ASTER
It wassurreal waking in the arms of a man you were supposed to despise and know you’d never felt safer.
Knowing you’d never felt more alive than you did with the steady thrum of his heart beating against your ear.
The blankets were down around his waist, and every inch of him was bare except for his underwear. His skin was warm and smooth, glowing like bronze beneath the streams of early winter light that bloomed at the base of the window in a show of brilliant golds and blazing oranges.
His breaths were long and deep, even and sure, as sure as his arms that still held me the way they’d held me the entire night—as if they were created for me.
For security.
For surety.
A promise to see me through the night where he would continue to love me in the light.
I knew it.
I felt it in the way his pulse sped at my touch. In the way his chest expanded each time he looked at me. In the oaths that fell from his tongue. The way even in his sleep, he seemed aware, as if his body gravitated to each movement of mine.
Every shift, tucking me closer.
Each breath, drawing me nearer.
It terrified me. Terrified me because I couldn’t fathom ripping myself away. Couldn’t imagine having to leave this sanctuary that had come to feel like a home.
It was getting harder and harder to deny that I hadn’t stumbled into where I belonged.
I knew I was falling.
Sinking.
Going under.
And I wasn’t sure I’d ever break the surface again.
Just thinking it felt like a risk. For both of us. For our hearts and our minds and our physical safety.
It wasn’t just our hearts on the line.
Jarek was a monster, and my father was the overlord of it all. But I’d seen his compassion before. Both times it had been given to me out of the love he held for me, as twisted as it was.
Hope sparked in that secret place I’d kept like a dream.
What if…what if my papa could understand? What if he really saw? In his harsh, traditional eyes, could love ever count?
I angled so I could peer up at Logan’s face—so perfect I had to wonder if he were real. Wonder if I’d gotten so lost in the loneliness—in the vacancy—that I’d conjured it all.
That game.
The bet.
My plea.
This man, who through it all, through all the pain I had caused him, still promised to stand by me.
Fight for me.
As if he felt every question ripple beneath my skin, those stony green eyes blinked open in the rays of sunlight that streaked into his room. It was the gold flecks that glinted and flamed.