Total pages in book: 208
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1048(@200wpm)___ 839(@250wpm)___ 699(@300wpm)
“Not even a stolen kiss, my lamb?” he asked gently.
“I am not your lamb.”
Oh, but she was.
Playful and frisky in sparring.
Soft, innocent and dewy-eyed after climax.
Skittish and stubborn pretending she didn’t want him as badly as he did her.
“Yes, you are.”
She shook her head, still turned away. “Please, get off me.”
“True is a gentleman.”
“And you are not.”
He didn’t need to be.
He would be her husband.
“True was not meant to be,” he told her quietly. “If he was, he would have had you. And you would have had him. We barely know one another, my princess, but we cannot keep our hands off each other. There is a reason for that. There is a reason you feel as you feel right now with my weight upon you. What I feel, with the softness of you under me, the smell of you in my nose. We were meant to be. This means you are mine, Elena. Do you not see that?”
She did not look at him when she stated, “I will not be cowed.”
“I cannot believe you can even begin to think I wish to cow you, my warrior,” he whispered, and her head turned, her eyes coming to his. “I cannot believe you can even begin to think I’d wish to take away any part of what makes you.”
“And you reconcile this how, Cassius?” she demanded. “Catching me up and throwing me bodily from the fray. That is taking a very large part of me away, my prince.”
She wished this?
She would have it as well.
“My dead wife was warrior,” he returned, his voice gritty.
Elena went completely still beneath him.
“There are different kinds, my princess,” he shared. “And she battled mightily. In a manner, she won. She gave me our daughter. They both did not perish to the fight. She fought, she did it bravely, and she succeeded in her goal. She also died doing it. And she did that happily. I know this because the last thing she did on this earth was smile at me as I held Aelia in my hands but moments after she slipped from her mother’s womb. Now, ponder this, Elena. Do you think I tossed you bodily from the fray because I did not trust in your capabilities? Or do you think in a million millennia that I wish to lose another warrior to a battle beyond my control?”
“Cassius,” she breathed, her face having softened, her eyes having warmed.
And there was his lamb.
But it was too late.
He might not have won the argument, but he won his point.
However, in forcing him to win it, she’d drawn blood.
And she had to learn that was no way to win between lovers.
Thus he pushed up at her wrists, angling from her and taking his feet.
She got up to her elbows but took one look at his face as he scowled down at her, and she made no other movement and said no further words.
“I shall meet you at our horses,” he declared.
“Of course,” she whispered, knowing she’d wounded her opponent, and conceding graciously. “I’ll be down directly.”
With that, he turned and left her chambers.
He had no desire to join a procession that would lead to witnessing torture and execution, this before he had to prepare to join the masses and watch his friend take his marital chain and give his new wife hers.
He wanted whiskey, an orgasm and sleep.
In that order.
All with Elena.
Even after their episode.
Which meant perhaps she was correct.
He was mad.
But that was what he wished.
However, he did not have a choice.
Instead he had torture, death, marriage and a stubborn bride on his hands who was born warrior who he did not want to die warrior.
No one was mentioning it, but the last quake that occurred but hours before shared explicitly the Beast was not only closer to the surface, it was angry.
And Cassius feared he was not going to convince Elena to use naught but her formidable magic as her part in quelling it.
So his chest was tight again and his heart felt heavy as he took the steps that would lead him to the front of the palace in order for him to mount his steed and await his bride.
He took these steps thinking of the tarot card he’d turned the morning before.
The warrior card he’d turned had had his head bowed.
His armor was intact. His body not bloodied.
But he’d tasted defeat all the same.
Cassius knew that taste.
It was vile.
And he would not experience it again.
Unless he had no choice.
He was now bloody Regent.
Even so, it seemed he still lived a life of limited choices.
A life marked with profound loss.
Both that of the past.
And as the warrior card was swept from his memory, and the vision he saw charging into the conflict but hours before of Elena under a raised sword filled his brain…
He knew it was a real possibility loss would scrape deep through his future.