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Away from the precious, life-giving breath to fill my lungs and the light of day to nourish my soul.
All because offearand my own deeply buried self-loathing… That I didn’t deserve that kind of happiness.
So now here I was, trapped in a prison of brawny, unforgiving arms that threatened to tear me apart and rob me of the fragments of my heart that had survived because of one male alone…Malekai.
ButI hadto gain this male’s trust so that he would free me.
The knowledge birthed a whole new fear, swelling and cresting like a tide being sucked back by unseen forces beneath the deep before reaching a terminal height that threatened to crush me beneath its weight. Drag me under and force its way into my lungs and every cell of my body.
And lastly… Could I kill him? Zurie wouldn’t accept failure. She’d demanded I bring his dead body to her. As desperate as I was to escape him… As much as I resented him… This male was the other half of my soul. I didn’t know enough about the laws of thesoulboundto know for certain what the consequences would be, but…
A sickening sense of foreboding filled me every time I tried to imagine myself walking those harrowed steps to Nakoa’s death - and returning to Zurie... To just continue on that well-worn, dead-end path that I now clearly recognized was the entrance to a tomb of my own fucking making…
The idea of killing Nakoa…Andreturning to my old life…
It felt like grazing the hem of death’s cloak… snagging his lethal attention and beckoning him closer, a whispered promise of oblivion on his lips.
Panic tightened my throat, coupled with the crushing weight of a fear that I was certain would cause my sternum to buckle.
Where the fuck was Miroslav?
He had questions to fucking answer!
And here I was, bound and kidnapped. Surely, that could be considered ‘harm’ and went against his vow.
“I canfeelyour internal battle as if you were carving me up with your sword, Mareina.Let it go. At least for now. Let us sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”
At my silence, Nakoa began to caress my hair. The tender action suddenly had my eyes stinging with unshed tears. Even though he was my enemy, it took everything within me to not turn in his arms and bury my face in the comforting, muscled wall of his chest to weep.
As if reading my mind, he turned me over and tilted my chin up with his thumb before cupping my face, holding my gaze to witness the tears streaming down my cheeks. He watched their descent, as if mezmerised by the sight, before wiping them away with his thumbs.
“How about we make a bargain, hm?”
The tension in my body went rigid again.
“How about during the day and the evening you can hate me all you want, and we can burn one another with all the ire we can muster for one another as much as we desire… But at night…Here…Whether it’s inourbed or a pallet of furs on the forest floor… Where it’s only us, and the space between us is reduced to this blissful barrier of flesh - the only thing that separates my soul from yours - let us seek solace in one another as we are meant to…”
The only sound between us was our sound of quiet, shared breaths and my now parched throat swallowing back another rising tidal wave of fear and emotion.
“Please…”
I couldn’t bring myself to speak… Even if a part of me - that part of me that I knew belonged to him but refused to give -yearnedfor me to sayyes.
Though he could no doubt feel it through our tether, with my bare chest grazing his with each inhale.
His face lowered gradually to mine as if giving me the opportunity to stop him. It was the flicker of vulnerability and…hopeon his face that prevented me from denying him.
His lips softly grazed mine… Tentative… Searching…Hopeful…
My heart fluttered like a hummingbird caught in the winds of a storm…
He gave a palpable groan, and his hand slid from my jaw to the nape of my neck, where he fisted a handful of my hair. His tongue swept against the seam of my lips in a silent question. The tether between us ached for me to give in, even as anxiety wound through my stomach thatthis wasn't Malekai.
The tether burned brighter, making my breath catch.
You have to gain his trust.
I gave in, caressing my tongue against his and taking his bottom lip between my teeth, biting hard enough to draw blood.
