Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,14
revealed four men on horseback. All young and strong. Quite un-noble looking. Unadorned and dusty from travel. They looked more like soldiers than officials. None of them wore what she’d expect a Crown Prince to wear, no matter how backwards those Persians were.
Three of them had dark hair; one blond. The blond, at first sight, was almost blindingly handsome, his golden crown soaking in the sun’s bright rays. One dark-head looked thoroughly barbarian, with heavy brows and a scruffy beard, exactly as Kira always pictured Persian men. Another one had a slim, lean figure with a clean-shaven face and a bored expression. He could have been the prince in the portraits, and he certainly fit the women’s descriptions earlier. But there was one more to go before she made her guess.
Finally, her eyes alighted on the fourth man, as the gates fully opened.
As if in a dream, Kira realized that her mare was moving forward toward the visitors, but she couldn’t recall urging her steed to do so.
Her mind was a blank as she looked upon the fourth man.
Beautiful.
The word throbbed in her head even though she’d dismissed it with disgust earlier. And yet, no other word would do.
That face. Those silvery eyes framed by thick, long lashes that shadowed his cheeks. Those cheekbones that reminded her of jagged cliffs by the sea. The wide, generous mouth that hinted at deep grooves around their corners if he ever smiled or laughed.
Suddenly, she wanted to see him do just that. Her heart thundered even louder at the thought.
What in the Goddess’s name was wrong with her?
He held her intense stare unblinkingly as she approached.
What was he thinking? What did he see? Did he feel the unfathomable connection that she felt? Could he hear her racing heart?
Drawing a bracing breath, Kira gathered her composure like a protective cloak and said:
“Welcome to my homeland.”
Chapter Three
Dalair…
Are you you…?
I-I don’t want to…
Disjointed whispers sifted through his mind. His eyes rolled restlessly behind closed lids. Lids that wouldn’t open no matter how he commanded them. Limbs that would not move.
He was trapped in a body that no longer obeyed his will. His shattered soul in jagged fragments he could never piece together.
His name…
Dalair.
What did it mean? Who was this person? Why did he matter?
Especially to her?
He no longer had a sense of self. It was merely a shadow. Unknowable, insubstantial, with death as its constant companion. He could no more pin it down than leash the wind in his hands.
He was more dead than alive.
As if apart from himself, he had the sensation that he was warm. It was a foreign feeling, for most of the time he felt on ice, submerged in darkness, silence and nothingness.
Luscious heat licked at the edges of his consciousness, so enticing, irresistible. He was drawn to it like a moth to flame.
He wanted to burn.
His heart…it burned. It hurt.
The muscle that beat in his chest was sore, wounded. But what pained him more was the heart that felt. That heart was broken. Afraid and bleeding.
Someone enfolded his body, blanketing him with their own. They fit more perfectly together than the missing pieces of a puzzle; they were simply one. He felt the vital essence of his other half, the life force she pulsed into him where they were joined. The air she breathed into his lungs. Her scent mating with his.
Sophia. Kira.
No matter her name, no matter her incarnation and form, she was never meant to be his, though he was ever and always, unequivocally, hers.
He fed energy back into her where he was locked tightly inside her body. Though he had little strength, though he was broken in every sense of the word, he still gave her what he could. And her body unconsciously and continuously milked him in her sleep, greedily absorbing every pearl of his release.
He inhaled a ragged breath.
It seemed that his physical self had turned toward the female covering him. Like pinpricks, he could almost feel his lips brushing her temple, the fine hairs there tickling his nose.
With every last ounce of strength he possessed, he concentrated on this closeness, struggling, clawing his way toward the heat of her, the essence of her.
He was so very cold. She was the only one who could warm him. She was the only one who mattered.
Please, Goddess, let him have her for a little while. A brief respite from the endless torment of his shattered soul.
Even though his heart still burned. His thoughts not his own. Even though