Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Don’t do it, he told himself. Don’t—
His hand reached up and hovered beside the vampire’s face. And when his palm closed the distance of its own volition, and he felt the warmth and the subtle friction of beard growth, he thought about the division between memories and dreams.
“Have you ever come back here?” he whispered. “To see if things were real.”
Apex shook his head, and in doing so, caused a brushing touch to flare between the pair of them. “No, I haven’t.”
Callum dropped his hand. “Oh. Well, good for you. Glad you moved along—”
As he went to turn away, Apex grabbed his arm. “I think about you. Always.”
The words were spoken with such urgency, there was no pretending to have misheard them or misunderstood.
And then there was the pain on that hard face. A special kind of agony radiated out of those eyes and flattened that mouth, and as Callum regarded the emotion, he felt the strangest unlocking in the center of his chest.
He was not alone.
He hadn’t . . . been alone. In the suffering.
Callum swallowed through a tight throat. “You remember.”
The vampire nodded and answered hoarsely, “Everything.”
It had been the touch Apex had craved for so long, and the sensations did not disappoint. Though that palm had rested on his cheek for just a moment, he had felt it all through his body.
And now he knew a different kind of heat, as Callum lowered his head in shame and retreated internally. Even though the distance between them did not change, the male seemed to shrink where he stood—and that made Apex want to kill that fucking female all over again.
“It happened to me, too,” he heard himself rasp. “Every time I pushed that food between your lips . . . with every towel I passed over your skin . . . for every hour I sat beside you and worried you were dying, what was done to you happened to me . . . too.”
Apex’s vision got blurry and he wiped his tears harder than he had to. And then with him being able to see, he had to look away from the wolven, from those icy blue eyes.
“I’m sorry I left like I did.” Callum shook his head. “That night, thirty years ago. I couldn’t—I just didn’t have it in me to . . . say goodbye to you.”
“I understand.”
Even though he didn’t, even though he hadn’t. But now that he thought more about it, he supposed that was just because it had hurt so badly.
“You had to take care of yourself.”
Their eyes held—and the sexual undercurrent surged. As it once had, all those years ago.
And it was too fucking weird. After all this time, he’d played this scene out in his head in so many different ways: There had been reunions of chance, like on the streets of downtown Caldwell some night, or in a restaurant, or in a supermarket. There had been the unexpected phone call, the out-of-the-blue contact that opened a random door. And then there had been his favorite, where Callum came and found him at his little bullshit house on the outskirts of town.
Maybe with a white rose in his hand because all those stupid fucking flowers he’d brought the guy had been remembered as the heartfelt gifts they had been.
There had been other fantasies, too. Like Lucan bringing the male over. Or maybe Kane doing the connecting. Both of those former prisoners knew where he lived, after all.
The last scenario he’d fantasized about had been the most impossible . . . and the one that had, on occasion, led him to have to do something to relieve himself: He had pictured himself going up to the summit of Deer Mountain, and walking into that cave, the one where the wolven had lived, the one with the hot spring. He always arrived just as Callum was emerging from the water, naked and dripping, as beautiful and haunting as he had been when he’d been naked in that road.
In that moment the two of them had first met.
“Never here,” he said softly.
“What?”
“When I imagined seeing you again, alone . . . it was never here, in this hellhole.” He glanced around. “I hate this fucking place. I’d burn it to the ground if I could.”
“It’s not a hellhole anymore.” Callum smiled in a flat way. “They’ve got Thermopane windows and lights now.”
“I don’t give a shit if every inch of paint is new and the roof is retiled with gold bars.” Apex shook his head. “It’s always going to be a fucking mausoleum to me.”
As Callum just stared at him, he shifted his weight back and forth on his boots. “What.”
“I didn’t know that . . . it lingered for you.”
“Not it.” Apex’s voice cracked, and he reached out for the male’s hand. Placing that broad palm in the center of his own chest, he said, “You. You were with me.”