Chapter 11
362 Words
11
Asher made it precisely five days, eighteen hours, and twenty-six minutes between the moment of her request and claiming Kira as his mate, fully and irrevocably. He’d holed up with Kira at the Manor, moving her into his room and more importantly his bed, only coming up for food and the occasional shower or few hours of patrol duty.
On day two, Asher knew he was in trouble. Being with Kira was just too good, and he was addicted to her presence, the sound of her laugh.
On day four, he tried to talk to her about what was happening. Not to scare her off, or even to explain that he had lost any and all self-control and might slip and sign both their death warrants. More just for the purpose of conversation.
“Hey, I am going to give you the mating bite, any minute now. I don’t know how I’ve managed to hold out during the last five minutes. You do realize that this will kill us both, right?” That sort of thing.
Unfortunately, she’d silenced his attempt with those lush, pink lips, and his words had slipped away, forgotten.
Early on day five, he was in a nasty, near-unwinnable fight with six Aszgraethe demons. He found himself welcoming the violent, bloody death that was about to happen. Kira would mourn him, of course, but she would be safe.
Gabriel and Rhys intervened in the fight just in the nick of time, and Asher actually felt bitter about it.
Now, five days, eighteen hours, and twenty-eight minutes after Kira pleaded for him to mark her, Asher was nearly delirious with simultaneous emotional gloom and pure, total physical satisfaction. Kira was snuggled down in his arms, sleeping away the afterglow of their mind-blowing, mating-bite-giving, death-sentence-creating s*x.
Asher ran a fingertip over the bare skin of her neck, just above the bright pink mark that claimed Kira as his, forever. Strangely, though there was an endless well of rage and self-recrimination boiling somewhere deep inside him, he simply could not bring himself to feel upset. Not with his mate in his arms. Not with everything inside the Manor so quiet and safe, so comforting.
The calm before the storm, as it were.
- Writer
