She screamed his name... Sethios... and climaxed so hard she swore she died.
But as she opened her eyes, she found herself beneath him, his dark eyes swirling with adoration and sensuality as he slid inside her, taking her to new heights and forcing her to forget the impractical nature of it all.
For just a few moments, she forgot her own existence. Stopped thinking about how this couldn’t be real. And just experienced his tenderness and love and pain.
His teeth were in her neck, drinking from her, showering her in goose bumps and spearing through all her defenses. She cried out, tumbling headfirst into another oblivion as he drove into her, taking her with a force that hurt in a beautiful way, one that touched her very soul.
This was her life.
Her purpose.
Her meaning.
She loved this man. This Sethios. This male who had shattered all her beliefs and had broken through the harshest of her resolves.
Caro clung to him, weeping, her time with him too short. The sacrifice they would make would change the future of the world. But what if they couldn’t come back from it?
She would never voice that fear, the knowledge of what was to come.
Because her mother would find her when she failed to locate Astasiya.
Caro would endure rehabilitation.
And she would survive.
That was her purpose, her one secret, that she never gave up. With Sethios forever etched into her very soul, the council couldn’t separate them. They would try, and they would fail. She would return to him. Always.
“I love you,” he whispered to her, his lips a caress against her ear. “I will forever love you.”
“I love you, too,” she breathed. And this time it was her. Her voice. Her heart. Her body. Her soul. She’d fallen into the memory, enraptured and ensnared and never letting go.
His eyes burned into hers. “Come back to me, Caro.”
“I’m right here.”
“Come back to me, angel.”
She frowned. “I’m here.”
“I miss you.”
It didn’t make any sense. How could he miss her? He was inside her. Making love to her. Only, everything began to blur, the memory slipping from her fingers and surrounding her in a cage of literal glass.
She frowned. Where am I?
Wires hooked into her arms, legs, around her chest. A soft beeping sound echoed outside her chamber. The room was dark. Cold. Smelled of antiseptics and sterility.
Caro shivered. This wasn’t where she wanted to be. She desired the warmth of Sethios’s body. His touch. His tongue. His voice.
She closed her eyes, striving to return to him, but the ice of her surroundings infiltrated her mind, suffocating her beneath a wave of harsh reality.
Reformation.
That was what this glass pod meant.
There was no sun here. No peace. It’d all been a figment in her mind, a ruse meant to lull her into a false sense of calmness while they reprogrammed her from the inside.
But a memory had awakened her, one so powerful it had shattered the chains locked around her mind and shoved her into full awareness.
