I breathed shallowly when he knelt on the bed, slowly crawling towards me. With one hand he pushed me back and I smiled, the sharp rainbow crystals whirling by me as I fell into the clouds. Blinking, Emon’s handsome face hovered over me and he was sweetly kissing my swollen lips.
“Thank you, little umbra.”
I snuggled myself closer into him, feeling his bulging erection heavy against my hip, and holding back a moan.
“This is not what I had in mind when you wanted to play show and tell.” I teased, protecting the softer side of Emon that gazed down at me with tentative fear on his face.
His eyes shuttered closed and he breathed. “I know." His eyes snapped open with a growl, his hand digging into my hair and shoving me harder into the clouds. “You know how a mind connection works. The sooner you say those words, the sooner I get to worship you in every way you deserve. With my mouth…” He trailed his mouth over my sensitive collar bone, “with my tongue…” He licked lower over the tops of my breast. “And with my cock.” He snarled, thrusting his arousal into me, his thigh parting my legs in the process and grinding into my sex.
The words to bind our minds tore from my lips in a worshipful moan. “Ligare!”
Emon rose up above me and his hair fell across his molten gold eyes. Pure devotion and love burned brightly in them.“Te amo mon lidi umbra. I love you, my little shadow.”His forehead dropped to mine.“Ligare.”
Chapter 67
ImmediatelyIwasswimmingin darkness.My consciousness melding with Emon’s and separating me from my own body. He had full control of the memories he would share. I was but a spectator within them.
A stunned speechless spectator left with his words whispering in my head, a beautiful confession torn from his soul.
Te amo mon lidi umbra. I love you, my little shadow.
My heart raced and my stomach performed terrible acrobatics—the rush both unpleasant and exciting at the same time…I could scarcely breathe at the possibilities of it.
But looking within his memory, my feelings quickly turned to one of horror.
"No." I whispered, taking in the bright lights and white sterile walls of a room I had hoped to never see again.
Except this time it wasn't me battered and chained with irons, it was Emon. He lay in a pool of blood on a cold metal table, hischest rapidly rising and falling while roars of agony drowned out any other sound, his gold eyes fixated on the heavy locked iron door.
“It can't be.” I whispered, hearing the muffled screams resonating beyond that door that drove the chained shifter king to madness.
I knew those screams well. They were mine.
“Oh Emon.” I choked back a sob as recognition hit me like a battering ram. These exact roars, his roars, were the same sound that echoed in my nightmares, telling me something I could not understand, could not remember.
It had been him. It had always been him.
We both eyed the door when another long scream full of pain and anguish echoed from the hall and then the pleading began. It was my voice, crying out. “Kill me! Just kill me!”
Emon’s head started to bang against the table roaring his despair, then shifting into a desperate sob. Tears falling from his broken golden eyes and mingling with the blood on the table. “Goddess. No more!” Emon roared out, thrashing again, his skin burning anew in the irons. “Please, no more! I’ll give it to you! I’ll give it to you. Just stop! Please, please stop—” His chest heaved. “Please make it stop, please, please, please—.”
Tears filled my eyes. This was his nightmare. The one that left him sweating and vomiting, unable to sleep. The same nightmare I had witnessed in the Balsam Plains when I realized we bore the same painful scar on our souls.
But I couldn’t help him this time. I couldn’t reassure him that I was okay, that in the future he heals me, in the future he loves me, and that we are together.
“Tut tut, King Daemon…now was that so hard.” A soft musical voice said from the doorway.
I glared at the fae standing there. Deirdre. My former lover, former friend, and former queen stood there with a satisfied grin on her face.
All I felt for her was utter disgust.
Smugly, she strutted into the room, her heels clicking against the tile in a powerful stride that had her hips swaying in a fitted deep blue dress. Her long shimmering legs peeked from two large slits that went all the way up to her hips, and flowing around her were waves of silky silver hair, sparkling in the harsh light.
Her eyes, two bright pools of turquoise, hungrily assessed the begging shifter. “You really did make this so much harder on yourself, you know,”she hummed, her red lips grinning down at Emon with satisfaction.
Everything about her was beautiful and sinful and I hated her for it. Hated that her allure was enough to make any male or female worship her. She reveled in the ability to pull their strings—the ultimate puppet-master.
“Stay the fuck away from him.” I hissed and stepped in front of her with my spectral form, wanting to cut her from our lives as much as I wanted to cut her from my own heart, but her grinning eyes stared right through me.
