“You good?” he asked, smoothing one trembling hand down the thigh still held against his chest.
“So good,” she slurred. “So, so good.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up even as exhaustion began to creep in. He turned his head to give the inside of her knee a soft kiss before he gently lowered her leg. He hated leaving her warmth, but he’d crush her if he slept on top of her, so Kaz quickly pulled out, stripped her of whatever clothes still clung to her arms, and then pressed her back against his chest.
And because he was selfish and greedy for his mate, he lifted her thigh and slid his semi-hard cock back into the tight, wet heat of her channel once more. His release coated her inner thighs and smoothed the way as he settled back where he belonged.
Atria moaned, her inner muscles clenching weakly, but Kaz didn’t ask for more. Curling his much bigger body around hers, he once more cradled her head on his bicep and buried his face in her hair.
“Sleep, princess,” he purred.
“Mm.” She threaded her fingers through the hand covering her stomach. “G’night, mate.”
His chest tightened so painfully, he found it hard to breathe. “Goodnight, my mate,” he whispered, eyes closing. “Sweet dreams.”
ChapterTwenty-Eight
Kaz had losta lot of fights in his lifetime. He had always been aggressive, after all, and picking fights with his brothers or anyone else who would swing a fist at him satisfied that restless beast inside him. But picking fights wasn’t the same aswinningthem.
A good fight was satisfying even when he lost. Valen, the man who had helped raise the Solbourne boys — and who was their grandfather in all the ways that mattered — used to say that even a bad fight taught you something good.
Bad fights on the streets of San Francisco taught him to fight dirty. Every beating he took from the other orcish teens on his mother’s family’s homestead taught him to accept that he would never be one of them. Every brutal training session with Fracture forged him into something stronger and earned him the respect of his team.
But by far the worst, most painful fight of his life had been the one he waged against nature.
Kaz came awake with a start as the watery light of predawn filtered in through the tinted windows of their stolen SUV. His arms instinctively tightened around the precious cargo sleeping soundly against his chest. Her breathing was soft and even, a gentle lullaby in the quiet. Their scents, mingled after a few hours of contact, filled the car.
Atria’s long hair tickled his throat when she rubbed her cheek against his bicep before settling again with a soft, content exhalation.
Kaz’s heart skipped a beat.I lost the fight.
It should have bothered him, but it didn’t. Kaz didn’t feel even a hint of regret when he threw his leg over hers, pinning her even more securely in his embrace.
Biology had, in fact, beat his ass. He just didn’t care.
I’m a fucking idiot.
That moment, when they were friendless, virtually defenseless, and without direction, happened to be the most in control and centered he had ever felt in his life.
The fear that Kaz had carried for so long, festering like an infection of the soul, was that matehood would make him a monster. He carried the guilt of his father’s actions, but he also worried that given the right conditions and the wrong choices, he would fall into the same violence and destruction as the man who sired him.
Thaddeus was never a good man. Prone to fits of uncontrollable violence, he’d gotten great pleasure out of using fear to control his people and his family.
Still, he hadreason.He was rational, if often cruel. He was a monster, yes, but still a man with children and an elvish spouse he appeared to at least tolerate. Valen had once been his best friend, his brother-in-arms, and Kaz had to believe that there was enough good in him at one point to earn the regard of his grandfather.
That changed when he met Amira Rione and felt the pull to his mate. Thaddeus was a greedy bastard. He kept his beautiful orcish consort, but he couldn’t give up his elvish spouse, nor risk his position as sovereign for Amira.
He needed to haveeverything.Amira wasn’t enough for him.
For a time, he somehow managed to dance on the razor’s edge between two lives: the one with his consort and the one with his elvish family, his power. His behavior grew increasingly erratic and his paranoia drove him to unimaginable lengths — demanding sigilworkers sacrifice beings to ward the Solbourne apartments with blood, kidnapping children for indoctrination into Fracture, and the gradual build up of hostility toward his elvish family that resulted in their near imprisonment in the Tower.
And then they discovered Amira’s pregnancy.
Kaz’s conception snapped Thaddeus’s tenuous grasp on reason. The news that he would have a child with his consort destroyed whatever delicate tether connected him to his elvish family, who he’d come to believe were intent on disposing of him. Two weeks before Amira’s due date, he returned to the Tower, locked the Solbourne apartments, and attempted to murder his spouse and children.
Raina Barbieri-Solbourne died defending Sam, only a little boy at the time, and Theodore, less than a month old. By the time Delilah and Valen managed to break into the apartments, Sam had been gruesomely injured trying to protect his baby brother.
Delilah took her revenge on their father, but it wouldn’t bring her mother back, nor erase Thaddeus’s legacy of terror.
