Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 50512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 253(@200wpm)___ 202(@250wpm)___ 168(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 253(@200wpm)___ 202(@250wpm)___ 168(@300wpm)
Her eyes fly open, darting left and right, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
“It’s okay,” I assure her. “It was another nightmare.”
She looks at me, reality coming back to her eyes. Her face crumples. “I hate it.” She drops her head against me, and I automatically wrap my arms around her. She trembles in my embrace, the adrenaline still coursing through her body.
“Was it the same?” I ask.
“It’s always the same,” she admits. “I beg him to stop. Beg him to kill me. He lets me taste death. Teases me with the relief of it. Then heals me.”
Anger sweeps through me in an inferno of hate.
“Make it go away,” she begs.
That quickly, I drop my mental shields, needing to soothe her in any way I can. My power reaches out to her mind in an instant, the two of us so used to this dance we’ve done it in our sleep. I focus hard, not wanting any images I send her to be of my deepest desires. Instead, I paint her a moonlit beach, like the one on Cassandra’s island that she loved so much.
She relaxes in my arms, leaning heavier against me before jerking away. “No.”
I lose hold of the scene, blinking down at her. “You want to go somewhere else?” I ask, desperate to help her. “Tell me. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
She inhales deeply, reaching up to cup my face in her hands. “I want to be with you, Saint. Here. Now.”
“Of course,” I answer immediately, holding her a bit tighter. We’ve done this so many times before, spent hours talking through the night after her nightmares. It’s how I learned she loves chocolate croissants and romance novels and how, when she was human, she had this incurable fear of spiders. “Tell me about the book you’re reading,” I offer when she doesn’t prompt a conversation. Normally she’s jittery and chatty after a nightmare, but sometimes, I have to coax her further out of them with topics.
“That’s not what I want to talk about,” she says. “But it’s an enemies to lovers romance.”
“Your favorite,” I say. “What do you want to talk about?”
She bites her lower lip, contemplative.
“Do you want to hear another story from a particular year?” I ask, knowing she loved to get lost in stories I’d tell from my past, always careful to tell them in a way that seemed like I never had a twin, like he never existed.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Saint…I don’t want to talk. I want…I want what’s real between us.” Her hand splays on my chest, slowly stroking downward—
I gently grip her wrist, stopping her. “You don’t want me.”
“I’m getting really sick of you telling me what I want.” She shakes her head. “Saint, when are you going to realize how much you mean to me?”
I furrow my brow, words getting stuck in my throat.
She moves on the bed, shifting from her sitting position to draw up on her knees like I am, facing me directly. “From the moment you saved me from that horrible place,” she says, running her hand over me.
Shit, I wended in here in only my boxer briefs.
“From the second you slipped into my mind and saved me from the nightmares. From the conversations we’d have after. The way you’re so quiet or sharp with everyone else, but with me, somehow, you crack open. I’ve only ever wanted to be with you.”
“You should be scared of me.”
“I know exactly the kind of monsters I should fear,” she counters. “You are not one of them. You’re nothing like them. You’re stubborn and grumbly, sure. Do you intimidate the hell out of people? Yes. Do I know without a doubt you can carve someone up with your knives? Yes. But I’m not afraid of you.”
“But my brother—”
“Is not you,” she cuts me off. “You’re the one who saved me. You’re the one who stayed with me. You put me back together when I didn’t think the broken pieces were worth reassembling. You’ve believed in me from the start, even when my mind felt like a labyrinth. You make me feel safe, seen. You’re all I think about. All I crave. All I want. You’re…Saint, you’re the most amazing being I’ve ever met. And I know how we met was really fucking shitty. I understand if you can’t see past how you found me and the reasoning behind it. I’ll understand if you look at me and only see your brother’s victim—”
“I don’t see you that way. Ever. You’re strong, Aurora. So fucking strong.” I can’t stop myself from grazing my knuckles over her cheek.
She puts her hand over mine, leaning into my touch.
“Then please,” she begs. “Be with me. Stop holding yourself back. Stop punishing yourself over someone you’re nothing alike.”
“Aurora,” I warn as she runs her free hand down my chest. “I don’t want to hurt you. If I lose control—”