—can cause a fatal infection!”
“Eh, Whisper?” Rook’s voice came from somewhere by the side of the bed. “Come here, tiny kitty. Lucien’s alive but he might not stay that way if you keep mauling him.”