Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
He’d fully admitted it last night. I was a means. A tool. A pawn.
Nothing more.
I needed to remember it.
His chuckle was rough. Filled with biting disbelief. “Nah, baby, it’s you who can bring me to my knees. You who has me crawling with a flick of your fingers. You could ask anything of me, and I’d be helpless but to give it to you.”
He rocked against me once.
Fire lancinated up my spine.
On instinct, my hands shot out, and I gripped onto his waist. “Answers. Then give me answers.”
Darkness gathered, furrowing his brow into a stark, slashing V.
Both of us were stuck in that position.
Teetering on the edge of a bottomless chasm that churned below us. Threatening to set us off balance and toss us into its abyss.
“I just need you to trust me, Brinley,” he finally said.
“What if that’s not good enough for me?”
“It’s going to have to be. My only objective here is keeping you safe, and I won’t jeopardize that.” The words ground off his tongue.
A soft scoff ripped free. “Isn’t that what I’m in? Jeopardy?”
“Not with me standing in front of you.”
Another one of those gritted promises.
Stone toppling from his mouth as if it could build a new foundation.
Did I believe him? Trust him? How could I?
But there was something in the roil of his expression that made me see his truth.
“I don’t like being left in the dark.” It was close to a plea.
He almost smirked. But it was soft. “That’s because you’re always in control. Fighting for yourself. For your brother. The fierce lioness that you are. Going it alone because there’s no one there to have your back. But this time, you’re giving that fight to me.”
Fear and hope clattered around in my spirit. How could he know that about me? My throat was nearly closed off when I whispered, “And what if you fail me?”
That darkness flashed a hundredfold, and he curled his hands around my wrists and pressed them to the bed. He dipped down so close that I tasted the words.
“I won’t.”
The little thumps low on the door startled us, and Silas pushed off, rolling over so he was sitting up in the bed just as the door clattered open.
While I lay there panting toward the ceiling, trying to gather my bearings enough to sit up, too.
I did just in time to see Kai toddle through, only wearing a diaper.
Adorable dimples denting his cheeks and his eyes that were the same color as Silas’s shining in the glinting rays of morning light.
“Siwas!” He pointed a chubby finger at the man who roughed a tattooed hand through the mess of his hair, and my brow pinched, realizing it was the first time I’d ever heard Kai call him anything.
Silas.
Not Dad or Daddy.
But that confusion was getting batted away by a surge of affection when Kai turned that sweetness on me. Basically dancing as he shifted to point a little finger at me. “Bwinwey! You stay Kai’s house?”
I gathered the sheet and brought it to my chest. It wasn’t like I was naked or anything, but I still felt like I’d been caught in a scandal.
Bare and vulnerable.
That didn’t seem to keep the smile from tweaking at the edge of my mouth, though. “I did.”
“You got sweet dweams? I got sweet dweams.” He patted his chest as he kept coming right up to the end of the bed.
Without reservation, Silas shifted so he could reach for him.
The man only wore his underwear. The length of his broad back bare, though completely covered in twisting, black ink.
Two winged creatures sat in the middle facing each other, their foreheads touching in a clear standoff.
One angelic and one demonic.
Black tendrils wisped out from their fingers and chests to duel and twine. As if their spirits were battling not to be tied together.
Silas plucked Kai from the floor and pulled him into those arms he’d just had around me.
Arms I was having trouble imagining as anything other than refuge right then.
“That’s because I wished them on you when I tucked you into bed last night, remember?” Silas snuggled him close, tickling him and making him howl with laughter.
Kai grappled for his face, clutching onto his cheeks as he leaned in close and ferociously shook his head as if he were trying to convey something super important. “I no scawed nigh-night.”
Silas’s flinch was almost imperceptible. A wince that seemed to come from the deepest recesses of his soul. If I hadn’t been watching so closely, I would have missed it.
But maybe I would have felt it, anyway. Sensed the way he pulled the child a fraction closer, breathing in as he buried his nose in Kai’s golden-brown locks.
Every word gravel as he pushed it from his throat. “That’s right. You don’t have to be afraid to go to sleep. Not anymore. You’re safe. You’re safe.”