“That may be one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard,” I admit, smiling. My mate really is a sweetheart.
“Even before you said it, I think I knew it anyway,” he adds. “You show it in other ways, not just in words.”
I smile, pleased by that. I’ve always thought that love was more about actions than big proclamations anyway, so I’m glad that my mates have felt loved, even when I was too much of a chicken to speak the words out loud.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “But I’m glad I finally said it. It was time.”
Especially since I don’t know how much time we have left. I don’t want the worst to happen without my men knowing for certain how I feel. Without my having told them at least once.
Raven smiles at me, a soft thing, and I can’t help but smile back to see him like this. He should always be allowed to be this vulnerable and relaxed. Not the angry person he has to be to protect me.
I get up onto my toes to kiss him. I’m pretty damn tall, but so is Raven, and I like to get up onto my toes so that we’re the same height when we kiss. Raven wraps his arms around me further as the kiss deepens. It’s slow and natural and perfect. My first night with the men was amazing, definitely. I’d never had such an amazing sexual experience before. But we were still new to each other. Now, we know each other’s bodies and how to touch, how to kiss, and that makes it even better and hotter.
I can feel Raven getting hard against my hip, and I shiver. I’m definitely in the mood for him to pick me up and give me a good old-fashioned fucking against the shower wall. I reach down to wrap my hand around his cock, ready to take this further, when Raven grabs me by the hips and gently pushes me away.
What? I blink up at him in surprise.
Raven shakes his head at me fondly. “You’re still healing. You need to take it easy.”
Aww. I have to admit I melt a little at his thoughtfulness. He’s sweet. And I get it, really. If our positions were reversed, I would probably feel the same way. I’m very protective of my mates, more so than I ever thought I could be.
But I still want to feel him, to connect with him. I want to have this moment together. After all that just happened, I’d like to have something that doesn’t have anything to do with the frustrations we’ve been facing. I want to have a moment to just be with someone I love, the two of us as one, confirming our bond and finding some damn pleasure in all of this.
I smile up at him. “That’s sweet. But I’m—”
Before I can even start to sayokay,I feel like someone’s punched me right in the solar plexus. My knees buckle and pain spreads through my body, and then a strange numbness. A bright light fills my vision, like a star exploded right in front of me, and then I can’t feel anything.
It’s all just white.
CHAPTER3
Energy pulses through me, so much of it that I feel like my body can’t hold it. Like this energy will literally tear me apart inch by inch. I can’t feel my body at all at first, and then gradually I can sense it, but only just. I think someone’s picking me up—it must be Raven—and then I’m being carried, and I can’t feel the water from the shower anymore.
My body jerks and twitches, or I think it does. I’m not sure. There’s just somuch. I’ve never felt anything that was this strong before. I feel like someone just plugged me into a damn wall socket. How can my body possibly contain all of this? It can’t, it just can’t.
I feel like I should be in pain, right? This is a lot, and I should be in pain. But I am, and I’m not at the same time. It’s like this is so much pain that my body’s kind of given up trying to process it. Pain is your nerves warning you about danger to your body, right? It’s a warning system? My warning system’s offline now. It’s given up, raised the white flag, all of that shit.
There’s the feeling of being laid down. I think Raven put me on the bed, but it feels almost like it’s happening to someone else instead of me. Like I’m starting to float outside of my body. Am I dying? Is my soul leaving my body? It’s taking a long time to die if so. You’d think it would be quicker.
I’m burning up, I’m burning up so much, I feel like I’m a star, and I’m just full of so much fire and light. What is this? What’s happening to me? Why does it hurt so much? Why doesn’t it hurtmore?
And then voices start up in my head.
“I wonder if he was lying about…”
“Damn, forgot to grab peanut butter…”
“Mom never listens to me!”
“Fuck! You!”
“She’s the sweetest, always so supportive…”
I feel like someone just plugged me into a thousand conversations all at once. Fae all have a connection to one another, but I’ve never felt or heard anything like this before. I can sense everything, like I’m simultaneously in the heads of a thousand different people. No, not people, fae. Specifically fae. I can feel that that’s what they are. It’s like someone took our All-Soul connection and spun the dial up to eleven.
Fuck, it’s all so much. It’stoomuch.
I would clap my hands over my ears, except I still can’t feel my fucking body, and I doubt that would help. These voices aren’t outside of me. These fae aren’t physically here talking to me. They’reinsideme. They’re inside my head. I can’t get them out, and I can’t get them to stop talking.