Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 151489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 757(@200wpm)___ 606(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 757(@200wpm)___ 606(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
An intensely powerful orgasm ripped through Taryn, wrenching a scream from her lungs. Her muscles closed around his cock and he punched into her one final time, growling her name, as his own release hit and his cock pulsed deep inside her. Totally replete, she collapsed against him, gasping for breath. He held her close as the aftershocks racked their bodies – it was a hold so tight that it was almost desperate. “I’m not going anywhere, Trey,” she assured him softly.
He grunted. “You say that as if you have a choice.”
“Ass,” she chuckled.
“I mean it, Taryn. I won’t ever let you leave. I’ll never give you up. I’ll never let anyone take you from me.”
She lifted her head and smiled at him. “Then it’s a good thing I’m planning on staying.”
The sight of her warm, reassuring smile triggered another of those strange pangs in his chest. Trey meshed his lips to hers, indulging in a long thorough tasting of her mouth. Then, content, he nuzzled her neck and breathed in deep. And froze.
“What’s wrong?”
“You smell different.”
“What? How?”
“Our scents. They’ve mixed.” A smug grin spread across his face. “It’s the mating bond. It’s advancing.” That meant that whatever it was they were doing, they were doing it right. It also meant that any shifter who picked up her scent would know she was a mated female before even seeing her mark – or marks.
Although she rolled her eyes at his self-satisfaction he could feel that she, too, was glad about it and liked the knowledge that it would be instantly clear to everyone that he was taken. He also felt her concern that maybe this was the most they would have, that the bond would never be complete because they might never feel they could be totally naked to each other.
What caused him the most unease was that beneath all that was her fear that he might never come to feel for her what she felt for him, that she would forever be in a mating with someone who couldn’t love her. It made Trey want to kick his own ass.
He wondered if she had been able to sense just how much he wished he could give her those words she wanted. It amazed him how there could be so much power in three little words. To him, they didn’t have any true meaning or hold the same power because they had never been part of his vocabulary. It wouldn’t have been any different than someone reciting an unfamiliar Japanese phrase and expecting him to not only repeat it but to also understand what it meant. His mom had been a good mother, but she hadn’t been what anyone might call tender or ‘loving’. His dad had been far from it. Even Greta, the person who had played the most part in his upbringing, had never used those words though he believed she cared for him.
Trey knew though that even if he had heard it every day of his life there was still a possibility he couldn’t have repeated it to Taryn. Considering the things he had done in his life and how fucked up his conscience was, it was possible that ‘love’ wasn’t something a person like him could feel, that it was reserved for good people like Taryn. It made him wish that he was a better person. There was no denying that Taryn deserved a better mate. Even with that in mind, though, he couldn’t give her up. Wouldn’t.
He hadn’t thought of his life as something that was dark or empty until she came here and suddenly lit it up and filled it. Even when he had been doing his level best to avoid her he had been simultaneously drinking in her presence in his life. It pained both him and his wolf that he couldn’t give her – his mate – what she needed. What he did know was that if it was possible for someone like him to experience an emotion so strong, then Trey would feel it for Taryn.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“So…who do we think the informant is?”
Everyone at the patio table looked at Dante, but no one answered him. No one wanted to actually face the fact that one of their own had betrayed them. Trey had secretly arranged for he, Taryn, Dante, and his enforcers to meet at the lake this morning to discuss the issue in private. As sad as it was, he felt that these were the only members of his pack he could truly trust. Well, them and Greta. However, he didn’t trust Greta to keep the issue of the informant to herself. She would most likely begin confronting and interrogating everyone, and he didn’t want the informant to know that they were aware of his betrayal yet. Taryn very much doubted that Darryl’s two thugs would own up to him that they’d told her about the informant, so if Trey played dumb they might just get to the bottom of the matter before anything else happened.