was thankful for that now. She wasn’t sure how she would have remained sane if she’d been the female she was now living with him. If she felt everything the way she did now.
No, she wasn’t numb anymore, and the reality of what Azel had done to her, what he’d taken from her, was suddenly tearing at her from the inside out.
“He hurt me, Gunner,” she whispered into the dark.
“Yeah, love, he did.”
There was no mistaking the feeling growing inside her, so hot and vast and wild. “I hate him. I hate that fucking twisted asshole with everything in me.”
Gunner’s hold tightened. “He deserves your hate, love, but don’t give him any more of you.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, her body shaking as she tried to stop the images, the memories from filling her mind. “He took what wasn’t his to take. He treated me like a thing, like I was nothing.”
Gunner pressed his lips to her forehead. “He was wrong. He was so fucking wrong. You’re not nothing, Luna, to me you’re everything.”
She turned in his arms and pressed her face against his massive chest and shuddered. “I should have fought. I should have looked harder for Ronan. I should have tried to leave sooner. I should have killed that piece of shit while I had the chance. I should have—”
“Stop,” Gunner clipped out, gripping her chin and tilting her head up. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for any of it. Not one fucking thing. You did nothing wrong, Luna. You survived. You got through every damn day because you are so incredibly strong and brave, and I’m so fucking glad…” He swallowed repeatedly. “I’m so fucking glad that you did and you’re here with me now.”
This male, god, he broke her. Every day with him, he chipped through the walls that had been around her all her life and slowly but surely revealed the real Luna, the Luna who had lived behind cold indifference, protecting herself from the pain. Gunner cared for her, he did. How could she have ever doubted it, doubted him?
“What did I do to deserve you?” she whispered. “Why did the fates choose me to be yours?”
“Because they knew, as I do, that no one else exists on this earth who could make me as happy as you do. Who could give me everything that you do.”
Her lip trembled as she stared at him through the darkness. “I can’t wait to be your mate,” she said, meaning it with everything in her. “Wish I was ready now. I wish my head wasn’t so…all over the place…”
“We have all the time in the world, love.”
There he went, making her cry all over again. She sniffled, and Gunner wiped her tears away with his thumbs. She wanted to be his mate so badly, but Azel was still poison in her veins, the monster in her head, and when she gave herself to Gunner, she didn’t want that evil, that darkness with them.
Pressing her hands to his warm, hard chest, she breathed him in, letting his scent, his strength ease the turmoil inside her. “Will you tell me about it? About mating. What’s it like?” She didn’t want to think about the past anymore, only the future.
“What do you want to know?”
His gravelly voice lifted goose bumps over her skin, the good kind. “Everything.”
He chuckled, a sound that had her feeling all the things she now associated with the word joy. His hand moved over her back, warm and soothing. Luna snuggled closer.
“It happens during sex,” he said. “The way my brothers tell it, there’s this thread of light that appears while you’re making love to your female.”
“Making love.” Luna found herself repeating the words before she knew she was going to.
“Yeah,” he said roughly. “What we’ll have will never be just sex, Luna. What you and I will share, will always share, will be so much deeper, so much more.”
Her face warmed, wondering what “making love” with Gunner would be like. “That sounds nice.”
“I guarantee it’ll be better than nice,” he growled, low and sexy.
Her head was resting on his bicep now, and she slid her arm around his waist. “What do you do when you see the thread?”
“You grab on to it, metaphorically speaking, I guess. That’s how my mated brothers have explained it.”
“Do I have to do it as well?”
She felt rather than saw him shake his head. “Only I’ll see it, and only I can make us mates.”