Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
Al had opened her heart. Blown right past the lockdown she’d always imposed out of fear.
And if there was some way to have him with her? Well, then she could do anything.
Nodding at her parents, she blinked away the tears. “This is my future.”
Now, she just had to make sure they were in it.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The following evening, just as the sun was setting over Caldwell and the cold night was coming once again, Allhan rubbed his gritty eyes and shuffled his feet off his bed. As his bare soles hit the carpet, his head pounded from one hell of a tension migraine so he gripped his toes into the short nap and thought of that old movie Die Hard. Testing out the theory that you could calm yourself by doing curls with your phalanges, he quickly decided that theory had just been movie magic.
The teeny tiny workout didn’t do anything for the iron lock of stress at the nape of his neck.
But at least he hadn’t done something impulsive and stupid down by the river close to dawn.
In the end, he’d decided to be smart instead of aggressive. Even as every hot-tempered, testosterone-injected neuron had fired like rifles in his brain, some part of him had kept himself together enough to know that it was a death sentence to go over there. For Carmen. He didn’t give a damn what happened to him, but if he rushed across the waterway all half-cocked and crazy, against a trained and armed slayer—who clearly had at least one accomplice? The barely managed seesaw he’d put himself and his sister on was going to tilt into at least one grave.
He needed logic and strategy, not emotion. That was the only acceptable way to proceed, and he’d spent the entire day doing nothing but thinking—
As his phone went off with a text, he closed his eyes and prayed it wasn’t a picture of his sister mutilated beyond recognition.
Except it was his Samsung.
He brought the thing up and saw the number. “Denne…?”
In a scramble to read her message, he nearly dropped the cell, but he managed to sign in.
I need to see you tonight. Come to Sal’s.
“Do not do this,” he said to himself. It was just going to torture them both.
And yet his fingers flew over the screen to respond: Coming soon as can
Unfortunately, a quick check of the time told him that if he went out now, he was going to be toasted into oblivion. In twenty minutes, though? He’d just have a sunburn.
He could live with that.
Heading to the bathroom so he could distract himself, he turned on the shower and checked his face in the mirror. He felt so different inside that it made sense the face staring back at him was that of a stranger.
And not just because he’d been through the change.
As he met his own eyes, he ran his hand over his jaw and then picked up his electric razor. He didn’t have much stubble, so a single pass was all he required. Then he was under the hot rush, and quick about the cleaning, especially when he got to what he’d always referred to as his private area.
His soapy hands paused as he gripped his dick. Quick, vivid memories of Denne flooded his mind and senses, and the next thing he knew, his palm was sliding up and down his shaft. With ever increasing speed, he jerked himself from the ridge around his head to the base of his arousal, up and down, faster and faster—
The memory of the sound his female had made in his ear as she started to orgasm kicked off the coming, and he had no idea how many times or how much he ejaculated. He just knew that he had to slap his free hand on the slick wall of the shower to keep from falling as he kept releasing and releasing.
The scent of dark spices that rose up all around him told him everything he didn’t need to know about what he felt for Denne. He’d overheard the other males at work talking about how it was with bonding, and he now knew it was all true. If she called on him, for anything, at any time, he was never going to tell her no.
Nineteen minutes later, he was in his uniform of jeans and a hoodie and leaving his room, and the silence out in the living area was once again a relief. He didn’t want to have to explain why he was going out at a dead run, and besides, there was a very good possibility he was throwing off that telltale scent even after he’d soaped himself down thoroughly.
Well, not as thoroughly as he’d cleaned his damn wanker.
No wonder that was the vernacular for the thing.
Out in the corridor, Allhan rushed to the stairs, and then up-and-outed himself through the series of checkpoints until he was exiting the yellow Colonial’s front door. He didn’t even bother to hide his dematerialization, and of course he knew the address of the restaurant. He’d looked it up as soon as he’d gotten back from tossing that kitchen knife into the river for her.