The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker Read Online Free PDF Page B

It wasn’t a dream. True, they’d justsurvived a nightmare, but she’d emerged from the other side victorious—and his.
    The line of his sternum, the graceful curve of his collarbone, was a fresh sight Percy glimpsed through the open neck of his clothing. This heretofore hidden treasure heightened her feverish temperature. The hem of his signature scarlet cravat clung limply to his collar like a stream of stage blood. The purpling bruise around his neck reminded her of the night’s horrific events. She’d never seen him so disheveled, and she’d never allowed herself such an intense flood of emotion at the sight of him.
    She choked, overcome. Mere months ago, she could never have imagined this strange fairy tale: to have gone from an awkward student, trembling in this man’s presence, to waking beside him as his intended. She found her awkwardness now layered with smoldering heat, making her feel all the more constrained and breathless; delicious torture.
    “Do forgive the bold act of lying next to you, Percy,” her beloved murmured. “But after last night I was too exhausted to keep watch and, dare I say, too covetous to be out of reach.”
    “If I’d awoken alone, Alexi, I’d have screamed for you something terrible.” She glanced about the room. “Where are we?”
    “The grand estate of Lord Elijah Withersby.”
    “Ah. Are the others here? Your… Guard? ”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, goodness.” Percy felt her face flush a mottled pink. “They don’t suppose you and I have…?”
    “No, dear.” Alexi could not hold back a smirk. “They do not imagine your modesty in jeopardy, if that’s what concerns you.”
    “Ah. I…well, I wasn’t sure if I ought to be embarrassed before your friends.” She gave a nervous laugh.
    “No, but…As the pleasures of holding you close are such a recent revelation, might your fiancé indulge his newfoundheaven again?” What started as a polite request finished more as a demand.
    Percy bit her lip, hard. “Please,” she breathed, and collapsed against him clumsily. He wrapped his arms around her, breathing slowly in as she relished his nearness. She dared to press her pale lips to the bared portion of his breast.
    He shuddered in response, murmuring, “My love. As much as I’d like to forget recent terrible events, I must say it is The Guard who are embarrassed for having so courted danger. I did insist that Prophecy meant you. Please believe me. But they wanted none of it; instead, that horrid woman—”
    Percy eased back to look up at him, stilling his mouth with her fingertips. “It’s done, Alexi. While I barely survived the heartbreak, and wouldn’t if it were to ever happen again”—Alexi started to make protest, but Percy continued—“we must move forward, you and I, and your Guard. Together.” She grimaced and added, “You may apologize, however, for having been very cruel.”
    “I’m so sorry,” he declared, cupping her white cheeks in his hands and staring unflinchingly into her eyes.
    She was not inclined to doubt his sincerity. “Apology accepted,” she murmured.
    He drew her in, greedy. Her body thrilled everywhere at his touch, trembling deliciously in the throes of this foreign intimacy after so many years of thorough loneliness, an odd orphan hardly touched. Newfound heaven, indeed. But then her eyes clouded suddenly in the familiar onset of a vision: A large, black, open door. A long, stone corridor shimmered in the dim beyond. Beckoning. Demanding. The sound of a river…
    The vision blinked away. “Damn,” Percy muttered, rousing from it. More doors.
    Alexi brought her eyes up to meet his. “You curse at my embrace?”
    Percy shook her head, laughing nervously. “No, a vision. I assure you, I’ll never tire of your embrace.”
    “Visions. I was hoping you’d be done with those. Unless it was a vision of us entwined…? For I assure you, that’s in your future,” he purred, dragging a finger down her cheek and tracing the